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 OF 
 
 ;3i':9]]'S':-6onRT 
 
 U TREATING THE FOLLOWING SUBJECTS 
 
 A Canvasser's Dream; A Grand Council; Satan Makes a Speech 
 . Giving the Result of 6,000 Years' Study of Man ; Exults 
 at His Success; The Earth's Crust is Four Miles Thick; 
 Inside it is Hollow ; at the Poles are Large Open- 
 ings Through which Pass Vast Multitudes to 
 His Grand Auditorium ; A Citizen of 
 Oakland Taken by a Friend to His 
 Majesty's Latest Grand Coun- 
 cil ; A Grand Feast ; 
 Toasts and Speeches. 
 
 'Fpe 0LD Fe^TY-j^iNEi^'g ^to^y. 
 
 By W. B. HARRIS 
 
 OAKLAND, CAL. : 
 
 F»UBT.ISHED BY THE AUTHOR 
 
 1884. 
 
 ■i^ 
 
J- 74^/ 
 
OP THB 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Dear Reader: — Any port in a storm. I am old, penniless, 
 and friendless. After an exceedingly active life, on the border, 
 in the mountains, mining, or on plains, cattle and sheep-raising, 
 I find myself at sixty years old in Oakland — broke. I have no 
 means of a livelihood. In youth and early manhood I could 
 devise a means of making money. Now, old and sick, I can do 
 nothing but write a book. The storm of poverty and want is 
 terrible. This is my only port, the writing of a book. A Chris- 
 tian gentleman, E. S. Fowler, goes my security to my publisher. 
 He and others who heard my manuscript read, were good 
 enough to call it very readable. 
 
 In the following pages the ground is taken that God and the 
 devil have been in the world from Adam's creation, battling for 
 character for their kingdoms. God with the Holy Spirit and the 
 word of his truth endeavors to lead man up into a better and 
 higher life. The position is taken that it is his privilege to go on 
 learning of God in this world until he reaches a plane of happi- 
 ness perfectly incomprehensible to the intellect of the unredeemed 
 man. But man being totally depraved, and loving darkness 
 rather than light, the devil, with his vast cunning and experience, 
 has largely the advantage, and is peopling his kingdom more 
 rapidly than God. He is in politics, shaping national measures 
 to suit his purpose. He is in the courts, making judges follow 
 old precedents to the enslavement of mankind. He is in all 
 those Governments where the land is all in the hands of the few, 
 and the common people are forced into the cities and towns, 
 
4 Introduction. 
 
 making the establishment and maintenance of standing armies 
 necessary. He is an accomplished devil. He is better educated 
 than any faculty of a college in the world; knows vastly more. 
 He is perfectly accomplished in State craft. He has been able 
 to cheat the United States for the last hundred years out of the 
 realization of the most important facts which her history has 
 developed, that is, that homes in the United States are the grand 
 power upon which is based all modern civilization. The devil 
 wants us to think that it is education, and he is constantly urging 
 the country to educate the negroes and poor whites of the South,. 
 by some national provision looking to that end. Give the negroes 
 homes, break up the system of land monopoly, all over the Souths 
 divide the land up among the inhabitants of the South, and 
 education is sure to follow. I do not mean to rob the white 
 people of their land, but tax land held in larger quantities than 
 1 60 or 300-acre tracts higher than any other property, and appro- 
 priate the money proposed for education to the buying of a home 
 for a family, which money the family refund as fast as they be- 
 come able. California is a splendid illustration of this matter; 
 land monopoly covered every valley from San Diego to Shasta. 
 
 The State has had a splendid school fund from her earliest 
 history, thanks to the United States Government. Its citizens 
 have been forced into the different towns and cities, which have 
 grown much faster than improvements in the country warranted. 
 The schools have performed their duty, and now we already see 
 the result in a generation of educated young men and women. In 
 no State in this Union will you find so many young men in pen- 
 itentiaries and jails. The places of honor and power are not in 
 the hands of young men raised in the State. On the contrary, 
 they are in the hands of young men raised in other States, or 
 Ireland, or Germany. 
 
 Go to your churches on Sunday, and a large majority of the 
 
Introduction. 5 
 
 men have gray beards, indicating an Eastern nativity. The 
 young men raised and educated here are diminutive in mind and 
 
 body. 
 
 The devil has cheated the State out of the million beautiful 
 homes, which she ought to have had, and would have had, if the 
 feudal land system, with the devil as chief council in the courts, 
 had not won his cause against God and right and the best interest 
 of the human race. It is a great deal easier for the devil to tear 
 down a civilization that God and home and truth have been gen- 
 erations building up, than it is to build it. If we were to lose our 
 homes in America, if land monopoly were established all over the 
 United States as it is in California and Mexico, we would have a 
 standing army to maintain law and order in less than ten years. 
 The larger holdings are rapidly absorbing the smaller, and capi- 
 talists are having established a nucleus, around which will gather 
 a standing army, and then our liberties are gone. 
 
 The devil is using another element to lower our civilization. 
 A constant stream of low, cunning, unprincipled foreigners are 
 flooding our land, filling our cities and towns. We must save our 
 land for the Dutch and Irish and negroes that are here. We 
 must legislate so as to make homes for our present homeless pop- 
 ulation. One man with a home, and under God educating his 
 children, is a bulwark in favor of law and order and liberty. A 
 hundred men loving lawlessness and disorder, who require ten or 
 fifteen constables to look after them, will lower the civilization of 
 a thousand. Our civilization is like a brook, flowing over a grassy 
 plain, clear and beautiful. The emigration from foreign countries 
 is a band of hogs wallowing in the brook, spoiling its waters. 
 
SATAN'S COURT. 
 
 Thursday, Jan. 3, 1884. — Arose early with the view of can- 
 vassing Woodland for >the Prohibitionist; when business opened, 
 I commenced. I received the same or nearly the same answer 
 from all: "No, I have all the papers I want." A great many 
 said, " I favor the cause, but I think we will have a drought, and 
 I must economize on every hand." No man put his hand in his 
 pocket and said, "Yes, here is the money, you are engaged in a 
 good fight and I will help you." At noon I was very tired an4 
 hungry. Ladies came to the door and said, " No, sir; we don't 
 want it," and unceremoniously shut the door in my face in order 
 to get back to their dinner. No one asked me to eat. I was 
 genteelly dressed and looked more like a capitalist, than a poor 
 old canvasser for a paper advocating an unpopular cause. At 
 last hunger must be appeased; I had to walk a mile to a restau- 
 rant to get my dinner. So I watched closely, and finally I saw 
 a Bible on a center table, and summoned courage to say, " Won't 
 you let me have a little dinner? I am old and hate to walk a 
 mile to a restaurant. She reluctantly fed me. After dinner I 
 thought I would try farmers. So I started out. They looked 
 upon me with evident scorn, and all declined to take my paper. 
 
 At night, footsore and tired, I approached the town of Cache- 
 ville. I called at the preacher's first. His wife met me at the 
 door; I handed her a paper, at the same time taking a letter 
 from Mr. Dunn, from a Bible and handing it to her, addressed 
 " To all whom it may concern," stating my business, and recom- 
 mending me to Christians; I was invited in, and rested my old, 
 aching limbs a minute, when 1 was politely referred to Mr. Griffin, 
 a leading member of the church. I observed it was sundown, 
 and that I would go and see him. He received me at the door 
 with courtesy, but did not invite me in. He was well dressed and 
 had a fine house, evidently a man well-to-do. In answer to my 
 
8 Satan's Court. 
 
 usual inquiry, he said he was a prohibitionist, favored the cause, 
 and did all he could for it and the church, but did not want my 
 paper. I asked him to let me stay all night; he said, no, he was 
 crowded and could not possibly accommodate me. I reasoned 
 the case with him a little; he pulled out a half dollar and gave 
 me; I put it down in my book as a subscription for three months 
 to my paper; he did not want me to do so. I resolved not to take 
 charity; he evidently wanted to make me the recipient of his alms. 
 I was no beggar; I had ten dollars in my pocket. I did want 
 to economize by paying a less price for food and lodging to a 
 friend of the good cause than I would have to pay hotel-keepers. 
 At the hotel I paid forty cents for a very poor supper, a poor 
 man's day's waajes. I got a bed at a private house and went to 
 bed, completely worn out, at six o'clock, and terribly disgusted 
 with California farmers. Not one cent had I taken in the whole 
 day. I soon fell asleep and dreamed. 
 
 I had in my dreams, over and over again, the interviews of the 
 day with the cold, hard-hearted, rich farmers. Their looks of 
 superciliousness haunted me in my dream. I had interviewed a 
 few suffering tramps during the day. Their worn, haggard, de- 
 sponding looks also haunted my dreams. From out of this chaos 
 my dreams took shape. I dreamed I was again a boy on the 
 Chattahoochee River, Forsythe County, Georgia, with my old 
 friend. Singleton Howell; he was, the last time I saw him, twenty- 
 one years old, six feet high, and weighed 200 pounds. He had 
 just fallen heir to a large farm, and over a hundred negroes. 
 More than twenty families, poor white trash, were living off his 
 bounty. He was as good as it was possible to be to his negroes. 
 To be his property was the negro's paradise; but he was a terri- 
 ble rake. Not less than forty children, black and white, pointed 
 with lineaments unmistakable to him as their father. He was 
 very popular with men and women. He drank just enough to 
 be convivial. He was honored by a seat in the Legislature at 
 twenty-two years of age, which place he exchanged only for a 
 seat in Congress, in 1840. 
 
 Well, I dreamed that in front of the hotel in Cacheville I 
 met a pale, haggard, shivering tramp, who surprised me by saying, 
 " Billy [that is my name], give me a quarter to get a drink." 
 
Satan's Court. 9 
 
 Looking up I beheld my old friend, Singleton Howell. " What," 
 says I, extending my hand, but to my surprise there was no hand 
 reached out to take mine. He did seem to glide off with my 
 quarter, and I saw him take two glasses full of whisky and gulp 
 it down. He again stood before me without walking in the 
 street. Said I, "Are you a ghost?" he answered, "Yes." I 
 said, " Tell me all about it." " Well," said he, " I was killed in 
 thelate war, and, of course, went straight to hell; but, Billy, I 
 was a good man in this world, and I got a good place in hell. 
 The devil gave me a place of high honor; but still it was hell. 
 There was gnashing of teeth. There was wailing. There was 
 the worm that dieth not. There was felt by all an eternal banish- 
 ment from the presence of God, and all that was good. Strange 
 to say, all my negroes that died went straight to Heaven. For a 
 long time they shouted and sang, ' Glory to the Lamb,' but they 
 seemed, after I was in hell about twenty years, to have a new 
 arrival. I owned an old negro man who was incessantly boring 
 me on religion. He would say, ' Massa, quit your sins, repent, 
 and turn to Jesus; you are too good a man to go to hell; all are 
 under condemnation without Jesus. But I laughed at him, and 
 praised him, and gave him good clothes, and books, and his 
 time. But he always worked. He did more work than two 
 common men, and was the best singer I ever heard. Well, a 
 thousand times I heard him praying for his poor massa. He had 
 full charge of my place and property. One day he came to me 
 and said: ' Massa, massa, Mr. Hammond whipped Jeff de odder 
 day, and Jeff run away; he is a powerful good nigger, and is 
 mighty anxious for you to buy him.' Said I, ' I have not got the 
 money.' He answered, 'You borrow de money, and we will give 
 in all hands and save enough on de crop extra to pay for him.' 
 So I met Hammond in Warsaw that day and said, ' Has Jeff run 
 away ? he answered, ' Yes; and by God when I get him I'll whip 
 him to death.' Said I, ' You are a d — d brute ! ' Well, you know 
 we had had many a fight, Hammond and L He knew I was the 
 best man, and only said with set teeth, ' I'll shoot you, G — d — 
 you, if you interfere between me and my niggers. You treat your 
 niggers so well it spoils all the niggers in the neighborhood.' 
 ' Well,' said I, ' come over to the hotel and take dinner with me; 
 
10 Satan's Court. 
 
 I have wine, brandy, and everything.' I touched on his weak 
 point; he came and drank heavily during the meal. I managed 
 to steal his pistols, and hide them. He swore he would kill me. 
 I humored his ferocious temper; we played cards, drank, caroused; 
 got drunk ourselves, and made everything else drunk that we 
 could. Hammond was terrible stingy, and when drunk wanted 
 to gamble; but he had sworn never to gamble any more. Not- 
 withstanding this I got him to gambling, and as he had no money 
 I loaned him a hundred, which I soon won. Drink and avarice 
 by this time had stimulated his appetite for gambling to the high- 
 est pitch. He asked for more money; I refused, unless he gave me 
 security. I told him I would buy Jeff. He gnashed his teeth, 
 and his ferocity was horrible; but passion and appetite favored 
 me, and it all resulted in my holding a bill of sale of Jeff before 
 morning. 
 
 "Well, I owned 300 negroes when the war broke out. 
 Nearly 200 were procured pretty much in the foregoing manner 
 through old Abe's influence. In the battle of Balls Bluff I was 
 killed, and of course went to hell. I have been there twenty 
 years. About a hundred of my negroes have died or been killed, 
 and nearly all have gone straight to Heaven; their faith had 
 saved them. As before remarked, there were many different 
 places in hell. The devil honored me and gave me little devils 
 for my servants. I had whisky and wine and gambling till I was 
 tired to death of them. That kind of life had to last forever 
 without change. Every man and woman continued the life they 
 had led on earth. Whisky sellers seemed to have a worse life 
 than any other class. Their bodies were swelled up to enormous 
 proportions; they fed ravenously with an insatiable hunger, upon 
 what they had robbed of helpless women and children. A great 
 plant of a fiery color, smelling of brimstone, grew up from their 
 feet, named Want. They fed continuously, unceasingly, with 
 awful unrest, terrible to look upon. Another class near them 
 was the California farmer. A terrible lust for wheat and land 
 and horses and carriages, and brag, consumed them. Also a fear, 
 a horrible fear that a tramp would come along, made their eyes 
 bulge out about an inch. They bragged from morning till night 
 on their honesty and liberality. All this was never to end. 
 
Satan's Court. 11 
 
 ''Well, one day I was looking over to where a vast, countless 
 multitude were singing and feasting, and shaking hands, and look- 
 ing peaceful and happy. My eyes naturally wandered to my 
 negroes, when I gazed in that direction. I was amazed to see 
 them all going toward the banks of Jordan to meet some one; 
 they looked very happy. What was my surprise to see old Abe, 
 for it was him they were going to welcome. As was the general 
 custom in paradise, all who had done good in the name of Jesus 
 were welcomed |by the recipients of their favors. I could not 
 help but reflect how much better it was to be welcomed by a host 
 on that side than have a fortune on the earth. 
 
 " Well, Abe was gladly greeted by that happy band; he was 
 carried on angels' wings to the vast throng who surrounded the 
 throne. Abe was very humble, and took a place where he 
 thought he was very low. All at once a host of beautiful angels 
 left the throne, and in a moment they surrounded old Abe, and 
 placing their wings under him they gently lifted him and wafted 
 him up, and bore him up to the feet of the Lamb. I then heard 
 the words: ' He that abaseth himself shall be exalted. Enter 
 thou into the joys of thy Lord.' 
 
 "Old Abe said, 'Lord, I prayed all my life for my young 
 massa.' Just then his eyes fell upon me over in hell; without 
 one word, he fell upon his knees. The command went forth that 
 I was to have another chance on earth. So I started back on 
 the road I went to hell, on through the grave. I had heard those 
 cursed old Californians bragging so much, that, as I had my 
 choice of places, I concluded to. come here on the Sacramento 
 River. 
 
