disappointment, yet others more than realized their most fabulous
conception of wealth. I was told when I was a boy if I went where the
sun set and dug for gold I would find it. When I became a man I went
three thousand miles in the direction of the sun setting and dug and
found gold. It is not a dream, for as I close this writing I see on my
little finger a gold ring made from the gold I there dug, which has been
there for forty-five years. It is so fine that it has been wearing away,
and it is not more than one-fourth the size it was when I first put it
on, and time is likewise wearing on me, and it will probably last as
long as I do, and we will disappear together, as Shakespeare says,
"besmeared with sluttish time."

THE END.




APPENDIX.

It was the brains and statesmanship of Wm. L. Marcy, when he was
secretary of war under President Polk, that inaugurated and generaled
the movements that resulted in our securing possession of California--by
his expeditions, sent by sea and by land, of regular forces, followed by
the volunteer regiment of one thousand men, under the command of Col.
Jonathan Stevenson, as the following able State paper indicates:

[Confidential.]

[Illustration: W.L. Marcy]