"It seems that about four years after Mr. and Mrs. Hammond were married, Mrs. Hammond received a letter from her cousin, Mrs. Featherstone, saying that Nat Harrison, a mutual friend, had been shot dead in a dispute over a faro game. He was under the influence of liquor at the time of the trouble. He left a wife and a girl baby eighteen months old, without any means of support, the mother being incompetent to take care of either herself or the child, and the letter asked would Mrs. Hammond like to adopt the baby. If so, Mrs. Featherstone was coming to San Diego in about a month's time and would bring the child (the Hammonds lived at San Diego then). The mother would make her home with her aunt. "Mrs. Hammond said, after reading the letter, 'Poor Annie Harrison. Only think. I sat beside her at the graduating exercises of Nat Harrison's class, and remember how pleased she was at the applause which greeted the oration delivered by Nat, "American Commerce." So many congratulated him on his talent and thought he would become a rising member of the bar, and his voice would be heard in the halls of legislation of the nation. "'Annie looked so pretty and sweet that day, you could not have bought her prospects in life for a million dollars. She thought she had a jewel of a lover, poor thing, she was so innocent of the nature of men. She knew nothing of the world, for her mother always treated her as a baby, never teaching her any self-reliance, and had kept her as a hot-house plant. She grew up with no higher ideal in life for herself than to be some rich man's toy and pet, under marriage. She was more adapted to be a flower in the "Garden of Eden" than to fight the battle of life in the present state of society.' "Nat Harrison had money and was doing well when he married Annie, but being a man of strong passions and appetites, Annie's freshness and bloom soon wilted. Then he sought other pastures for his carnal pleasures, and with that came drinking and gambling. When his estate was settled up after his death they found he was in debt.