 " Well, I landed here about two years ago, flat broke. What 
 should I do? Hunger and thirst must be satisfied, and clothing 
 must be had. I had never worked. I had no professional edu- 
 cation. What should I do for a living ? I wanted whisky, but 
 had no money. I was back to reform, but somehow I could not 
 believe on Jesus for me, even when I knew that he had saved 
 millions of hosts. I thought I would lecture, but I could not get 
 an audience. I thought I would keep men from selling whisky, 
 as that was the worst hell, but they w^ould not believe me. I 
 worked for farmers, but I — Oh, it was terrific t^d^^feijjave led, 
 
12 Satan's Court. 
 
 and I am going back to hell; it is a much better place than it is 
 to be poor and friendless in California. Why, Billy, you keep 
 your trust. Obey the Scriptures, do good, make all happy whom 
 you meet, as you journey through life, and above all look every 
 moment to Jesus; and that which you enter upon by so doing is 
 better than gold, and lands, or houses, or merchandise. When 
 you die and go over yonder, hug and kiss old Abe for me; tell 
 him I thank him with all my heart; but there is no chance for a 
 poor old tramp in California to go to Jesus. The people here 
 have him all surrounded in fine churches, with fine clothing and 
 pomp and splendor. Tell Abe I said it was better to be in hell 
 than to be here, and I am going back. 
 
 " What are you doing, Billy ? Lend me another quarter ? Billy, 
 what, are you canvassing for the Prohibitionist here among these 
 farmers ? Well, I guess I won't take your quarter. Poor fellow, 
 I am awful sorry for you. A poor old quill-driving author, here 
 in California ! To think that I, who am going back to hell, 
 should pity you ! You will be happy forever, if you obey God; 
 but, my dear friend, the martyrs who were led to the stake with 
 great rusty chains eating into their flesh, had a better chance 
 than you. Good-bye, Billy — by the way I will take that quarter. 
 Nothing on earth is so exacting and imperious as whisky. When 
 our system gets well loaded, like a magnet the larger quantity 
 draws the smaller. The poor drunkard can feel the drink draw- 
 ing him five miles. No wonder the saloon-keeper knows he has 
 a bill of sale of drunkards. Well, Billy, good-bye; I am going 
 to hell; I will see you across the gulf in Heaven if you are faith- 
 ful." At this he glided into the hotel and took two more large 
 glasses of whisky. 
 
 He did this hurriedly. Setting down the glass the last time, 
 he took the bottle and turned it up to his mouth, and was rapidly 
 getting outside the contents, when I saw distinctly the bar-keeper 
 take a pistol from behind the counter, level it at my friend's heart, 
 and fire. The report of the pistol awoke me. The dream was 
 so vivid and impressive that I at once arose from my bed and 
 wrote it down. With the dream in my head, about 8 o'clock I 
 commenced canvassing the town. An interview with one man 
 will give the reader a correct idea of a day's work. The can- 
 
Satan's Court. 13 
 
 vasser being told that Mr. K was a prohibitionist, and his 
 
 house being pointed out, he repaired thither. He rang the bell. 
 
 The door was opened by Mrs. K , a well-dressed, middle- 
 aged lady. 
 
 Canvasser. — "I am working for the Frohibitionist. I want 
 subscribers." 
 
 Lady. — "Yes, indeed; well, it is a cause that I think has 
 God's sanction. I am a strong Prohibitionist." 
 
 Canvasser. — "Well, ma'am, won't you subscribe?" 
 
 Lady. — "Well, no; it's going to be a dry season, and we are 
 carrying as many newspapers as we can." 
 
 Canvasser. — "Well, we are on the eve of a grand boom. 
 Prohibition stock is going right up. The people all over the land 
 are waking up. The enormous taxation arising from the trade in 
 order to prosecute drunken criminals, and to feed them in jails, 
 penitentiaries, and poor-houses, is the argument that reaches every 
 tax-payer." 
 
 Lady. — " Yes; I am an old settler here, and know, of my own 
 knowledge, of the loss of six splendid homes. You see that 
 house, and that — " pointing to empty houses that stood in the dis- 
 tance. "I will tell you how that one was settled, and how the 
 home was afterwards broken up; but come in." 
 
 The canvasser, being tired, thought he would rest and 
 hear the story. 
 
 So the lady continued: — 
 
 "Mr. Turner, with four children, came across the plains in 
 1850, stopping first at what was then called Hangtown. He had 
 six yoke of good oxen, and moved over here and took up that 
 quarter-section of land. We took up this. He and his wife were 
 from the border in Missouri. He was a good hunter and game 
 abounded. Every pound that he killed was worth from two to 
 four bits a pound. He bought a scythe and cut some hay, and 
 hauled it over to Sacramento, getting as high as $100, and even 
 $150 per load. Every time he went to town he got a little tipsy. 
 In that condition he spent a fearful amount of money. He had 
 no caution nor acquisitiveness, and very large friendship. 
 
 "The poor man loved his family, but the cruel bondage to 
 whisky ruined him. In 1856 he sold his cattle and paid for his 
 
14 Satan's Court. 
 
 land. He had planted fruit trees and vines, and at that time was 
 making wine. He went to the city with a load of hay. That 
 saloon-keeper over in town met him in Sacramento, where they 
 commenced drinking, and while drunk the saloon-keeper won his 
 money, wagon, and team. When he sobered up the next morn- 
 ing, he felt so ashamed and miserable that he swore he. would 
 drown himself. The saloon-keeper told him that if he would 
 mortgage his farm for the money, he could take his team and go 
 home with it. So it was agreed. They had a mortgage written 
 by a lawyer and duly recorded in Washington, which was the 
 county seat. After Turner's return home he was very miserable, 
 keeping the above facts a secret from his wife, who was the hard- 
 est working woman I ever saw. 
 
 " I happened over there the day the saloon-keeper came for 
 the money, and I shall never forget the deserted, ashy, forlorn look 
 that spread over her face. She said: 'Whisky killed my poor 
 mother and has made me and my children slaves. O God, if 
 there is a God, this is three good homes I have helped.that man 
 to make, and I have worked, and saved, and patched, stayed at 
 home and never went to church, and my children have never had 
 anything to -wear to school, and they are, just like I am, growing 
 up in ignorance.' All these fine ranches," pointing toward other 
 houses, " were first made by drinking men, who got in debt and 
 had to sell. Whisky is the mortal enemy of homes." 
 
 That evening I returned to Sacramento and was ordered to 
 Oakland. 
 
 I came to Oakland Monday, January 7, 1884, to canvass 
 for the State Prohibitionist. I was to get for my work $1.00 per 
 day and board, and an interest in the paper in case we built it up 
 and made it a valuable property. 
 
 Oakland was known as the "City of Churches," It was the 
 seat of the State University. The wealth and taste of the whole 
 Pacific Coast had been lavished upon its improvements. There 
 were more beautiful residences and well improved grounds than 
 in any place I had ever seen. San Francisco, with all her mill- 
 ionaire merchants, had come over here to build among the old 
 oaks residences in which to spend, wdth wife and children, their 
 last years on earth. Any one would say that it was a good field 
 
Satan's Court. 15 
 
 to work for such a cause. I began about 9 o'clock on Eighth 
 Street, intending to go over the whole city street by street. At 
 every house it was about the same, " No," or " No, sir." I was a 
 pretty decent-looking old gentleman, working for my own paper — 
 an honorable calling. What was the matter ? Monday, Tuesday, 
 Wednesday all passed with the same result. 
 
 I had always had terrible pluck and energy, and unbounded 
 faith in any of my well matured plans. I began to get scared. 
 Is my brain softening? ^ave I got to work in the wrong cause? 
 A hundred persons wished me success every day in my labors. 
 Should I give up the battle and beat a hasty retreat and go back 
 to Sacramento? About an average of one a day, after hard try- 
 ing, for three weeks. What was I to do? Work till I was very 
 tired, sit up till midnight writing a pamphlet to publish, which I 
 wanted to sell that I might get bread and butter. On the eighteenth 
 day of January I worked hard with poor luck; attended meeting 
 at the headquarters of the Salvation Army, went with feeble steps 
 to my lonely room, and wrote with throbbing brow, till midnight. 
 
 When I sadly retired to my virtuous couch I could not sleep. 
 I again interviewed beautiful, richly dressed women, rang door 
 bells, and was terribly nauseated with politeness. 
 
 Suddenly my dream took shape. My old friend Singleton 
 Howell was again troubling my dreams, but very different this 
 time from his appearance before. 
 
 I dreamed that I went to a large and costly church in Oak- 
 land. I was shown to a seat in the back part of the church by 
 the usher. x\lthough well dressed, I imagined all eyes were turned 
 upon me on account of my failure to come up to the fashionable 
 standard. I dreamed that I was trying to get into a devout frame 
 of mind. When the preacher arose, what was my surprise to see 
 in the tall, well dressed, sanctimonious divine, my old friend 
 Singleton Howell. I dreamed that he read, in a most resonant 
 voice, a beautiful hymn, which was sung by the richest-looking 
 choir I had ever s'een. 
 
 The preacher, standing, prayed most thrillingly. Says I, 
 "What is it? I am dreaming," but I could not awake. When 
 he arose he took for his text: — 
 
 " Get thee behind me, Satan, for it is written thou shalt not 
 
16 Satan's Court. 
 
 « 
 
 live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the 
 mouth of God." 
 
 I knew that preacher was my old friend, Singleton Howell, 
 that he was a ghost, and that he had been dead and in hell twenty- 
 two years; that as a particular providence he was allowed once 
 more to return to earth that he might embrace Christ; that after 
 trying about two years in California, he had concluded the task an 
 impossible one for a tramp, and had concluded to return to the 
 place from whence he came as being preferable for a penniless 
 tramp to this. The church, I dreamed, was the most costly 
 structure I had ever seen of its kind. The audience was the 
 finest dressed and most cultured in appearance I had ever seen in 
 my life. I imagined that there were the marks of fast living upon 
 the countenances of all, both old and young. An indulgence in 
 fine wines had forced to the surface of many fair cheeks and 
 brows, blue veins that would otherwise have sought to flow in a 
 more hidden channel. 
 
 The preacher, six feet high, a perfect specimen of manhood, 
 with a very large head and symmetrical features, except the mouth, 
 which was very large; his voice, peculiar and resonant, so per- 
 fectly trained that every person in that vast audience caught every 
 intonation. 
 
 There was perfect self-abandon. He stood towering, motion- 
 less, at first pale, but as he proceeded the color deepened. Such 
 a flow of electric oratory I had never heard, as he pictured fallen 
 man at the mercy of a foe who possessed perfect knowledge of 
 man's weaknesses, and had been practicing his arts on man from 
 the day of Adam's fall. By nature an alien from God, and with 
 this powerful foe to mislead and tempt with such power. He 
 then, after a long pause, turned to the great deliverer, Christ, and, 
 with manner and eloquence, electrified the whole audience. He 
 begat an emotional tension almost painful to bear. 
 
 His sermon lasted one hour. At its close he said, " Let us 
 pray." He leaned forward, and with a perfect pathos appealed 
 to Heaven for help against so powerful an enemy. At its close 
 he said, "Sing the doxology." The congregation arose, and, be- 
 ing dismissed, they seemed spell-bound. The preacher walked 
 through the aisles shaking hands. I remained standing also. He 
 
Satan's Court. 
 
 17 
 
 made his way to where I stood, and with both his he caught my 
 hand and said, " Come to my room to-night," leaving a twenty-dollar 
 gold piece and his card in my hand. 
 
 On leaving the church I immediately sought a restaurant and 
 satisfied my hunger. 
 
 I was very impatient for the hour to arrive, as the reader may 
 imagine. 
 
 At nine o clock I knocked. The door was opened by Single- 
 ton himself. He embraced me very affectionately and led me 
 into a splendidly furnished apartment, in the center of which was 
 a table covered with all the delicacies of the season, brandy, 
 whisky, wine and everything that could tempt the appetite. Two 
 ladies lounged voluptuously upon a sofa, to whom he introduced 
 me, as his oldest _and best friend. I saw plainly that they had 
 been waiting for me, for they pulled a chair out from the table, 
 bidding me be seated. When we were all seated. Singleton poured 
 from a bottle|a glass of wine for each, and said, " Billy, drink to 
 the h^ealth of my king." I bowed, and blushed, and stammered, 
 and drank. They all did the same. "Now," said he, "lam 
 burning to gratify your curiosity." I now saw they were all full 
 of wine, and he wanted to talk, so he commenced. "You know 
 that saloon-keeper shot me, and you awoke, well that was all true. 
 I vanished when^he pulled the trigger. It scared the saloon- 
 keeper to death. He immediately embraced religion, and I sup- 
 pose he will go to Heaven. I dropped my humanity and went 
 back to hell, I confess a little ashamed of myself. Spirits have 
 only to will it, and in a second they travel millions of miles. I 
 saw a vast multitude gathered together as I approached my old 
 quarters. I will say to you, for your better understanding, that 
 there is no law of gravitation in that place. A spirit flying through 
 ether with the rapidity of thought can instantly stop, fold his 
 wings, and rest on ether. There is no atmosphere. When you 
 speak, your voice travels millions of miles in a moment. Well, I 
 was met on my approach by a vast multitude of the inhabitants. 
 A leader stepping to the front took off his hat, and, bowing low, 
 said that he was profoundly honored by being the bearer from 
 his majesty of welcome news to you, sir. We have gotten up in 
 honor of your return, the grandest reception ever known in Hades. 
 2 
 
Satan's Court. 
 
 You were the first man ever released from this place and allowed 
 to return to earth, and have one more chance of getting to 
 Heaven. And furthermore, sir, you are the first man that ever 
 voluntarily took up his line of march for this country. When you 
 were talking to that old canvasser in Cacheville, imps of his 
 majesty heard you and instantly reported your conversation. He 
 ordered an ovation. Not a soul in all his majesty's vast domain 
 but will be here to witness your triumphant return. I am Cain 
 who killed my brother, and of course I am the oldest settler from 
 earth, in this country, and I never saw a man who did not have 
 to be brought here in chains. Just listen to the clanking chains. 
 They wear them forever. 
 
 " Just then there was an immense scattering or parting in the 
 vast multitude, and his majesty himself appeared. He called me 
 to him. I approached him. He caught me to his breast and 
 shed great tears over me. Said he, ' There is all the vast throng 
 that Noah preached to, and who would not repent there in Nine- 
 veh. There is Sodom and Gomorrah. There are the wicked 
 children of Israel who fell in the desert. In a word,' said he, 
 'all the nations that forget God are here.' [I had drank, in my 
 dream, a whole bottle of wine, and he pointed to the brandy and 
 we begun on that.] 
 
 " We could see over into Heaven, where there were vast mul- 
 titudes, but incomparably smaller than the multitudes surround- 
 ing his majesty. A great feast was prepared in my honor. 
 Speeches were made by men who lived before the flood, enumer- 
 ating the very few means then employed to deceive men and make 
 them worship idols. God was jealous, and that nation which en- 
 gaged in idolatrous worship was allowed to follow it up in hell to 
 all eternity. There were speeches made by a large number of 
 old Jews, describing the manner used by his majesty's servants to 
 lead them from the true worship. His majesty himself made a 
 speech, heard plainly by every inhabitant of his dominion. I 
 will give you a brief synopsis of his speech. 
 
 SATAN MAKES A SPEECH. 
 
