the ever-present nuisance and eyesore of our otherwise beautiful and
romantic moonlit nights." "Listen to this scoundrel!" said he; "how he
can insult an unfortunate man! Makes his own living braying, lying, and
flinging dirt, and spits upon us sad devils who fail to do it in an
honest manner! Ah, the times are changing in California! Once, no one
knew but this battered hat I sit under might partially cover the head
of a nobleman or man of honor; but men begin to show their quality by
the outside, as they do elsewhere in the world, and are judged and
spoken to accordingly. I will shake California dust from my feet, and
be gone!"

In this mood, I thought of General Walker, down there in Nicaragua,
striving to regenerate the God-forsaken Spanish Americans. "I will go
down and assist General Walker," said I. So next morning found me on my
way to San Francisco, with a roll of blankets on my shoulder and some
small pieces of money in my pocket. Arrived in the city, I sought out
General Walker's agent, one Crittenden by name, a respectable,
honest-looking man, and obtained from him the promise of two hundred
and fifty acres of Nicaraguan land and twenty-five dollars per month
for service in the army of General Walker, and also a steerage-ticket
of free passage to the port of San Juan del Norte by one of the
steamers of the Nicaragua Transit Line. Of my voyage down I do not
intend to speak; several unpublished sensations might have been picked
up in that steerage crowd of bog Irish, low Dutch, New Yorkers, and
California savages of every tribe, returning home in red flannel shirts
and boots of cowhide large; but my business is not with them, and I say
only that after a brief and prosperous voyage we anchored early one
morning in the harbor of San Juan del Sur, at that time part of the
dominions of General Walker.