"I once had a little experience, but a very amusing one, of being 'lost.' In the summer of 1854, I concluded to make a trail to Seattle. Up to that time I had ridden to the city in a 'Chinook buggy.' One bright morning I took a compass and started for Seattle on as nearly a straight line as possible. After an hour's travel the sun was hid by clouds and the compass had to be entirely relied upon for the right course. This was tedious business, for the woods had never been burned, and the old fallen timber was almost impassable. About noon I noticed to my utter astonishment, that the compass had reversed its poles. I knew that beds of mineral would sometimes cause a variation of the needle and was delighted at the thought of discovering a _valuable iron mine_ so near salt water. A good deal of time was spent in breaking bushes and thoroughly marking the spot so that there would be no difficulty in finding it again, and from that on I broke bushes as I walked, so as to be able to easily retrace my steps. From that place I followed the compass _reversed_, calculating, as I walked, the number of ships that would load annually at Seattle with pig-iron, and the amount of ground that would be eventually covered at the cove with furnaces, rolling mills, foundries, tool manufacturing establishments, etc. "As night came on I became satisfied that I had traveled too far to the east, and had passed Seattle, and the prospect of spending a night in the woods knocked my iron calculations into pi. Soon, however, I was delighted to see a clearing ahead, and a shake-built shanty that I concluded must be the ranch that Mr. Nagle had commenced improving some time before, and which, I had understood, lay between Seattle and Lake Washington. When I reached the fence surrounding the improvements, I seated myself on one of the top rails for a seat and to ponder the advisability of remaining with my new neighbor over night, or going on to town. While sitting thus, I could not help contrasting his improvements with my own. The size of the clearing was the same, the house was a good deal like mine, the only seeming difference was that the front of his faced the west, whereas the front of mine faced the east. While puzzling over this strange coincidence, my own mother came out of the house to feed the poultry that had commenced going to roost, in a rookery for all the world like my own, only facing the wrong way. 'In the name of all that's wonderful!' I thought, 'what is she doing here? and how did she get here ahead of me?' Just then the world took a spin around, my ranch wheeled into line, and, lo! I was sitting on my own fence, and had been looking at my own improvements without knowing them." And from this he draws a moral and adorns the tale with the philosophic conclusion that people cannot see and think alike owing to their point of view, and we therefore must be charitable.