 " ' I have earnestly studied man's weak points from his creation. 
 God has often given me great trouble. He at first put into man 
 a disposition to worship. I soon learned to take every advantage 
 
Satan's Court. 19 
 
 of that by flattering their vanity. I could always delude them 
 into erecting an altar to some other God. Before the taking pos- 
 session of Canaan by the Israelites, I had it pretty much my own 
 way. He then made a law that beat me. 
 
 " ' That was this. He divided the land up into inheritances, or 
 homes, that had an effect on the human head and heart that was 
 always too much for me. You see they were placed in a condi- 
 tion, the home condition, that naturally improved them. It made 
 them loyal to God, and country, and virtue, and I always draw off 
 all my forces when I find the land in any country divided up 
 into homes. It was that condition that made the civilization of 
 Egypt. She arose to be the granary of the world. Well, I filled 
 Jerusalem and the cities of ancient Egypt with wine and beautiful 
 women and idols, so that when the young men of the homes full 
 of love to God and virtue, went on business to the cities, they 
 went back intoxicated with the idea of leading a city life. They 
 would sell out and move to the city, and soon get to loving wine 
 and women, and finally worshiping the gods that I had ingen- 
 iously contrived to have introduced along with foreigners. You 
 see the heathen were there on account of the increased prosperity 
 occasioned by these homes. 
 
 " 'You see as soon as homes were established, that is, every 
 head of a family owned what land he could make productive, 
 they would build school houses and churches, and work, and 
 study the resources of their land, and fight for their homes. But 
 just let me get them away to the city, and they would lose the 
 improvement in a week or two that it took a generation to build 
 up. The great power of the Romans was built up on the home 
 condition. The learning and wisdom of the Greeks had the 
 home condition as a foundation. God made that a law of nature, 
 just as he made gravitation a material law. 
 
 " 'On the decline of the Roman Empire, I induced the Gauls 
 to make war on the tribes and nations in the south of Europe. 
 When they conquered a province, they took possession of it in 
 favor of the prince, and he divided the land up into large tracts, 
 among his most renowned followers. The common people had 
 no homes; they belonged to the soil, and when the land passed 
 from one owner to another, they, the common people, went with 
 
20 Satan's Court. 
 
 it. That was called the Feudal Land System. That system com- 
 pletely destroyed the plans of God; not but what a few poor 
 people always looked to Jesus. I never could get entire control; 
 but I brought about the Dark Ages, which lasted nearly sixteen 
 centuries; and if it had not been for my neglect, I could have 
 kept mankind in just that condition.' Here the devil tore his 
 hair and grew wrathful at the thought of his want of vigilance. 
 
 " * I was busily engaged in other parts when Sir Walter Raleigh 
 gave to six hundred immigrants a home each, in case they would 
 remain and cultivate the soil. There is where I made the great- 
 est mistake of my life. This was at Jamestown, State of Virginia. 
 They concluded to accept the offer, and when they did, they 
 called into being a power which had been dead twenty centuries, 
 and in spite of all my determined cunning, has been the cause of 
 all modern civilization in the world. 
 
 " ' I cannot touch one of God's laws. It is a law that when a 
 man looks to Jesus, he is saved. If he looks to him all the time, 
 he is perfectly saved. 
 
 "'So you see these people built school houses and churches, 
 and met together and worshiped God. He was well pleased and 
 had all power, and blessed them and prospered them as no people 
 ever did prosper. Under the home power I could do nothing. 
 They rapidly raised up a superior people, purified by the Lord, 
 and zealous of good works. It took only a hundred and fifty 
 years to raise up Washington and his armies. 
 
 " * Then followed the establishment of the great American 
 Republic. I was terrified. What could I do ? Here was prog- 
 ress, and I could do nothing to prevent it. 
 
 " ' Then followed that generation which made so many new 
 inventions. When the cotton gin was discovered, I thought I 
 could take a grand advantage of it by fastening, like a festering 
 sore, slavery upon that people forever; but the Southern planters 
 were good men and Christians, actually bettering the condition of 
 their negroes. Of course I got a few Yankees, Englishmen, and 
 Irishmen who went down South and brutally treated their negroes, 
 like Dick Hammond. 
 
 " After an area of great prosperity the Mexican War came on, 
 and the United States acquired Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, 
 
Satan's Court. 
 
 21 
 
 and California, all covered with large land grants. That was just 
 into my hand, and I have been reaping a good harvest ever since. 
 
 " ' Then when the War of the Rebellion came on, I managed 
 so that nearly all the land in the United States worth having should 
 fall into the hands of land monopolists, and now, if the devil 
 has not lost his cunning, the United States will go back into bar- 
 barism yet.' Cheers rang out, the chains rattled, thunders rolled, 
 lightning flashed, and all hell seemed writhing in flames. 
 
 " Order was soon restored, when he continued: — 
 
 " ' Now God released you [addressing me] from hell in answer 
 to the prayer of that accursed old nigger, Abe, and gave you 
 another chance to embrace Jesus. You failed to do so, for rea- 
 sons of your own. I honor you for your good sense, and now it 
 is my time to send you back to earth. [Loud applause.] I shall 
 send you back as a preacher. I want you to preach in all the 
 cities of the earth, beginning at Oakland.' So preparations were 
 made for my immediate return to earth, in the service of his 
 Satanic majesty. Prior to my arrival a report was circulated that 
 a very talented young divine from London would preach in such 
 a church on a certain Sunday. 
 
 "Well," I asked, "how did you promote the interest of the 
 devil by such a sermon ? " 
 
 " Mankind are responsible for every word of truth they hear. 
 If they allow truth to take root in their hearts, then they are 
 blessed and made happy by it. If not raised up by the reception 
 of truth and brought into a better life, it stands against them all 
 along the journey of life. He hardens his heart against this 
 truth, and against that, day after day, through his whole life. At 
 the last day they all rise up and he sees them standing there, and 
 he says, ' Oh, miserable man, how did I make such mistakes ? 
 Now I see I have chosen to fix my own destiny. I did not 
 choose Christ as my portion, and will now have to spend an 
 eternity in making mistakes. I rejected the truth, and now I 
 shall always be rejecting it.' " 
 
 Where do you preach next ? " 
 
 " In Church to-morrow, in San Francisco. Here, Billy, 
 
 is a check for $i,ooo. Honor me by your presence every time L 
 preach. I am anxious to have the press in attendance when I 
 
22 Satan's Court. 
 
 preach. My sermon has been telegraphed all over the land. I 
 know you are poor, but I have orders from the devil to put just 
 as many such men as you are to work as soon as possible." 
 
 " Well," said I, " my dear friend, I don't understand you. 
 You put me in surroundings where the senses are all captivated; 
 you make me drunk; you give me $i,ooo and then boldly an- 
 nounce that you have orders to put me to work for the devil, 
 your master." 
 
 I smelled brimstone burning, and heard the clanking of 
 chains. A great ugly worm dropped from the ceiling upon the 
 table. It was the worm that dieth not. Singleton and the 
 women laughed loud and long. Their laughter was echoed from 
 interminable dungeons. I said to Singleton, " Is this hell ? " 
 He answered, "Yes." I said, " God have mercy in the name of 
 Jesus." In a moment all was quiet and my fears were dispelled. 
 I moved to throw the worm off the table and kill it, but he re- 
 strained me. *' You kill that worm and countless thousands will 
 spring from its remains. They live on the heart-strings of the 
 people; they get fastened on around the heart in this life; they 
 gnaw and eat and fatten, and never, never, never let go in time 
 nor eternity. All the world over they abound, and he who fails 
 to get rid of them in life carries a multitude of them throughout 
 the vast cycles of eternity." 
 
 " Why, how do they get rid of them ? " 
 
 " By calling on the name of Jesus. He said he would be 
 found of all those who called upon him, even though he be afar 
 off." 
 
 I dropped on my knees, and, with throbbing heart, said, " I 
 thank God for Jesus Christ, thy son, whose blood cleanseth me, 
 even me." 
 
 In a moment the room was cleared of the women and the 
 feast. 
 
 I said, "Here, Singleton, take back this check; it has worms 
 on it and I won't have it." 
 
 " Why, said he, " I do not want you to change your business. 
 You are doing God's work, but my master is reaping the benefit 
 of it." 
 
 "Why," said I, " how is that? " 
 
Satan's Court. 23 
 
 " Well, you are old, and poor, and decrepit, perhaps hungry 
 and in need of medicine. You approach a very fine residence 
 and ring the bell. A lady in rich attire opens the door. You 
 say at once, 'I am working for the Prohibitionist.'' She says, 
 'We don't read it,' and shuts the door. There is a worm in that 
 woman's heart. Already is ringing in her ears, ' For I was hun- 
 gered, and ye gave me no meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no 
 drink; was in prison, and ye visited me not.' You go to a Chris- 
 tian with rich surroundings and present your cause. He says, 
 *I have all the papers that I can carry or read. I am doing all I 
 can for prohibition and the church.' He does not say, 'Here, 
 lose no time with me; take a dollar or two and send me the paper. 
 I can give it to somebody, if I don't read it.' You slowly take 
 your departure. That man has a worm. He hears deep down 
 in his heart the voice of the meek and lowly one, ' Inasmuch as 
 ye did it not to one of the least of these ye did it not to me. Go 
 away into everlasting punishment.' On the other hand, he who 
 with open arms receives and invites you in to rest, hospitality 
 beaming on his features, and who says, 'Yes, your work is God's 
 work; how much is your paper.? $2.00; that is high.' 'Well,' 
 you say, 'We issue 5,000 copies a week. Our subscription is 400. 
 The 4,600 we give away whenever we can find a man to read 
 it.' 'All right; here is your $2.00. God bless you. Amen.' 
 You wring his hand, take your departure, and leave that man with 
 a voice singing in his heart these words, ' I was a stranger, and ye 
 took me in; I was naked, and ye clothed me; sick and in prison, 
 and ye visited me.' Now, Billy, how many have you visited 
 since your arrival?" 
 
 "About a thousand." 
 
 "Well, I suppose you have left a worm in the hearts of 990. 
 If you won't take the check I will manage to see you and keep 
 your wants supplied. But it is to the devil's interest that you 
 should be in want, that you should let your wants be known, that 
 they should positively refuse to relieve you; If they do not go 
 out and hunt up the want and relieve it, they will get the worm 
 
 that never dieth in their hearts. I preach to-morrow in 
 
 Church. Hark! Do you hear that? His majesty summons me 
 to his presence. Come and go with me; I will bring you back 
 safe." 
 
24 Satan's Court. 
 
 He caught me in his arms and before I could remonstrate 
 we were in an intolerable cold region. 
 
 "We are passing the North Pole now, Billy." 
 
 It all of a sudden got hot. 
 
 "We have now entered hell. You see the crust of the earth 
 is only about four miles thick, and all inside is hollow. In this 
 place the devil holds his court. We will go slow now, so that I 
 can explain what we see. The lesson learned will be invaluable 
 to you in the world in which you live. There are the people 
 whom Noah preached to. They are as happy as barbarians 
 are in your world. An opportunity lost follows a man through 
 vast eternity. They were not bad people and are not much pun- 
 ished. They lead, you see, the same kind of lives they led on 
 earth. There are all the vast heathen nations of ancient and 
 modern times, in fair hunting-grounds. Here are all the tribes of 
 Israel after Moses' time and up to the coming of Christ. Op- 
 portunity improved made for those people the character that 
 qualified them for Heaven. The same opportunity slighted put 
 them into a hell a degree hotter than barbarism. Jesus provided 
 a great salvation, the bare neglect of which was sufficient to con- 
 sign men to torment. I was full of the salvation of Jesus. I 
 was good to everybody. The condition of 300 negroes was 
 greatly elevated and blessed by me. A large number of white 
 men, women, and children knew where to get corn at my crib. 
 They cultivated my land without paying rent. My forefathers 
 had been followers of the meek and lowly, and I inherited very 
 large veneration and benevolence. I committed only one sin, 
 and that was the neglect of so great a salvation. If I had got 
 out of that battle alive, I would have embraced Jesus and 
 preached to the soldiers, but procrastination made me put it off just 
 a little too long, and I got shot. You see that vast army of well- 
 dressed men, cultured and well educated? What would you sup- 
 pose was their calling.-^ They are preachers and priests. They 
 were pretty good men, representing all generations from Christ 
 to the present. God says, *Son, give me thine heart.' These 
 preachers did not do it, and here they are, preaching forever, just 
 as they did on earth. Their incessant preaching gets to be an 
 intolerable punishment and they realize the terrible mockery in 
 
Satan's Court. 25 
 
 their hearts. But now we come to a vast multitude engaged in 
 accumulating vast quantities of a filthy stuff they imagined was 
 money. They gathered on and on, looking enviously on each 
 other's piles, trading, trading. Their punishment was terrible. 
 The drunkard was classed with a vast multitude of lunatics. The 
 manufacturers and venders of alcohol came last. They were in 
 a vast field where a plant grew about as high as their heads. It 
 was the color of a flame of fire. A smoke that smelled of brim- 
 stone went up from it. Its name was want. They ate it raven- 
 ously, their cheeks bulged out and hung down. Their paunches 
 almost dragged the ground. There they fed on this plant, gather- 
 ing it in from both sides and cramming it into their insatiable maw. 
 A burning thirst consumed them, while a beautiful clear stream 
 seemed to flow at their feet. Its rippling music made them go 
 wild with want. 
 
 Said I, "Singleton, take me back to earth." 
 
 " Oh, we have come to attend a grand council, and here we 
 are." 
 
 We were in the presence of his majesty, the devil. He called 
 all the vast multitude to order. He thundered reports from the 
 world. Everything from Europe, Asia, and Africa was all that 
 could be desired. In South America and Mexico the feudal land 
 system had fixed everything permanently as well as could be de- 
 sired. But the great contest was in the United States. In that 
 country was the commencement of the grandest struggle the world 
 had ever witnessed. One billion dollars in whisky — the industry 
 of a million men. Land and railroad monopoly was now king. 
 
