a greeting to Alabama.



The California Politician.

The California politician of the early days was plucky. He had to be so,
for faint heart won no votes in those rough times. One of the Marshalls
(Tom or Ned--I forget which), at the beginning of a stump speech one
night in the mines, was interrupted by a storm of hisses and execrations
from a turbulent crowd of fellows, many of whom were full of whisky. He
paused a moment, drew himself up to his full height, coolly took a
pistol from his pocket, laid it on the stand before him, and said:

"I have seen bigger crowds than this many a time. I want it to be fully
understood that I came here to make a speech tonight, and I am going to
do it, or else there will be a funeral or two."

That touch took with that crowd. The one thing they all believed in was
courage. Marshall made one of his grandest speeches, and at the close
the delighted miners bore him in triumph from the rostrum.

That was a curious exordium of "Uncle Peter Mehan," when he made his
first stump-speech at Sonora: "Fellow-citizens, I was born an orphin at
a very early period of my life." He was a candidate for supervisor, and
the good-natured miners elected him triumphantly. He made a good
supervisor, which is another proof that book-learning and elegant
rhetoric are not essential where there are integrity and native good
sense. Uncle Peter never stole any thing, and he was usually on the
right side of all questions that claimed the attention of the