The Haggins’ was another of these homes where one felt the evidences of good taste and refinement. I shall never forget one party I attended there. One of the family had been to our store in the afternoon and purchased some merchandise, placing special stress on the necessity of having it delivered that day, as it was needed for the reception in the evening—the same to which I had been invited. In the rush of closing the store, it was noticed that these things had been overlooked, and, as the Haggin house was on my way home, I agreed to deliver them myself. Accordingly, I proceeded to the back door and handed these sundry brooms and saucepans to the butler, who received them from me in shirt sleeves as man to man. Later in the evening, with a friend from Harvard whom the young ladies especially desired to meet, I alighted at the house from a carriage, this time at the front door. The butler, who was English, received me with a suspicious air, but let me get into the drawing-room, when all of a sudden, with the light of memory in his eye, he made rather a threatening movement toward me, but, thinking better of it, made his way up to Mr. Haggin and, drawing him aside, whispered excitedly in his ear. That gentleman burst out into loud guffaws of laughter and could not refrain from telling the joke. The butler had whispered the awful news that I was a tradesman! No Britisher, even a servant, could possibly be expected to understand the Californian of that day. The bigness was not confined to the natural characteristics of the country, but seemed to have invaded the spirit of the people, making them pleasure-loving and easy-going, and, above all, gave them a magnificent, even if childlike, sense of humor. Then the richness of the land and the abundance of everything made them careless of property. Imagine a city where every humble clerk owned a horse and carriage; imagine, if you can, that same horse and carriage to be absolutely at the disposal of anyone—a friend or stranger—so that if you came out of a building onto the sidewalk, and your own vehicle had disappeared, you simply hopped into the nearest one and proceeded to your destination. Think of the president of the Stock Exchange being driven out of his seat by beanshooters operated by the members! Business was slack that day, and this was merely a form of amusement. Bring them any sort of a new toy, and they were ready to play with it immediately. We had an oversupply of ice cream freezers at the store, so I made up my mind to get rid of them. Every day at a certain hour I gave a demonstration out on the sidewalk, lecturing all the time I was freezing the cream, and handing out free samples of the stuff to the assembled crowd. These same members of the Stock Exchange thought it a great joke to join the antics and chaff me, while trying to force me to accept five-dollar gold pieces for the ice cream. Of course they bought out the