 His majesty arose and said, "My allies and friends," bowing 
 low (he was as polite as the ladies and gentlemen of Oakland), 
 "the whisky business is doing splendid work for me. Land monop- 
 oly is on our side. We are flooding the country with a pauper 
 immigration from Europe, which has already greatly lowered the 
 general level of civilization. In several States we have repealed 
 the Sunday law, but the best stroke ever made is to come. We 
 have succeeded in banishing the Bible from the public schools all 
 over the land. I never could do anything with a man who read 
 the Bible in his school-boy days. Another very prominent feature 
 is this: The preachers are very learned and eloquent, and describe, 
 
26 Satan's Court. 
 
 in most eloquent terms, the goodness and love of God, but never 
 say a word about me or hell. They do not honor me with a 
 thought; but don't I wake them up when God, in his wrath for 
 their failure to declare the truth, says, ' Depart ye cursed.' They 
 do not want such men in Heaven, and I don't want them here, 
 and I would be very glad to give them a supply of fire and brim- 
 stone with which to start a little hell of their own. They would 
 try to burn each other up. See them, how they are preaching 
 now. All denominations are there firing away at each other. 
 Singleton Howell, I make you chief of the American delegation. 
 Homes in that country are my greatest enemies and Heaven's 
 strongest ally. Now whisky, alcohol, is our best friend, for we 
 cannot attack these homes with any other weapon. Get a man to 
 dram drinking, and then, when under the influence of drink, start a 
 horse race or a game of cards. Loan him money and make him 
 think that he is the smartest man in the world. By and by, as a 
 matter of business, take a mortgage on his farm, and then the home 
 is broken up, and he and his wife and children belong to me. The 
 man who buys a farm becomes a land monopolist, and wants more 
 and more, and through greed I shall get him. You must preach in 
 all the cities and towns of California. Dwell particularly in praise 
 of the rich State and liberal people. They would swallow a lie in 
 that line backward, if they had to do it against scales as big as those 
 on my back. Look at them. I can make them happy by calling 
 them rich and liberal even here in hell. They all come here on 
 account of their greed. In your sermons elevate the wine interest. 
 That is our best friend. I will ruin all California's fairest homes yet. 
 Oratory is better than gold. Let it be known that you are from 
 London; that you had been traveling on the continent for the 
 last four years, carefully arranging statistics in reference to tem- 
 perance, and that, according to the best accounts, there was 
 almost no drunkenness in those countries where wine was cheap 
 and abundant, and that no crime in such countries was traceable 
 to drunkenness; that Jesus of Nazareth had made wine, and that 
 it was just as much a blessing as flour made from wheat, or cloth- 
 ing made from cotton. I will send out i,ooo servants, who are 
 t9 report to you, and you will give them such orders as you think 
 best. Remember that habit makes character, and that character 
 
Satan's Court. 2T 
 
 fixes destiny. Get every man to join the church. But here I 
 give you a lotion called ' Secure, now, safe. No use to do any 
 more; I belong to the church.' Above all, waste no time. I 
 have studied man for six thousand years. There are large num- 
 bers of men and women in the world who, when converted, 
 turned right away from their sins and have since honestly taken 
 all pains possible to know their duty to God, to country, to family, 
 and to society. God leads such people. Just let them alone; it 
 is time thrown away to fool with them. Their hearts are full of 
 love to God and man. They are modest, unassuming, tender- 
 hearted, always abounding in works of charity and love. They 
 are perfectly saved and perfectly kept by the power of God's love 
 shed abroad in their hearts. Lose no time with such people. 
 Old Abe was just such a man. He did all the good possible in 
 the world. When he was called over to the other side, not less 
 than a thousand people met him on Jordan's banks. They had 
 been recipients of his favors in the world. When he arrived in 
 sight of the Lamb he fell down and worshiped away off, but 
 angels surrounded him, lifted him up, and bore him to the side of 
 the risen Saviour. Don't bother such men. You will have plenty 
 to do. In all the churches you will find preachers who are long- 
 winded, and who talk and preach a great deal. Encourage them. 
 Flatter them. Make them think that every time they open their 
 mouth fountains of wisdom uninterruptedly flow. They will soon 
 kill any church, and then a dose or two of the lotion, which you 
 must never be without, will put a whole church to sleep. Then 
 there is a class of long-faced, speech-making old men and women 
 in every church. Take a great deal of pains with them. Stimu- 
 late their avarice. Put good sound arguments into their minds 
 against ever doing an act of charity; and in case they should give 
 of their abundance a little to some poor woman, make them boast 
 of it till they tire their neighbors to death. In every meeting 
 make them take all the time. Always be stimulating the self- 
 esteem of such. Make them think their presence is absolutely 
 necessary at every testimony meeting. Then induce two or three 
 to get up and take all the time, and keep such always in the way 
 of young convert's testimony. If they testify, by all means make 
 them testify of crooked paths and shortcomings. That is testify- 
 
28 Satan's Court. 
 
 ing for us. Don't ever let any man or woman get up and say, * I 
 am trusting in Jesus and am glad to know when I am in the line 
 of intelligent duty, for God puts in my heart the sweetest happi- 
 ness when I, in his name, discharge my duty.' Crowd such out 
 with the long-winded talking old men and women. Then there is 
 the Salvation Army and holiness bands, who throw precious pearls 
 before swine. Just let them alone; they are doing us no harm. 
 They may get to Heaven themselves, and I think they will. At 
 least I don't want them here. They have money, and say it is the 
 Lord's, but they seem to think it is a great deal better for them to 
 keep it for the Lord than to invest it in his name. Then there is 
 in all the towns and cities a vast army of poor. Make them dissat- 
 isfied. Keep them away from churches on account of their clothes. 
 They are generally better educated and more refined than their 
 rich neighbors and would enjoy the sermon and the worship, but 
 they can barely keep soul and body together, much less decently 
 go to chnrch. Put cankering envy in their hearts. Fill their 
 mouths with useless complaints. Keep in mind character is what 
 we want. Every man, woman and child is engaged in making 
 the character which must live forever." 
 
 God is in the world at every single point, and has always 
 been just the same as he was when he made it, and is always 
 ready to lead man into a new life. God put into man a little of 
 himself, when he made him, and it was that which became alien- 
 ated by disobedience. That part of man will never die. If it 
 commences an obedient trusting life in this world, it will be led 
 out in a beautiful life, fit to live with God and the angels forever. 
 If it does not yield obedience, then it is ours; make it useful. 
 Then there is another class, the rich and well-to-do, of whom 
 there are vast numbers in San Francisco and Oakland. Fifty or 
 one hundred of that class arrive every day. There is one now, 
 a finely dressed lady, in a splendid buggy drawn by a noble look- 
 ing horse. A scroll is in front of the buggy on which is written 
 in large letters, " Judgment is sure. My judgment will overtake 
 thee." A fortune of $50,000, well invested, yielding an income 
 of $6,000 per annum. A church letter from the M. E. Church 
 of Oakland certifying that she was an acceptable member of the 
 church. She had a fine house and grounds. In youth she gave 
 
Satan's Court. 29 
 
 her heart to God and was very happy; but she gradually allowed 
 selfishness and pride and vanity to absorb her every thought. 
 There they stood condemning her; all the truth scorned that she 
 had ever heard stood in mourning by her side. She had her 
 money all along with her, crushing her soul. Here were a hundred 
 women pleading for washing, the very hardest drudgery, to keep 
 starvation from their children, surrounding her buggy. No; John 
 Chinaman does my washing, and does it well and cheaply; I can- 
 not change. In the twenty years of her womanhood a hundred 
 tramps had begged a scrap at her door. There was nothing 
 cooked, not a scrap. 
 
 An asthmatic old man had asked a subscription for the Pro- 
 hibitionist. No; I cannot afford it. There his ghost was appear- 
 ing, saying. Opportunity lost. The worms in her heart made her ut- 
 ter the most heart-rending moans. Want stalking abroad in Oak- 
 land. Poor, destitute women walk the streets all night without 
 shelter, cold and hungry. Many had looked to God through Jesus, 
 and their sins, which were many, were all blotted out. The ghost 
 of every one of these stood by her buggy, and on their bodies 
 was written, " Ye did it not unto one of the least of these." 
 
 "Oh," said she, "too late, too late!" in reply to a voice she 
 had heard ten thousand times in life, which said, " Son, give me 
 thine heart." The cry would go up forever, "Too late, too late." 
 She looked over and saw me and knew me, and said, " I saw you 
 in Oakland. You are not as I am, dead, and your judgment along 
 with you; you yet Hve. Tell every one in Oakland that 'Habit 
 makes character and character fixes destiny,' as Mr. Dunn often 
 said. Tell them that the first step is to get rooted in the vine, the 
 true vine, and then, oh, such beautiful clusters of fruit gather around 
 the vine, as they travel through life, which live forever. Tell them 
 not to lose an opportunity of doing good; if they do, it makes a 
 worm, that grows up before their eyes, and is named after the op- 
 portunity lost, and which never dies. And they bring all their 
 money with them, and that which was called for by some suffer- 
 ing one on earth is put in a sack and hung around their neck, 
 marked with the lost opportunity, in letters of fire. Now, sup- 
 pose one has a $50,000 fortune and $5,000 income saved for 
 twenty years as I had, and an opportunity of doing good that 
 
30 Satan's Court. 
 
 would have used it all. True I did no harm; I was a lady of 
 fashion; but alas, alas! here I am, here I am, unutterably miser- 
 able forever, forever, on account of opportunity lost!" 
 
 While this panorama was going on before my eyes, the devil 
 had ordered a grand feast. The tables extended from pole to pole 
 right through the earth; everything that the mind was capable of 
 thinking about was there; but the worm that never dieth was in 
 everything. All were seated, I with the others, but I did not eat. 
 I was pressed to drink of the wine or brandy, but I declined. 
 They strained all the worms out and offered me a glass of nectar 
 a thousand years old, but I would not. They feasted and drank 
 till they were all drunk; large numbers were under the table. The 
 table was cleaned off in an instant. "Toasts and speeches are 
 now in order, said his majesty." 
 
 Singleton Howell arose with his glass filled to the brim. 
 Said the devil, " Fill your glasses to drink to Mr. Howell's toast. 
 He is my most honored subject on account of being the first man 
 who ever came here voluntarily. Here's to the health of the 
 reverend Mr. Thomas." Mr. Thomas arose and said: "Your 
 majesty and fellow subjects, I was born in the good old State of 
 Missouri. My father and mother were old hardshell Baptists. I 
 was raised up in that faith (I don't believe I ought to be here). 
 I joined the Baptist Church (the old side) by experience. My 
 experience was this, and it was sufficient. I told them that I had 
 given myself to God; to his service as long as I lived; and by the 
 .authority of God's word I was his child as soon as I went down 
 into the water and was immersed, or baptized, in the name of the 
 Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Well, I was soon after licensed 
 to preach. I baptized a great number into the church. I did all 
 I could for God and the church. I worked hard all the week, 
 made money, preached on Sunday, and was very happy in the 
 service of God. I gave cheerfully and largely of my money, and 
 oh, I do wish I had died before I was forty years old, in Missouri! 
 At twenty-two I married a well made, beautiful woman. We 
 had, in Missouri, twelve children, in twenty years. In 1849 we 
 immigrated to California. Oh, what a mistake ! We arrived in 
 Hangtown with five wagons and teams and one hundred head of 
 loose cattle and twenty-five good horses and mules, in September, 
 
Satan's Court. 31 
 
 1849. I had about a thousand dollars. I built a log house in 
 Hangtown, put my family into it, and with my team made a trip 
 to Sacramento. There I bought supplies of provisions and a 
 barrel of whisky. My father always kept it and I had. When I 
 drove up to my door in Hangtown, my oldest son met me at the 
 door and said, ' Dad, did you bring any whisky ? ' 'Yes,' said I. 
 ' Well,' said he, ' there ain't none in this town. It is worth fifty 
 cents a drink. There are a hundred men here waiting for you. 
 ' Old Thomas has whisky,' yelled half a dozen voices. ' I bought 
 it for my own use, boys.' * Here is fifty cents; give me a drink . 
 I drew it for him; he said, ' take a pinch of that gold-dust. I 
 kept on drawing that whisky, till it was all gone. I weighed my 
 gold-dust, and the barrel brought me $2,000. The boys had sold 
 my provisions and tools for $2,000 more. You see I made 
 $3,000 clear on the trip. I immediately made another trip, re- 
 turning in four days. Other teams had arrived with provisions, 
 tools, and whisky; and so I started a hotel and bar. Well, I 
 rented ten tables at $10.00 a day each to gamblers, to play on. 
 I built a large cloth house for a hotel. No man ever came along 
 in those days asking for a miner's outfit but what he got it, money 
 or no money. There was three or four hundred of my old neigh- 
 bors and neighbor's sons in my neighborhood. They came in and 
 weighed their dust on my scales every night. The diggings were 
 rich and they took out vast quantities of gold. My receipts were 
 $1,000 per day. My old neighbors drank and gambled. I wondered 
 at it, for I did not. A great many of my old friends had left their 
 families in great distress, in order that they might get an outfit, 
 promising to send back money as fast as they earned it. But 
 they drank their money up at my bar, or gambled it off in my 
 house. I was thoroughly disgusted with them, and when they 
 would come in Saturday night and drink all night and spend 
 their money, and carouse all day Sunday, I soon got to throwing 
 them out and driving them ofi". I was big and strong, and the 
 more I threw out the more 1 wanted to. Well, I made money 
 very fast. I put up a very large gambling hall. It was filled 
 night and day. I owned an interest in several tables, having 
 furnished the house, tables, and banking capital. 
 
 " My old Brother Smith, a good Baptist preacher, struck a 
 
32 Satan's Coort. 
 
 rich pocket and took out $10,000. His family was exceedingly 
 destitute. He came into the store, his countenance all lit up, 
 thanking God for his good luck. He treated and I treated. He 
 commenced bragging on his skill as a miner, and I praised him. 
 He treated, and, finally losing all caution, commenced gambling. 
 He drank and gambled until he lost all, at one of my banks. I 
 was mad at him and abused him. He took it all for a day or 
 two, begging whisky and his meals, till I finally threw him out of 
 the door. I did that to a great many, fifty or seventy-five, in the 
 next two years. Well, one day in a great row, I got shot dead. 
 At that time I had $200,000 or more. Well, I started to Judg- 
 ment. I thought I was sure of Heaven. I had preached and 
 baptized. My doctrine, once a child of God, always, came into 
 my mind. True, I had not prayed for two years. I was too busy; 
 I had given good advice every day to my old neighbors: it was 
 none of my business if they did not take it. Well, when I started, 
 it looked to me as if an army of men, women, and children 
 clustered around me and went with me. 
 
 " Here was Brother Smith and an aged father and mother, 
 and a large family. Brother Smith had never saved a dollar since 
 I had robbed him at my bar and bank. The starving family 
 with all their suffering, had written in letters of fire, ' Woe unto 
 him who putteth the cup to his neighbor's lip.' A thousand men 
 who looked like starved shadows had these words written all over 
 them. Slaves forever to whisky. You ruined me, pointing a 
 long bony finger into my eye. My gold was around my neck. 
 I imagined I could see in my gold the faces of hundreds of my 
 old neighbors' women and children. You ruined my husband, 
 or father, and got his money. I thought I could argue or bribe 
 my way into Heaven, on account of my religious baptism. I was 
 the most responsible and respectable man in Hangtown. My 
 name was good at the bank for any amount. Sc I knocked at 
 the door. St. Peter opened it. Said he, ' What do you want ? 
 Who are you ? ' 
 
 " * I am Brother Thomas who was converted and baptized 
 twenty-four years ago on Spring River, Missouri.' 
 
 " Said he, ' Look at all that gold.' I did not want to do 
 that, for I knew that I had not given value received for one cent 
 
Satan's Court. 33 
 
 of it. I had got it all for alcohol, and tobacco, strychnine, and 
 other poisons called whisky. Said he, ' Look at itP At this com- 
 mand I was obliged to do so, and there, in letters of fire, were 
 the words, 'Robber, murderer, lying thief, whoremonger.' Said 
 he, 'What is written of such?' 
 
 "'They shall be cast into outer darkness,'" said I. 'Out of 
 thine own mouth will I judge thee.' Well, I believed, had faith, 
 and was baptized.' 
 
 "' Believed,' said he, 'can a man have such a terrible array 
 against him as that, and believe? What do the Scriptures say of 
 him who says he believes, and does not obey ? ' 
 
 " ' He is a liar, and the truth is not in him.' 
 
 " He slammed the door in my face and I fell back fainting. 
 When I recovered consciousness, I was in somebody's arms. I 
 thought I was in Abraham's bosom and lay there one moment 
 deliciously happy. A voice said, ' Bring those red hot tongs and 
 pull his toe nails off. That will bring him to.' I opened my eyes 
 and found myself in the devil's arms. 
 
