it. The house had been stripped bare; many cases of goods were awaiting
shipment around Cape Horn to California. California! A land of fable! We
knew well enough that our father was there, and had been for two years
or more; and that we were at last to go to him, and dwell there with the
fabulous in a new home more or less fabulous,--yet we felt that it must
be altogether lovely. We said good-bye to everybody,--getting friends
and fellow-citizens more or less mixed as the hour of departure from our
native city drew near. We were very much hugged and very much kissed and
not a little cried over; and then at last, in a half, dazed condition,
we left Rochester, New York, for New York city, on our way to San
Francisco by the Nicaragua route. This was away back in 1855, when San
Francisco, it may be said, was only six years old.

It seemed a supreme condescension on the part of our maternal
grandfather that he, who did not and could not for a moment countenance
the theatre, should voluntarily take us, one and all, to see an alleged
dramatic representation at Barnum's Museum--at that time one of the
features of New York city, and perhaps the most famous place of
amusement in the land. Four years later, when I was sixteen, very far
from home and under that good gentleman's watchful supervision, I asked
leave to witness a dramatic version of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," enacted by a
small company of strolling players in a canvas tent. There were no
blood-hounds in the cast, and mighty little scenery, or anything else
alluring; but I was led to believe that I had been trembling upon the
verge of something direful, and I was not allowed to go. What would that
pious man have said could he have seen me, a few years later, strutting
and fretting my hour upon the stage?

Well, we all saw "Damon and Pythias" in Barnum's "Lecture Room," with
real scenery that split up the middle and slid apart over a carpet of