THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS

VOL. IV, DECEMBER, 1859, NO. XXVI







THE EXPERIENCE OF SAMUEL ABSALOM, FILIBUSTER.


In the winter of 1856, the outlook of the present writer, known
somewhere as Samuel Absalom, became exceedingly troubled, and indeed
scarcely respectable. As gold-digger in California, Fortune had looked
upon him unkindly, and he was grown to be one of the indifferent,
ragged children of the earth. Those who came behind him might read as
they ran, stamped on canvas once white, "Stockton Mills. Self-Rising
Flour!"--the well-known label in California, at that day, of greatest
embarrassment.

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 village
newspaper:--"The heavy frost which fell last night brings with it at
least one source of congratulation for our citizens. Soon the crowd of
vagrant street-sleepers, which infests our town, will be forced to go
forth and work for warmer quarters. It has throughout this summer been