 " ' Oh! ' said he, ' my preacher tried to fool somebody! Did 
 you try to fool St. Peter ? ' 
 
 " ' You never fooled anybody but once, then you fooled old 
 Brother Thomas. When you sold whisky, you said 'Well, if I 
 don't do it somebody will; I might as well do it as anybody.' 
 Every drink you sold made you a meaner man; made the dis- 
 tance between you and God and goodness greater and greater, 
 until you finally got to be meaner than I, the prince of liars. 
 You will keep on fooling yourself forever. ' " 
 
 I had known Brother Thomas in youth, and was very sorry 
 for him. He told me to tell his boys to stop their wicked ways 
 and serve God. Here the beautiful woman came to me with a 
 glass of clear, sparkling wine to drink. My old appetite was 
 about to convince me that I could do so, and keep it concealed, 
 when I said, " God have mercy and save me for Jesus' sake," and 
 I awoke. 
 
 On awaking I commenced and immediately wrote my dream. 
 I canvassed uninterruptedly two or three days for the Prohibition- 
 ist^ returning to my room supperless. The question came up» 
 What are you working for ? Is it God's work you are in, or is it 
 3 
 
34 Satan's Court. 
 
 of the devil, or is it a selfish aim ? In answer, I say, I am one 
 of a vast army of men, women, and children whose lives have 
 been wrecked by whisky, and I want to see the time when it wiU 
 be impossible for poor people to get it. 
 
 If we can get the United States constitutional prohibition 
 and State constitutional prohibition, there will still be some whisky 
 sold and drank. It cannot be thoroughly enforced any more than 
 the law against stealing. There is a law everywhere against 
 stealing; men break it everywhere and steal. Sometimes they 
 are punished and sometimes they are not. The prohibition law 
 can be enforced as well as that, and it will be as effectual as the 
 law against stealing. Is it practicable ? I believe it is. There 
 are enough prohibitionists to-day to carry it, but they are not 
 organized. The Republican and Democratic Party cry, we swal- 
 low up the whole people; there is no room for a third party. 
 
 I believe if we divide the Republican Party in the North and 
 the Democratic Party in the South, the Prohibitionist is the 
 party that will make a young giant who will fashion all things anew. 
 So I decided. It is God's work. It is eminently practicable and 
 an answer to the last question. It is as nearly unselfish in its pur- 
 poses as any work in which men ever engage. If I keep in this 
 work for God and prohibition, I am saved. If I engage in any- 
 thing else, temptation to drink will sooner or later result in my down- 
 fall and ruin. With these reflections I fell asleep and again 
 dreamed. At first strange faces and forms, penniless and weak, 
 canvassing all day for my paper. Should I give it up and go to 
 some better paying business ? Old Abe and Singleton appeared 
 alternately, first cheering words from old Abe, " Strike on, Massa 
 William, right in the same place, the rock will break bye and bye 
 clear through and through." Then Singleton would say, " You 
 are a fool, there are a hundred agencies in San Francisco that 
 would pay you better than this. Give it up. Make a little money 
 to keep you from starving and then commence work on this. 
 There are thousands of people here with great wealth, who do 
 not think that the cold grave ever awaits them. Minister to their 
 greed or selfish desires, or vanity; make yourself useful to their 
 senses, like Bob IngersoU. Flatter their vanity and they will bless 
 you and pay you. You are engaged in a work of truth which makes 
 
Satan's Court. 35 
 
 them see themselves as they are. Now they will curse and rob 
 you in return. 
 
 " One of their sons is at twenty-one years of age a splendid 
 scholar, and with a large fortune started out in the world, without 
 one single interest in common with the vast masses around him. 
 Do you think that son has been favored by the seeming good 
 fortune which has fallen to his lot ? Is it possible, in the nature 
 of things, for him to embrace the salvation of the meek and lowly 
 Jesus ? In his drives every day he sees thousands of struggling 
 young and old men and women, terrible poverty making their lives 
 an incessant battle to keep the wolf from the door. If he says 
 anything it is, ' Am I my brother's keeper.' He takes a cold. 
 The physicians can do him no good; brain fever hurries him to 
 an early grave. Alone he crosses the dark river. He stands on 
 the other shore; the shore of vast eternity. He has, strange to 
 say, all his money; it is a witness against him. The thousand 
 wants which he ought to have relieved are there. The truth, 
 slighted and scoffed, as it fell on a thousand occasions, stands 
 there. Neglected salvation through Jesus all there. 
 
 " ' Lost, lost! ' he cries as he views the terrible witnesses 
 against him. He hurries to the presence of the devil. As he 
 approaches, he sees his mother, the fine lady mentioned in the 
 other dream. ' Oh mother! you never told me of Jesus and his 
 wounds for our sake. You were in love with glitter and show and 
 gold. Now in these scenes we are to live forever! Cruel, cruel 
 fate!'" 
 
 Old Abe put in an appearance, and Singleton left. Said he, 
 " You are writing down your dreams. Facts are stranger than 
 fiction. The Scripture says the sins of the father shall be visited 
 upon the children, even down to the fourth generation; on the 
 other hand, the promise of God is to you and your children. 
 
 "A young man arrives in Hangtown in the fall of 1849, pen. 
 niless. He has a blanket and a worn old Bible and song book. 
 He passes his first night under a tree. By the light of his fire he 
 reads an hour or two in his Bible before retiring. He then sings 
 in loud, clear, ringing tones, a good old hymn; kneeling, he opens 
 his heart to God in prayer and praise, and asks his blessing on his 
 work in the new country. He rolls himself 
 
36 Satan's Court. 
 
 and sleeps very sweetly. With early dawn he rises, builds a fire, 
 reads a chapter and sings a hymn of praise, and again kneels and 
 prays. When he arises he is confronted by another young man. 
 ' Thomas Dunn is my name,' said the new comer. ' James Ross 
 is mine,' shaking hands. Thomas said, ' I heard you singing 
 that dear old hymn, my mother's, in Ohio, and I came to your 
 camp to get acquainted. 
 
 " Said James, ' I am glad to know you but I have no grub to 
 offer you a bite.' 
 
 " ' Well,' said Thomas, ' come to my camp. I want a partner. 
 I have a claim and mining outfit and will divide.' 
 
 " ' Thank God,' said James. 
 
 " Their claim was a good one. They prayed, as they had 
 been taught, and worked hard. Their habits were regular and 
 God greatly blessed their labors.* They were foremost in every 
 work of charity, visiting and comforting the sick and afflicted. 
 They rapidly acquired a very large fortune, notwithstanding their 
 munificent charities. After relieving the wants of friends back 
 East, at the end of two years they weighed their dust and found 
 that each had $t 00,000 in gold. Their hearts went out in thanks- 
 giving to God. For five generations their forefathers had been 
 pious. They had often heard of the beautiful valleys around the 
 bay. They gave up mining. Each had graduated as a law student 
 before coining to California. When they arrived at the bay, in 
 the fall of 185 1, the whole talk was about jumping land. The 
 valleys were covered with Spanish land grants. An old Mexican 
 was in the city endeavoring to sell a grant of eleven leagues. He 
 wildly cursed the Americans. He said he had a perfect title, hav- 
 ing lived on the land forty years, and that the Americans had 
 jumped every rod of it. He would sell the whole tract for $20,- 
 000. James Ross looked at the title, saw that it was perfect from 
 the Mexican Government, found the records all right, and said, 
 ' I will give it.' He notified the squatters of the transaction. 
 They laughed at him, and threatened to lynch him. They all 
 improved their farms the same as though there was no Spanish 
 grant. In 1854 it was confirmed by the commissioners and by 
 all the courts. The squatters were intelligent. A large town 
 had sprung up in the center of the grant. The squatters were 
 
Satan's Court. 37 
 
 prosperous. North, south, east, and west the courts were eject- 
 ing squatters. James Ross quietly watched events. He was 
 an exhorter, and held meetings in the school houses which had 
 been erected by the squatters. They well understood that he 
 could eject them by law. They also knew that a law firm in San 
 Francisco would have bought the grant from the old Mexican in 
 a day if Ross had not completed the trade, and that the law firm 
 would have ejected them by due process of law as soon as pos- 
 sible thereafter. 
 
 " In June, 1854, he summoned the squatters to meet him in 
 a certain town that had sprung up on the grant, in reference to 
 their homes. There were nearly a thousand persons present. 
 There were 400 homes on the grant. Ross read a letter from 
 Eugene Casserly, representing a law firm in the city, offering him 
 seven dollars an acre for the entire grant. They owned a grant 
 joining it, stocked with cattle, and needed more land. ' But,' 
 said he, ' I recognize one fact, and that is that every one of you 
 will be ejected from the land at once, and will have to leave your 
 improvements, which are considerable. I have to give an account 
 to God for everything I do. I own the land, bought it and paid 
 for it, and have a right to sell it legally, but I hold myself amena- 
 ble to a higher law. You are in the condition that God intended 
 all men to be, and that is the home condition. In the beginning 
 he made just so many facts or laws, and men are happy in pro- 
 portion to the number of facts discovered and practiced. In 
 thousands of countries and districts in the United States the land 
 has been divided up and the home condition established, result- 
 ing in the rapid development of the resources of the section so 
 settled. And, what was better, they always, without fail, built up 
 a superior manhood. I have studied this question in all its bear- 
 ings. If I sell this land to Casserly & Co., they will immediately 
 put 400 homes in mourning. You will all be involved in law. 
 Lawyers will fleece you. A miserable life for all of you will com- 
 mence. When you are ejected, there will be no place for you to 
 go. You will scatter out into the different towns, which are al- 
 ready too full. Your manhood will be reduced to a lower level, 
 and your wives and children will at once feel the deterioration 
 A man with a home is the better the moment he comes in pos- 
 
38 Satan's Court. 
 
 session of it. The nation is stronger the moment he comes in 
 possession of it. The State, county, and district are all the bet- 
 ter and stronger by the fact that he has it. On the other hand, 
 the man and his family are infinitely lowered the moment he is, 
 by any means, deprived of a home. If he sells it and gets the 
 money, the effect of his losing his home is the same. The nation. 
 State, county, and district are all injured. If it is so with one 
 man, then how much will be the damage to the body politic in 
 case of the dispossession of 400 families ? ' Said he, continuing, 
 * If you want your homes, appoint a committee of five to draw up 
 the terms upon which you would like to buy ? ' 
 
 " The committee in due time reported that they were willing 
 to pay $10.00 per acre for the land, payments to be made in one, 
 two, three, and four years, with mortgages on the land duly exe- 
 cuted and recorded as security. Interest at two per cent, per 
 month until paid. 
 
 " ' Now,' said Ross, after all the papers were drawn up and 
 signed, ' I want to make a speech. You are in the best climate 
 in the world, a fine rich soil, and each one of you are at peace 
 with all the world. You have beautiful homes. No man can es- 
 timate the value of these homes. They are yours. All modern 
 progress rests upon the home power. That country without 
 homes maintains law and order at a fearful cost. In fact, liberty 
 lives nowhere without homes. One home is worth a hundred 
 soldiers in the maintenance of law and order. God made the land 
 for homes, and they are of vital importance to your happiness. 
 Water is not more valuable to man's physical life than homes are 
 to his moral life. All other countries on the earth but ours have 
 standing armies, and when the time comes that the homes are aU 
 absorbed by the larger, which I very much fear is approaching, 
 then we will have standing armies maintained at a fearful expense 
 in money and morals. Your homes have a mortal enemy. Sup- 
 pose an army with banners, guns, and ammunition were to at- 
 tempt to quarter itself upon you, burn your fences, insult your 
 wives, force contributions of provender, flour, hogs, poultry, but- 
 ter, and eggs, you could organize, appoint your officers, procure 
 war material, meet the enemy, and perchance drive him from 
 your midst. If not, sacrifice your lives on the field of honor in 
 
Satan's Court. 39 
 
 the attempt. The enemy I speak of is worse than an army. 
 That enemy's name is whisky. It is the enemy of homes every- 
 where. If you do not pay me for your lands it will be whisky. 
 I will take your land back at cost for land and improvements at 
 any time. I know you have a fine bargain.' 
 
 "The land rapidly increased in value. In 1855 the assessor 
 valued wild lands at fifty cents an acre. An eleven-league grant 
 joining the Ross tract, covered with wild cattle, only paid taxes 
 on $50,000, everything counted. It was wild land. The Ross 
 tract was valued by the same assessor, who had been elected in 
 the interest of land monopoly, at $15.00 per acre. 
 
 The 50,000 acres, at $15.00 per acre _ - $750,000 
 
 Four hundred houses, barns, corrals, etc 400,000 
 
 Every farmer had some fencing 400,000 
 
 The wagons, teams, tools, etc. 500,000 
 
 $2,050,000 
 Or about twenty times as much taxes paid by the Ross tract 
 as that just like it but in the hands of one man. The man who 
 owned the big ranch traveled in Europe, and of course spent his 
 income there. The settlers on the Ross tract lined the roads with 
 wagon loads of grain, hay, and poultry. They marketed immense 
 quantities of beef, pork, mutton, and horses. They were buyers 
 of newspapers, music, books, etc. Immense quantities of dry 
 goods, groceries, teas, silks, shoes, and every merchantable article 
 found cash buyers among the homes on the Ross tract. 
 
 " Is the city of San Francisco interested in the breaking up 
 of land monopolies ? Is there a tax-paying interest in the State 
 but what is injured by it ? Have not land monopolists from the 
 earliest period of the State's history debauched the elective fran- 
 chise in behalf of their own interest? I ask, are not the courts, 
 the legislative and executive departments of the Government, all a 
 living power arrayed in favor of land monopoly and against homes? 
 From San Diego to Shasta there is one large tract after another. 
 In all the valleys these tracts are large enough for 200 homes. 
 An owner of a large tract employs say fifty men on an average. 
 Are these men so employed the kind of citizens demanded by a 
 great republic, or are they just such as can be used to destroy the 
 nation's liberty by debauching the purit;^ of the ballot-box? 
 
40 Satan's Court. 
 
 There are no school houses on these large grants. There are 
 saloons, which levy tribute upon the wages paid the employes. 
 
 "The devil accomplished the finest piece of strategy of his 
 life when he argued the United States into annexing Texas. That 
 was the cause of the war with Mexico. Through that war we ac- 
 quired New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Not but what we 
 added many millions to the circulating medium of the world by 
 our gold fields in California. Not but what California is the best 
 State in the Union naturally. The United States, up to the an- 
 nexation of Texas, was engaged in building up manhood. Her 
 home condition for 220 or 230 years was precisely that which God 
 ordained from the beginning should never fail in building up man- 
 hood. If it had not been for that home condition we never could 
 have had Washington and his armies, who fought seven years, and 
 then, without pay, laid down their arms and resumed the various 
 occupations of peace. The splendid pluck, grit, and endurance 
 exhibited by the Northern and Southern armies were a result of 
 the home power. 
 
 " Now a large portion of our country has culminated, and we 
 are on the downward grade much faster than ever we went up. 
 A standing army will be absolutely necessary to hold in check the 
 wildly throbbing, beating heart of the vast mass of unnecessarily 
 poor people who crowd the cities and towns of this State. If the 
 lands of the State were divided up into homes, the cities and 
 towns might be five times as populous, and not too large for the 
 country. In fact, many others would spring up on every large 
 grant, two or more towns in addition to what there are. 
 
 *' James Ross, as he entered his buggy to drive to a farmer's 
 where he intended to pass the night, was reaching for the lines 
 when a drunken man fell heavily under the horse's feet. The 
 horse sprang to one side, and, bounding forward, collided with a 
 large wagon, capsizing the buggy and throwing James under the 
 wheel of a moving freight wagon. It moved right on over his 
 heart, instantly crushing the life out of him." 
 
