Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Tonya Allen, and Project
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In the winter of 1856, the outlook of the present writer, knownsomewhere as Samuel Absalom, became exceedingly troubled, and indeedscarcely respectable. As gold-digger in California, Fortune had lookedupon him unkindly, and he was grown to be one of the indifferent,ragged children of the earth. Those who came behind him might read asthey ran, stamped on canvas once white, "Stockton Mills. Self-RisingFlour!"—the well-known label in California, at that day, of greatestembarrassment.
One morning, after sleeping out the night in the streets of Oroville,he got up, and read these words, or some like them, in the villagenewspaper:—"The heavy frost which fell last night brings with it atleast one source of congratulation for our citizens. Soon the crowd ofvagrant street-sleepers, which infests our town, will be forced to goforth and work for warmer quarters. It has throughout this summer beenthe ever-present nuisance and eyesore of our otherwise beautiful andromantic moonlit nights." "Listen to this scoundrel!" said he; "how hecan insult an unfortunate man! Makes his own living braying, lying, andflinging dirt, and spits upon us sad devils who fail to do it in anhonest manner! Ah, the times are changing in California! Once, no oneknew but this battered hat I sit under might partially cover the headof a nobleman or man of honor; but men begin to show their quality bythe outside, as they do elsewhere in the world, and are judged andspoken to accordingly. I will shake California dust from my feet, andbe gone!"
In this mood, I thought of General Walker, down there in Nicaragua,striving to regenerate the God-forsaken Spanish Americans. "I will godown and assist General Walker," said I. So next morning found me on myway to San Francisco, with a roll of blankets on my shoulder and somesmall pieces of money in my pocket. Arrived in the city, I sought outGeneral Walker's agent, one Crittenden by name, a respectable,honest-looking man, and obtained from him the promise of two hundredand fifty acres of Nicaraguan land and twenty-five dollars per monthfor service in the army of General Walker, and also a steerage-ticketof free passage to the port of San Juan del Norte by one of thesteamers of the Nicaragua Transit Line. Of my voyage down I do notintend to speak; several unpublished sensations might have been pickedup in that steerage crowd of bog Irish, low Dutch, New Yorkers, andCalifornia savages of every tribe, returning home in red flannel shirtsand boots of cowhide large; but my business is not with them, and I sayonly that after a brief and prosperous voyage we anchored early onemorning in the harbor of San Juan del Sur, at that time part of thedominions of General Walker.
Whilst the great crowd of home-bound passengers, with infinite din andshouting, are bustling down the gangways toward the shore, our littleparty of twenty or thirty Central American regenerators assemble on theship's bow, and answer to our names as read out by a small,mild-featured man, whom at a glance I should have thought nofilibuster. It seems he was our captain pro tem., and borerecommendations from the agent at San Francisco to a commission in theNicaraguan service. He had made the voyage on the cabin side of theship, and I saw him now for the first time. His looks betokened nofire-eating soul; but your brave ma