 Abe continued: " Here was a man who had, in early boyhood, 
 embraced Jesus. One who had never faltered in his allegiance. 
 His head and heart and pocket-book were practically dedicated to 
 God every moment. What was the result ? God had made him 
 
The Old Forty-niner's Story. 41 
 
 wonderfully prosperous in this world's goods. Now, in the prime 
 of manhood, he met with a violent death." 
 
 A halo of glory spread over Abe's face as he continued: 
 " Without a moment's warning he was on the banks of the dark 
 river. He knew that he was in the arms of the Almighty One. 
 In a moment they were passing its dark and dangerous flood, and 
 were safely landed on the other shore, where was gathered quite a 
 multitude, and all shouted, 'Welcome, Brother Ross.' A voice 
 more precious, and one that he well knew, said, 'Ye have been 
 faithful over a few things; I will make you ruler over many.' 
 
 " I saw him," said Abe, " with the Saviour. The character 
 formed on earth was to go on and grow under the immediate eye 
 of Jesus through vast eternity. 
 
 " I must not omit to mention the best witness he had. When- 
 ever he had been called upon for help in this world, if he did 
 not know the merits of the case, he would say, ' In thy name, O 
 Lord, this is casting bread upon the waters.' Now, here was the 
 harvest, a multitude of the sweetest singing angels to sing heavenly 
 songs as Jesus carried him to the mansion prepared for him." 
 
 THB OLD KORTY-NINER'S 
 STORY. 
 
 The first I ever heard of California was in the year 1839. 
 I was fifteen years old. We lived in the country. I went one night 
 on a visit with a boy of my own age (fifteen years) who had a beau- 
 tiful sister, with whom I was desperately inlove. It is curious how 
 hard a boy's first love goes with him; but the love of the girls has 
 been a magnet shaping my whole life. I am sixty, and have ten living 
 children. My wife, Mrs. H,, and all the old women look like 
 girls to me. Well, I went home with James Boring. That night 
 when the old gentleman came in (he owned a plantation and a 
 hundred negroes), he opened his mail and there found a letter 
 from the Agricultural Department with a table-spoonful of wheat 
 that had been raised in California. An old map musty with age 
 was sought in order to find where the country was that produced 
 
42 The Old Forty-niner's Story. 
 
 such round plump wheat. The next I heard was after we moved 
 to Missouri. Thomas H. Benton, the great Missouri senator, 
 procured the passage of a bill to make an appropriation to pay 
 John C. Fremont for organizing a company of a hundred rnen to 
 cross the great American desert (there is no desert where that 
 was marked) to California and Oregon as topographical engineer. 
 His wife, Jessie, Mr. Benton's daughter, wrote a book which had 
 a very large sale, composed from Fremont's diary. 
 
 It was thought to be the glory of any administration to ac- 
 quire California. When Texas was annexed and war was threat- 
 ened, the United States sent around the Horn, under Commodore 
 Sloat, a naval squadron with secret instructions. James K. Polk, 
 of Tennessee, was president. The councils of the nation were 
 in the hands of the South. The South wanted California as a 
 splendid area into which they could take their slavery. When 
 Texas was admitted a condition was stipulated for a division of 
 the State into four additional ones. The fiercest struggle was at 
 that time going on to maintain in the Union a balance of power 
 in the senate. The Northw^est was rapidly improving and 
 European immigration all went North. It feared competition with 
 slave labor. 
 
 Sloat was secretly instructed to proceed to the Pacific Coast 
 and the moment he heard of war between the United States and 
 Mexico to open his instructions. England and France each, with 
 the same thing in view, sent naval squadrons to the North Pacific 
 with instructions, with or without a pretense, to get a protectorate 
 over California. An agent of England had begged General Castro 
 at Monterey to allow him to declare an English protectorate, but 
 Castro declined, or hesitated a little too long. 
 
 All the aforesaid naval squadrons were in the harbor at 
 Mazatlan watching each other. One bright morning about eight 
 o'clock, without previous notice, the American Flag-ship with her 
 two consorts were observed hoisting their anchors and getting 
 ready to set sail. The French squadron commenced to get ready 
 to follow the American and watch it; the English slowly follow- 
 ing. The American knew exactly where it was going. The other 
 two were determined to watch it. Fortunately, when outside, a 
 storm separated the fleet. The American arrived in the bay of 
 Monterey. 
 
The Old Forty-niner's Story. 43 
 
 As soon as Commodore Sloat heard from U. S. Consul 
 Larkin, of the effort of the English Consul to induce General 
 Castro to ask an English protectorate, he at once went ashore and 
 hoisted the American flag, issuing a proclamation in accordance 
 with the secret instructions he had received. He said that the 
 people would not be interfered with in any respect; that the 
 same officers would enforce the laws they had always been used 
 to; that property would be protected, and any one having the 
 sales of title to land would be protected in it. 
 
 Coijimodore Sloat's proclamation had been written for him 
 in Washington. That clause binding the Congress to protect 
 those having a color of title to land was inserted in the interest of 
 slavery. It was right, legally right, for the South to fight for 
 slave territory. The death knell of slavery was to confine it. 
 New cheap lands made a big demand for slave labor. It has 
 always been the custom to denounce the laws of the generations 
 preceding as barbarous. All nations have looked back to the bar- 
 barous laws and conditions of their ancestors to keep away inves- 
 tigation from themselves and their laws. If a man owned a 
 hundred negroes, it was to his interest to see that they were 
 clothed and fed, the Bible read to those negroes, and the doctrine 
 of marriage, and the family, encouraged, for then fewer doctor's 
 bills would be necessary for nameless diseases. They also in this 
 condition raised more children. Then they were positively, by 
 law and public opinion, protected from the whisky seller. It was 
 a penitentiary offense to sell a negro whisky. True they had to 
 work. The family by law could be broken up. The father sold 
 one place, the mother another, and the children another. 
 
 One white man on a ranch in California to-day would do the 
 work of three negroes in the South in ante-war days. The com- 
 promise of 1820 when Missouri was admitted into the Union gave 
 all territory south of 36° 30', to slavery, but it did not settle up 
 like the free territory North. Southern Statesmen determined to 
 make slave States as fast as free, and California was needed and 
 large land grants were to be established all over the State, so as 
 to make it impossible for free labor to get a hold. No man who 
 held slaves under the law was guilty of breaking any law, human 
 or divine. The law was hateful and abominable. The law to 
 
44 The Old Forty-niner's Story. 
 
 imprison a man for debt was just as bad. The race made by the 
 naval squadrons from Mazatlan to Monterey was of the utmost 
 importance to the human family. The authorities at Monterey 
 would have gladly welcomed the French or English in place of the 
 Americans. Texas had just been annexed. Fremont had de- 
 fiantly marched through the whole length of the State, and the 
 California authority would have gladly thrown itself into French 
 or English arms to obtain protection from the embrace of its 
 hated enemies, the Americans. Thus you see it was obtained 
 first by conquest. Then by the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, 
 by purchase. Let us take two bird's eye views of California as it 
 it was thus obtained by America from Mexico. 
 
 A splendid eagle enters from the south representing slavery. 
 He says all these splendid valleys of rich new lands, already di- 
 vided up into large tracts or grants by Mexico is the very thing we 
 need for our sons. A splendid State after the order of the 
 patriarchs of old has been thrust upon us, almost without the 
 asking. This is our natural heritage. x\nother bird, the gentle 
 dove, enters from the north. It says: "Homes, splendid herit- 
 age! Just as it comes from the hand of a most loving Father, 
 intersected by thousands of streams full of fish, its valleys, 
 plains, hills and mountains abounding in game. 
 
 This is the cradle of liberty. Homes here will have an area 
 in which to build a manhood such as has never been witnessed. 
 
 Alas for human calculations. The great plumedeagleknew 
 well that slavery owned American genius, all the offices of 
 Government, all the public press. The pulpit of the entire 
 South, and nearly that of the entire North gladly prostrated itself 
 before the golden image of slavery. Commodore Sloat's procla- 
 mation declaring that all in the possession of land, having a 
 color of title would be protected, forever binding on the Govern- 
 ment just coming into possession. Mexican script was only 25 
 cents on the dollar and with that 90 leagues could be bought for 
 $100; about 18^ cents an acre. 
 
 The three Hebrew children were again thrown into the fiery 
 furnace. If it had been thought that there was the remotest chance for 
 this Pacific State to be free soil anywhere in its future it would 
 not have been an American State to-day. 
 
The Old Forty-niner's Story. 45 
 
 The naval squadron would not have been sent to the 
 Pacific Coast to look after it. The dove was to be equally disap- 
 pointed. It did not know that a new order of things worse 
 than slavery ever was, could be devised and incorporated upon a 
 new fair State which was so fair to look upon and which pos- 
 sessed a promise of a million homes and a superior manhood. 
 
 It was a virgin State. Thousands of herds of wild mustangs, 
 with flowing manes and tails, roamed uninterruptedly where now 
 grow unlimited fields of wheat and barley. Under the shade of 
 the trees which grew on the banks of the rivers and creeks, 
 bands of elk, deer and antelope lazily chewed the cud of content- 
 ment. 
 
 A death-like calm had not been disturbed for thousands of 
 miles, north, south, east, and west. But hark ! what sound is 
 that borne upon every breeze that seems to wake the nations? 
 All mankind to earth's remotest bound rises with listing ear in- 
 tent. 
 
 'Tis not pestilence, cholera, famine, nor war. These dread 
 evils are always confined to a small area. Yellow fever may make 
 New Orleans quake with fear, cholera might depopulate New 
 York and London. Napoleon through wear's terrible calamities 
 make Europe put on sack-cloth and ashes and mourn fifty years, 
 but all these are local. The world hardly knows anything about 
 them when they are happening. Gold had been discovered at 
 Sutter's Mill a hundred miles from the bay. For a thousand 
 miles along the coast back of the bay of San Francisco, gold in 
 large quantities is being dug. This discovery is more powerful 
 than the tread of armies. 
 
 The noise of busy preparation to go to these new gold fields 
 is more emphatic, and significant and wide-spread than any prep- 
 aration for a campaign ever made by military chieftain. 
 From every quarter of the civilized earth they come at ter- 
 rible cost to life and purse. The rush was so wide-spread, 
 frantic, senseless, and unprovided for, that millions fell by the 
 way. 
 
 In the first four years from '49 to '52 inclusive, four million 
 men started to these shores from every town, city and hamlet on 
 the civilized earth. There were no means of travel and a mill- 
 
46 The Old Forty-niner's Story. 
 
 ion fell by the way. AVhat can there be in gold to so move a 
 whole world? Preachers from a hundred thousand pulpits elo- 
 quently described the ruin brought upon any people by an inor- 
 dinate lust for money. They got down from the sacred desk and 
 joined the rush. Doctors forsook a comfortable practice. Law- 
 yers threw aside their briefs. Fathers tore themselves away from 
 the care of little ones and the fond embrace of tender wives. 
 
 Thousands of love stories were acted out better than any ro- 
 mance ever pictured them on paper. College professors threw 
 up their professorships. Education, improved mental attainments, 
 makes nations, communities and individuals want money. Even 
 religion, our holy religion, one of whose tenets is "money is the 
 root of all evil," makes us want gold. 
 
 I would not give a cent for that man's religion which allows 
 him to sit down and wait for God to feed him. Religion makes 
 a man seek for gold to spread God's truth, to feed the hungry, to 
 clothe the naked and relieve man's wants. Education makes a 
 new want for gold, books, music, art, flowers, luxurious sur- 
 roundings, makes a demand for gold such as the same man would 
 never have if uneducated. 
 
 They crowded over every available route across the plains, 
 wearily pulled themselves up the eastern declivities of the Sierra 
 Nevada and dropped down the western slope into what? 
 
 The South sent up a herd of Mexicans, almost as many as the 
 Americans. The world sent the largest fleet ever known on the high 
 seas freighted with human produce. There were five hundred 
 ships at one time in the bay of San Francisco without a sailor. 
 This army by the sea met the other across the plains in the grand 
 center of attraction, viz., the mines. 
 
 Here were a dozen civilizations, about three million of men 
 without law or churches or women, with open, free gambling, 
 whisky everywhere, no homes. Gold was in great abundance but 
 nothing else. No gardens or farms to supply the miners with 
 vegetables or fruits. 
 
 Race hatred and prejudice were often the foundation of severe 
 conflicts. All the land divided up into large tracts which would 
 soon involve the whole population which had come for homes, 
 as many did, in law-suits had not all been settled yet in 1884. 
 
The Old Forty-niner's Story. 47 
 
 The United States had been engaged in developing a peculiar 
 manhood. For 250 years the matter-of-fact, utilitarian manhood 
 of a class that looks first to self and self-interest, had been a 
 peculiarity of the civilization. Homes, peaceful homes, about 
 160 acres in each, surrounded with other homes of the same 
 size, hewn out of the forest. The jungle grubbed out, all seeking 
 the protection of law without a constabulary and without a stand- 
 ing army to enforce order. The children of the United States 
 had been accidentally, or led by the hand of God. Some believe 
 the former. I had rather accept the latter. They were well fed 
 on good meat and bread, vegetables and fruit, and not too much 
 schooling, but sufficient for practical purposes. Here I must say 
 that in this condition a nation, town, county or settlement is 
 always blessed of God. They naturally have faith and feel and 
 know collectively and individually that God's blessing is upon 
 them. This is the seat of all benevolence. The people knowing 
 well that God's blessing was only kept by loving one another, 
 it was everywhere considered a solemn mockery for one man to 
 advise another to reform or love God when he knew that man 
 was in poverty and want. They first relieved a man's wants and 
 then said God has given me his great love and pardon and I can- 
 not keep that love and see his creatures in want. This made an 
 inquirer. If a man gets a sack of meal because God loved the 
 donor, he wants to know more about it. It is a new argument 
 that has weight. The people of the United States were the most 
 religious and benevolent that any civilization had ever developed. 
 They were brave and liberal. It is selfishness refined to be 
 brave and true and to give God all his due in praise and service. 
 The greatest selfishness is to be perfectly unselfish. The greatest 
 good a man or woman can do him or herself is to constantly lead 
 a life of self-denial and cross bearing. The truth that tells most 
 in one's own favor, is to be perfectly true to others. It is not 
 only so once or twice, but for a whole life-time. 
 
 Now then, gentle reader, in 1849 there were 35,000,000 of 
 improved developed manhood in the United States. From all 
 that 35,000,000 manhood, was selected its very best material to 
 pour down in the State three million. One million died from the 
 many causes while on the way. Thousands of homes had been 
 
48 The Old Forty-niner's Story. 
 
 mortgaged to raise means to send the best qualified, morally and 
 physically. Large numbers of loved ones were never heard from. 
 When they landed at the mines, what was their surprise to find 
 that all the civilized and semi-civilized nations of the whole world 
 were heavily represented on the ground. 
 
 There was no stealing, there was very little crime. Every 
 gulch was rich. Gold was more abundant than anything. One 
 of the very strangest things was that where there was so much 
 gold, there was so much real poverty. Vast numbers were sick with 
 chronic diarrhea. There was no means of caring for such, and 
 they died. Vast numbers did nothing but prospect. It was im- 
 possible for them to settle down to steady work. Everybody 
 that traveled had their blankets. Tramp, tramp, everybody 
 tramped. The ground under the trees was covered with vermin, 
 so many people dropped down in the shade to rest, leaving, in the 
 shape of a louse, a testimony that there they had rested. 
 
 What is the proof that the American emigration had a supe- 
 rior manhood? First, they were congregated in a thousand 
 towns; half the population belonged to other and poorer 
 civilizations. All were after gold, the most exciting and ab- 
 sorbing chase that ever engaged the attention in one place of so 
 vast an assemblage. Of course interests clashed. All were 
 armed, whisky was everywhere drunk. A vast majority gambled. 
 
 Judge Lynch established his court in a thousand towns, and 
 no court from the foundation of the world ever made so few mis- 
 takes. He who committed crime well knew that in case of arrest 
 and proof of guilt, punishment would be speedy and certain. In 
 opposition to most of the foreign element, Judge Lynch ruled 
 with a justice seldom praised enough. 
 
 General Riley, a military governor, without any authority 
 of law, in 1849, issued a proclamation appointing a certain day 
 for the people to assemble and elect delegates to a convention 
 which was to form a State constitution. Where in history does 
 any occasion arise for an exhibition of trained manhood such as 
 this? In three weeks this disordered mass assembled and held 
 an election, and quietly dispersed. 
 
 The delegates assembled and from copies of other State 
 constitutions, copied one for California in three weeks. In 
 
The Old Forty-niner's Story. 49 
 
 this way a State was born as if by magic, with government for 
 all classes, as perfect and complete as any old community in the 
 world. This convention were all new-comers selected at random. 
 Nothing in the whole history of man ever raised a manhood 
 equal to such an emergency. Homes had been 200 years engaged 
 in this task. A grand trial of the young giant's power was to be 
 exhibited in the presence of the gods. His brilliant success 
 commanded the profoundest admiration of a witnessing world. 
 Here was a new State formed in six weeks from its inception. 
 
 An election was ordered to decide whether the new State 
 with its new constitution should be accepted or not. At the 
 same election the electors were to elect a legislature and governor 
 according to the provisions of the new constitution. It was ac- 
 cepted. Thus before the people of the United States, or civilized 
 world, knew anything about it a new State was born. The slave 
 power which controlled the Government at that time resisted its 
 admission, claiming that according to compromises made that all 
 territory south of 36° 30' should be left to the people to say 
 whether they would have slavery or not. The South was right. 
 She had a right under existing compacts to demand a vote in the 
 Territory. 
 
 It was a curious fact that the new State had been acquired by 
 King Cotton for slavery, but it was more singular and took every 
 one with the profoundest surprise that the child as soon as it 
 was born became a man and refused to have slavery thrust upon 
 it. The election for delegates, the assembling of the convention, 
 the forming of a State constitution, the ratifying of the same by 
 the people at the polls, forbiding slavery, took the whole matter 
 out of the hands of those minds at Washington who had plotted 
 other things for this splendid Territory. They, however, fought 
 it in Washington. It was six long months before, under a com- 
 promise, California was admitted into the Union. Under the 
 terms of that compromise, that one of 1820 was repealed. 
 Judge Douglas contended that now with that old compromise 
 repealed, the people of a Territory decided whether they would 
 have slavery or not. The South, or slavery, got a decision 
 called the Dred Scott decision, establishing slavery everywhere 
 in the Territory. The South still hoped to get the southern half 
 
50 The Old Forty-niner's Story. 
 
 of the State for slavery, the history of which will appear in 
 " Pioneer life in California. " Reader take a bird's eye view of 
 that young State. Sacramento, Stockton, Marysville, and San 
 Francisco were new cities, houses of cloth, shakes and adobe. 
 The streets were full of goods, men and wagons and drays 
 through every avenue. The whole population was young men, 
 large, tall and strong. New, wide, well-beaten roads led in 
 every direction to the mines. Every mile or two a new hotel 
 sprang into existence, as if by magic. The whole of the United 
 States was terribly excited, hundreds of mortgages were recor- 
 ded in every county in the United States, in order to raise 
 money to send the most trusted on to California. Very large 
 numbers in making their outfits had in view the business of 
 teaming on their arrival, so that horses, mules and cattle doubled 
 in value in consequence of the California demand. To have an 
 American horse or an American cow was quite an honor. 
 
 The mines were considered inexhaustible by everybody. 
 It was thought that the more they were worked for a hundred 
 years, the more gold would be taken out. In every gulch where 
 there was water there was a town; the improvements were often of 
 a permanent character. The old Mexican governors were still in 
 the country on their ranches. 
 
 In consequence of this vast rush to the mines, the bands of 
 cattle, sheep and horses, owned all along the coast, became im- 
 mensely valuable. Just think, a Mexican, Jose Maria Sanchez — 
 a hospital old fellow living on the Pajaro River, forty miles south of 
 San Jose, the owner, according to Commodore Sloat's proclama- 
 tion, of three large grants — had for many years kept a hun- 
 dred Indians at work, skinning cattle and laying out tallow. A 
 beef bringing $5.00 was a good animal, $3.00 being a 
 fair average. Now he owned, on the three ranches, more than 
 40,000 head. Before the mining discovery they were worth noth- 
 ing until butchered. Now when driven to San Francisco or the 
 markets made by the rush, they were worth $50.00 each. A man 
 suddenly, as if by magic, changed from a pauper to a millionaire. 
 Whisky was everywhere; men suddenly grew rich everywhere. 
 The Legislature had legalized and licensed gambling. It was the 
 amusement, the grand occupation of many classes. It was the 
 
The Old Forty-niner's Story. 61 
 
 life and soul of the country. The bar-room of every hotel pre- 
 sented its tables to attract the eager, idle and covetous. Monte, 
 faro, poker, every kind of game ran every day and night. Beau- 
 tiful and well dressed women dealt the cards with exquisitely white 
 and well-shaped hands. Lascivious pictures hung upon the 
 walls. Lewd girls, freed from the necessity of all moral restraint, 
 lounged voluptuously around bar-rooms. Such bar-rooms were 
 vastly patronized. Music and blazing lamps gave great anima- 
 tion to the scene. No wonder the unwary visitor was tempted 
 and fell before he had time to wake from the pleasing delusion. 
 
 To make a fortune by the turning of a card was delightful. 
 The very men, glad hope and fear of eventual success was a 
 charming excitement. For a moment men felt as great conquerors 
 may be imagined to feel. They manoeuvred on the green cloth — 
 the field of their operations, thinking their own skill was play- 
 ing the game when chance alone gave the result. At the end of 
 a long evening's campaign of mingled victories and defeats, petty 
 skirmishes, they would either draw off their forces to commence 
 the game again the next day or hazard their all — thousands of dol- 
 lars perhaps — on the issue of one great battle, and in a moment take 
 leave of the table richer or poorer by a moderate fortune. Again 
 and again were such campaigns fought and lost until the excite- 
 ment and intense desire of play became chronic. When great 
 sums could no longer be had, smaller ones answered the same 
 purpose, and even in the end, lost like the others, gambling be- 
 came a regular business and those who followed it professionally 
 were really among the richest, most talented and influential citi- 
 zens of the State. The sums staked were occasionally enormous. 
 One evening $16,000 was called upon a faro table as a bet; the 
 game lost. The money was counted out without a murmer. 
 Twenty thousand dollars were often risked upon the turn of a 
 card. The ordinary stakes were from fifty cents to five dollars, 
 so that the ordinary day laborer could lay his moderate stake as 
 stylish as a lord. The rich gamester became desperate. A half 
 tipsy miner on his way East was the one who put the largest 
 piles on the cloth. The bankers had no objections to these heavy 
 stakes, they knew the game better than the players and were well 
 aware of all the chances in their favor. 
 
52 The Old Forty-niner's Story. 
 
 The extensive saloons, in each of which ten or a dozen tables 
 run night and day, were continually crowded, and around the 
 tables the players crowded three or four deep. The pro- 
 fessional gamblers who paid great rents for the privilege of 
 placing their tables in these saloons, made large fortunes by the 
 business. Their tables were filled with heaps of gold and silver 
 coin, with bags of gold-dust and lumps of the pure metal to tempt 
 the gazer. The sight of such treasures, the occasional success of 
 players, the music, the bustle, the heat, drink, greed and deviltry, 
 all combined to encourage play to an extent limited only by the 
 great wrath of the community. Judges and clergymen, physi- 
 cians and advocates, merchants and clerks, contractors, shop 
 keepers, tradesmen, mechanics and laborers, miners and farmers, 
 were adventurers in their kind; every one elbowed his way to the 
 gaming table and unblushingly threw down his golden or silver 
 stake. While such scenes in hundreds of distinct places were 
 night and day being enacted in public, the conspiracy in Wash- 
 ington to get California with the Mexican grants all in large tracts 
 for slavery, was only too well plotted. The wild rush for the gold 
 mines did defeat the hopes of the South for slavery, but it con- 
 tributed largely to the help of the plotters to get the land. The 
 plotters were to get control of public affairs in the politics, elect 
 the courts and State officers. They were actually the State. The 
 old Mexican governors and generals and keepers of archives 
 were all in the State. They could make a land grant as well now 
 as before the American acquisition. They covered every foot of 
 the country, which was worth at that time anything, with large 
 grants and made many float grants. Gwin was senator, elected 
 to serve the Pacific Mail Steamship company. Fremont in the 
 interest of land grabbers. He had a large grant covering the 
 Mariposa. 
 
 Now, reader, to prove these facts, I will state that the country 
 was in the hands of the Jesuits up to 1835. They owned from 
 one mission to another, which were forty miles apart. A grant 
 was never made till it was taken away from them. It took years 
 to send to Mexico for a grant. The old soldiers of the mission 
 were ignorant and composed the entire population. It was only 
 eleven years between the time of the secularization of the country 
 
The Old Forty-niner's Story. 63 
 
 and the time when it was conquered. Of course any one can 
 see there were but few genuine grants. They claimed to have 200. 
 There were 800 presented to the land commission, appointed in 
 1852 by Pierce. It suited the purposes of the American plotters 
 to at first fix these grants, good and bad, so that they would be 
 universally confirmed. It then suited their purposes to have 
 these grants all squatted on by the gold-seekers, so the politi- 
 cian proclaimed from every rostrum and stump. In consequence 
 of this, men were elected, pledged to pass laws that would enable 
 the squatter who entered upon land in good faith as a settler to re- 
 cover on final confirmation to the grants for his improvements. 
 The result was that all the land on the rivers and around the 
 bay and on the coast was squatted on and recorded as pre-emption 
 claims. Sometimes they bought land of a grant. There were 
 often two or three titles to the same tract of land. The result 
 was as had been intended. A perfect harvest of law-suits for 
 lawyers and courts. Job said, "The earth is given into the 
 hands of the wicked, " which is no less true now than it was in his 
 day. It is the standing complaint of the world. The moan of 
 history is bad men in power. The land grant holders were neces- 
 sarily compelled to hunt up witnesses to attend courts, to employ 
 lawyers. The courts, lawyers, and attaches of courts were often 
 the owners of games or put stock in the bank of games. The 
 law suits were interminable. The consequence was as might have 
 been expected, the Mexican grantees found themselves homeless by 
 the time the battle was fought to obtain their homes. Now comes 
 the battle against the squatters. They had only been led to go 
 on to the land to annoy the old grantee. Suits are commenced 
 for their ejectment. The squatters raise money to fight in courts 
 which are too often parties in the suits. Judges are gamblers^ 
 lawyers are mental slight-of-hand performers. "Now you see it 
 and now you don't. " The American political system reached a 
 greater depth of corruption in 1855 and '56 in California than it 
 had anywhere else. The squatters' money was perhaps divided 
 between the courts and attorneys. Decisions were made be- 
 forehand; they were ejected from homes which according to all 
 principles of right belonged to them. The people were unac- 
 quainted with their leading men, and their officials were selected 
 
54 The Old Forty-niner's Story. 
 
 at random. The profits of mercantile transactions and mechan- 
 ical labor far exceeded the salaries of most of the government 
 officers which, beside as a class, were beyond the reach of men who 
 would riot bribe conventions and descend to low associations. 
 The sudden and complete formation of the American govern- 
 ment of California was not more wonderful than was the organi- 
 zation of the spoils system of party management under the lead 
 of men who had received the highest education in political cor- 
 ruption before they left New York, which city furnished about 
 one-sixth of the population of California, and a majority of those 
 who controlled the dominant faction of the dominant party. All 
 the arts founded or perfected by Tammany Hall or the Albany 
 regency for defending the people out of a fair choice in the nom- 
 ination of candidates. Party conventions were a farce. The 
 vilest ruffians were employed by prominent politicians instructed 
 to carry such and such wards. When election day approached, 
 associations in the city were formed to sell their votes to the 
 highest bidder. Gangs voted in every ward. The policemen 
 were appointed to reward political service. They could be trusted 
 for untiring labor in elections, but little could be expected from 
 them in the matter of arresting criminals who had money or in- 
 fluence. The most dangerous criminals in California were them- 
 selves officials. Ten thousand homicides were committed between 
 the years '49 and '59. 
 
 The crime upon the ballot box, the corruptions of the public 
 service, the prominence of notorious criminals and ruffians and 
 their patrons in city offices, the forgery of Meigs, the failure of 
 the courts to administer criminal justice properly, — all these things 
 had provoked the people who were engaged in money making to 
 general desperation. It was impossible to reach and punish these 
 crimes by law. What was the result.? Before we discuss the 
 result which was prompt and efficient for the time, go back with me 
 to 185 1. John Biglar as the Democratic nominee was elected 
 governor. What did that election express ? It clearly and forci- 
 bly expressed the dominant will of a vast majority of the people. 
 That is that the land grants were nearly every one a fraud, and that 
 laws should be passed protecting the squatters. The squatters 
 were loudly promised protection by politicians who knew they had 
 
The Old Forty-niner's Story. 55 
 
 no power. The squatters were all powerful in politics. The land 
 was all squatted on; it was worth nothing. Colonel Hollister 
 bought the San Justo grant, near San Juan, for $20,000, contain- 
 ing 60,000 and 70,000 acres of land worth on an average to-day 
 $50.00 per acre or $3,000,000. It was all covered with squat- 
 ters. 
 
 The land commissioners were interested in the law's slow de- 
 lay. In three or four years the courts and lawyers owned all the 
 land. The processes were all arranged by which the squatters 
 were to be ejected. 
 
 The squatters were the sufferers of the most trying and out- 
 rageous frauds ever perpetrated in the world's history. They 
 were a class of men who made any sacrifices for law and order. 
 A majority returned East, only to meet with disappointment. 
 They never realized and the world does not to-day realize the fact 
 that life in California in those days forever disqualified a man 
 for a life in any other. Large numbers bought land only to get 
 into lawsuits which have put many in their graves, many in in- 
 sane asylums, driven many to murder. Large numbers were 
 driven into the cities, towns and villages. 
 
 In 1856 the result arising from all the foregoing causes like a 
 brilliant, unknown comet, sprang into existence. The Vigilance 
 Committee, a body of citizens, took that law, which they them- 
 selves by their existence violated, pushed aside the officers who 
 were themselves the criminals and executed, themselves, that law 
 against all its violators but themselves. History does not repeat 
 itself. This was a divergence from all precedent. The guilty 
 were punished, the criminal element was overawed, the officials 
 were forced to respect public opinion. They then turned that 
 law back again to the officers of the law, gaining for themselves 
 the plaudits of an astonished world. The land had all fallen 
 into the hands of the few large holders. The people were driven 
 into the cities, towns and villages. All had to engage in business 
 of some kind. The vast majority were always poor in Califor- 
 nia. This is a strange anomaly. Whisky, gambling, lewd women 
 did their work. 
 
 About this time a new discovery was made by the China 
 companies. They imported large numbers of China women and, 
 
66 The Old Forty-niner's Story. 
 
 according to the laws of California, they were on every street, in 
 every town, large and small, in the rooms most availably situated 
 for their business. This lasted many years before it was re- 
 pealed. California, is the youngest son sowing his wild oats, the 
 prodigal who received his patrimony. The school fund was given 
 to her by the United States. She contained 188,000 square miles. 
 The sixteenth and thirty-sixth sections were all school lands. It 
 was sold for $2.50 per acre. The proceeds were the school 
 fund, they could not be diverted. The school system has been of 
 a high grade from the first; the children have had superior school 
 advantages. 
 
 No State in this Union, nor country in this civilization, has 
 given any attention to physical manhood. Much has been ex- 
 pended by States and nations upon mental development. Vast 
 sums have been spent to educate the mind, supposing the body to 
 attend to its own development. A State never made a graver mis- 
 take. The first and highest duty the State owes itself and its citi- 
 zens, is to prevent the monopoly of its homes, and by positive 
 legislation bring about that state of affairs, or condition wherein 
 all its citizens have enough land of their own from which a living 
 can be made. Then they are in the condition or order in 
 which God intended them to be from the foundation of the 
 world. There are but few small sections of the State in the 
 home condition. The climate, soil and mineral resources are 
 unsurpassed. These are facts known perfectly everywhere in 
 America. 
 
 A very large emigration has continued to pour into Califor- 
 nia every year from '49 to '84, a large number with means suf- 
 ficient to return East in case of a failure to situate themselves 
 pleasantly. A large number have come on account of health, 
 arriving here almost penniless. The land, all in the hands of large 
 holders, they have been driven into the cities, towns and vil- 
 lages, where their children have been educated. The children 
 could not get work; Chinamen were imported to do the work; 
 the parents of such children had moved into a circle of well-to- 
 do, respectable people. The hardest task that ever fell to the lot 
 of a poor, proud mother is to feel that she is, by her dress and that 
 of her children, falling gradually below their condition. So a 
 
The Old Forty-niner's Story. 57 
 
 great effort is made to economize on every hand and keep abreast 
 with the neighbors in appearance. The father may occasionally 
 take a dram; every ten cents wasted is severely felt. The chil- 
 dren when they come to the table find thereon just so much. 
 The father divides it fairly and equally, the children go away half 
 filled but satisfied. They have no cows to drive to the pasture, 
 no pigs to feed or horse to water, but kill time by studying or 
 reading till the school hour arrives for them to go to school. 
 This is a description of one family. Day after day is repeated till a 
 new generation is raised up. The children will be twenty-five or 
 thirty pounds less in weight than the parents, and what astonishes 
 the world is that they are not educated. Education like this does 
 not educate only in one way, it makes a race of little, untrustworthy 
 people. Now suppose the boys of such a family arrive at man- 
 hood at eighteen. The family has increased its natural wants. 
 The father is getting old, increasing cares are laying a heavy hand 
 upon his bending body. The loving mother says: " John," to 
 her oldest son, the pride of the fond heart, " I am trying to work 
 to help make a living, you are in need of clothing, don't 
 you think you might earn something?" "Well, mother, I have 
 been thinking I would like to try if I only knew how. " The 
 boy is very small, not well fed, in school all his life. There is 
 positively nothing for him to do in or about his town; his best 
 clothes are somewhat seedy. He starts out first in his own town, 
 imported Chinamen are doing all the unskilled work, no one wants 
 him. He often hears the words, " Don't want no d — n hoodlum in 
 mine." He applies to every mechanic to get to learn a trade. 
 "Don't want no boys in this county." Not a soul invites him to 
 enter and tarry awhile and rest, no hospitable look or kindly 
 word. At night he turns his weary way to find a tired father and 
 mother and noisy brothers and sisters with not sufficient food for 
 health and strength. At early morning, after discussing all the 
 prospects through the night, he hopelessly tries it again. The 
 hotel keeper says: " Johnny what are you doing? " " I am trying 
 to get a job. " " Well, you cannot do much, but come and work 
 in the kitchen and I will pay you all you are worth. " John is 
 delighted. This hotel keeper's name is O'Brien. He has a son 
 the same age of John, who has always attended the same school. 
 
58 The Old Forty-niner's Story. 
 
 His bar-room is the center of attraction for the whole town; he 
 has a small room attached to the bar-room, where there are two 
 tables covered with a green cloth. Day and night men are gambling 
 on one and often on both these tables. The bar-room has a 
 peculiar language. All bar-rooms have. Nude pictures hang on 
 the walls. Joseph, the oldest son, manifested a peculiar aptness in 
 learning the language of the bar-room. Hideous monstrosities in 
 the shape of men told yarns about the gentler sex that ought to 
 have burnt out their tongues. Vulgar allusions, obscenities, is the 
 language of the bar-room. The boy, as all boys will, greedily 
 devoured these stories. 
 
 Well, Joseph had also graduated as an expert gambler, but 
 secretly. It was not known generally in the town. The father 
 whipped him nearly to death for drink, and he had not up to this 
 time drank much. He and John slept together. John soon got 
 to listening to the bar-room tales. It only took two weeks to 
 make him listen with relish to vulgar anecdotes, and alas for poor 
 human nature, in a month under the tutoring of Joseph he had 
 graduated in a China house. Every night Joseph took John to a 
 room where they played cards. He declared John was the best 
 player he ever saw. John beat him every night. In about a 
 month O'Brien said, "Jo^^^^ I will pay you twenty dollars, you are 
 a good boy, I will give you twenty-five dollars the next 
 month. " With what joy and gladness he took that money to his 
 rnother. Joseph stole a bottle of sweet wine and they occasionally 
 sipped it. He was the stronger character of the two, besides he had 
 always set down to a table well filled, and after he was done the 
 table was still well filled. John soon learned to sip wine. 
 Joseph was lavish with his money, always bragging about his win- 
 nings. He had let John win a dollar or so at every sitting during 
 the following month. When he drew his pay for the second 
 month, they went to their play before John could go to see his 
 mother, and Joseph won all his wages in an hour. John was 
 overwhelmed with grief; he went home in the deepest misery. 
 The mother's ashy look of misery. She said "Your father will 
 whip you terribly. " John hid from his father. That night he 
 went to Joseph and said, " Joseph lend me five dollars." "What 
 for, " with a look of surprise. "Well, I am going off, mother says 
 
The Old P'orty-niner's Story. 59 
 
 father will whip me and I am going to run away. " Joseph re- 
 fused him — gamblers are the greediest, meanest men in the world. 
 He had allowed John to win to bait him. John started off. 
 We cannot follow him as he travels, turned from the door of cold, 
 hard-hearted farmers, sleeping out in the chill night air. If hunger 
 drove him to ask for something to eat, it was handed out like he 
 was a dog. He at last got a job; he was called up at four o'clock 
 in the morning, and with just time to eat his meals, he worked do- 
 ing first one job and then another till eight p. m. He was too 
 timid. He then crawled into the hay and shivered all night. 
 Had this poor boy anything to do with the surroundings that 
 made him a tramp ? 
 
 The Sunday came. The family went to church and Sunday- 
 school. He was manly and determined to stand it rather than 
 tramp. The next Saturday the farmer paid him off at noon. 
 "Well" said he, "let me stay until Monday, won't you ?" "No; 
 there's the hotel, half a mile off, go there, you have got plenty 
 to pay your way. " The poor boy went to the hotel, his board 
 and lodging cost more than he had earned, what should he do ? 
 To remain was to be kicked out, there was no other resource but 
 to tramp. He was well educated and good looking, but small; 
 every one took him for a hoodlum; he arrived at the hotel. To 
 his pleased surprise he was met by the landlord with great cor- 
 diality. At supper he declined to eat, just calling for a bed. 
 He was pumped in regard to what he had been doing. They 
 ascertained that he had worked two weeks for the rich farmer 
 nearby. They knew he had some money, so the landlord and 
 his family treated him with very marked politeness. The next 
 morning at breakfast he made the acquaintance of Frank Stevens, 
 from Iowa. He said to John in a talk the boys had: "I am 
 just out of school, I always had to work on my father's farm, do- 
 ing chores evenings and mornings. I am strong, weigh 175 
 pounds and in good health, but would rather die than live in 
 California three months longer as I have the last three months. 
 I have not slept anywhere only in a hay stack and positively suf- 
 fered more with cold than I thought it possible. I was a sober. 
 Christian boy in Henry County, Ohio. It had for months been 
 decided to send me to California as soon as I completed my 
 
60 The Old Forty-niner's Story. 
 
 studies, so I came with just money enough to bring me here. 
 I landed in Sacramento the fifteenth day of October, 1883, with 
 one dollar. I could not get work in the city; my one dollar was 
 soon gone; my trunk and clothing was pawned and soon gone. 
 Poor men told me of such dreadful suffering among farmers 
 that I feared to go to the country, but after two weeks I did, and 
 I have had barely enough work to keep soul and body together. 
 The farmers are brutal, worse than hogs. If a laborer wanting 
 work asks for something to eat, they shove a crust of stale bread 
 and meat out of the door. They are always pretending to be 
 afraid of tramps. Never did people suffer like tramps, and never 
 was a class more maligned, and never on earth did any class of 
 men suffer so. California makes men tramps. The law threat- 
 ens to take them up for vagrancy, if they lay around the towns 
 doing nothing, and they have to tramp. I have one dollar; I had 
 only one meal yesterday, and that is all I'll have to-day. I 
 tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, hunting work all over this State, 
 Sunday as it is, Christian as I am, I go to-day. " 
 
 John was crying. Said he, " I have earned $15.00, don't go, I 
 will loan you a dollar to stay here to-day and go to church. You 
 can pay me some day. " Frank gratefully accepted the loan as 
 his feet were very sore. When he went to church he took a back 
 seat. He wanted to pray and get near to God, but oh, the 
 leaden feeling at his heart. It was too plainly perceptible that 
 that young fellow with his worn clothes was an intruder. Not a 
 welcome hand from a single member of that congregation. 
 
 John would not go to church in his dirty old clothes. The 
 landlord was very friendly, talking all the time. His daughter 
 also paid him that attention and notice which a boy of eighteen 
 learns to prize. John had been treated four or five times to 
 wine; it was very sweet. Reader, that sweet wine is the most in- 
 toxicating drink a strong man can drink. Drink of any kind 
 stimulates first the predominant animal passions and puts to sleep 
 the balancing moral organs. With poor John the wine had stim- 
 ulated his desire to get another place and make money, and had 
 put his caution to sleep. The landlord's two pretty daughters 
 invited John to take a hand in a game of cards; he did so. The 
 landlord said he would give the boy work at something, he 
 
The Old Forty-niner's Story. 61 
 
 thought, the next morning. Hope was thus inspired to help ruin 
 the poor boy. A small stake was proposed to make the game in- 
 teresting. After supper the game was renewed; John had been 
 winner; they wanted their revenge; they all again sat down. 
 John thought he had fallen into the hands of friends, he was very 
 trustful and unsuspicious. At ten o'clock when they began to get 
 tired, by a few practiced tricks, they put up the cards, gave John 
 big hands; the wine had destroyed his judgment and John was 
 flat broke in half an hour. The landlord counted the money, 
 said he had won, and said, you want a bed. " Yes, sir, " said 
 John, " but I have no money. " " Well, I give no credit, if you 
 want a bed you must pay for it. " John said, " I have no money, 
 you have got all I had in half an hour; you won't turn me out to 
 freeze after winning my money ? " "The hell I won't. Do ye's 
 thinks I keeps beds for to give away to the loikes of ye's, either pay 
 or go, I want to lock up. " The poor boy without a cent was 
 turned upon the street, a cold January night, at ten o'clock. 
 He now bitterly realized that the landlord was only carrying out 
 with him a plan that had been successfully worked for years. 
 This, dear reader, is just what California, the flower naturally of 
 the Union, the garden spot of the world, has made herself — the 
 manufacturer of tramps. 
 
 When Frank Stevens awoke he began to inquire for his kind 
 young friend. Frank Stevens was horrified when he awoke in the 
 morning and found how they had robbed his young friend and 
 turned him out in the cold. He found his track and in a run he 
 started aftershim. About noon he overtook him; he was lying 
 with his head on the root of a tree, asleep, his sweet face wet 
 with tears. Sobbing very hard, like a whipped boy, Frank knelt by 
 his side and prayed for that poor, stricken boy as he had never 
 prayed for himself. He said, "O Father, he cannot work; no 
 one will hire him, if he should get a job that taxes his poor 
 frame to its utmost, some rascal of a whisky seller lays 
 some plan to rob him. His lot is a terrible one; have mercy; give 
 the comfort of thy spirit. " As he prayed John opened his eyes. 
 With difficulty he raised himself into a sitting posture. Said he, 
 " I was dreaming of my mother in the town of New York. 
 She and my sisters were kneeling over me and praying for me. I 
 
62 ■ The Old Forty-niner's Story. 
 
 was sorry for my sins and wanted to be on the Lord's side, but 
 oh, I could not. That old Irishman was so clever I did not think 
 he would take all my money, even if he won it, and his girls with 
 their sweet ways fascinated me and filled me with wine till my 
 judgment was sound asleep. They filled me with wine till they 
 were no longer amused; they then dextrously, as they had done a 
 thousand times before, put up a few hands, giving me large hands 
 so that I would bet. My mother and sisters were trying to pull 
 me away all the time. I have acted over again in my dream 
 what occurred yesterday and last night. " As he talked he slipped 
 off a shoe, his foot was badly blistered. "O God, " says Frank, 
 "what a country." A wagon was passing; Frank asked the driver 
 to take John to the next town. He was a fine lordly farmer. A 
 few years before, in 1849, himself had been a tramp, but now he 
 turned up his nose, and said, " Do you think I keep a nice, fine 
 wagon and team like this to haul tramps about in ? You must think 
 I'm a d — n fool." Frank was large and strong. There was ab- 
 solutely no work, he could not desert his friend, they were both 
 very hungry. Frank took John on his back and packed him so 
 as to get him on to the next house. He had the dollar loaned 
 him and the half of his own which he had yesterday. It was a 
 large grant, fifteen miles across it. John had traversed about half 
 the distance in the desperate effort to keep from freezing the 
 night -before. To make the distance to the next ranch before 
 night, desperate efforts were necessary. Despite their efforts 
 night overtook them. Frank gathered a pile of wood, and by 
 turning from side to side kept from freezing. John could hardly 
 walk; they managed to get to the ranch the next morning. John 
 bought some meat and bread at a fearfully high price, from an 
 old woman who said the country was full of tramps, she had to 
 feed them every hour in the day. John said, 'T have not seen 
 any coming down the river. " "You haven't?" They arrived in 
 Sacramento that night and slept on the bare ground in the wil- 
 lows about the city. If they built a fire they would be seen and 
 arrested. There is some religion and Christianity in the towns and 
 cities, particularly among the American population, but the self- 
 ishness and inhumanity of the foreign element is horrible, particu- 
 larly towards Americans. What has poor Americans done to in- 
 
The Old Forty-niner's Story. 
 
 63 
 
 cur such rancorous hatred of the Irish and Dutch? They are 
 hypocrites and the well-to-do Americans never find out that such 
 is the fact. They, in open defiance, ride over our American 
 Sabbath and without hesitation would sell for five cents to a boy 
 that which will wreck many lives. Many men who have "ruined 
 themselves and families trace their ruin back to five cents worth 
 of beer bought of some Dutchman or Irishman. Their profes- 
 sion of religion and friendship and patriotism is a lie. The very 
 same argument they use to present the immigration of Chinese 
 we ought to use to place all foreigners on a level. Keep 
 America for Americans. Let us build up on homes for all our 
 people a splendid manhood. Tax lands held in larger quantities 
 than a man can make productive. Let homes up to a certain 
 value go untaxed.