It had been arranged that we should return to San Francisco to dinner, but Senator Sharon had in his secret heart resolved that we should do nothing of the kind, or at least, that if we did so, it should only be after we had partaken of such a feast at Belmont as would very much indispose us to test the capabilities of the _chef_ of the Palace Hotel. From Palo-Alto accordingly we were driven to the charming country house, some miles away, of the ex-senator of Oregon, and we were regaled there, after some delay, at a very elaborate _déjeûner_, sent out from San Francisco. It was nigh 8 o'clock ere we got back to the city; and the night ended by what might well be called "an excursion" to the Baldwin Theatre, which was at the time the most attractive of the places of entertainment of that sort open in the city. As some of us were walking back, after the play was over, with an American friend, talking of the "hoodlums," famous rowdies, who, we were assured, had been of late days utterly broken up by the vigilance of the police, our attention was attracted to a number of lads smoking at the corner of the street. Our friend said "Hoodlums broken up! There they are--don't you believe it. That's a lot of them, and if you were alone you might find out very unpleasantly that there are plenty of them." The San Francisco journalists possess astonishing powers of imagination. I rubbed my eyes when I read that I had described "with eloquence the similarity between a marsh at San Bruno and a patch of jungle in the north-west of Scinde, where I had the felicity of spending three weeks with General Green while the natives were arranging a plan to capture the party and cut our throats." I never was in the north-west of Scinde in my life, and, although I had the pleasure of passing a longer time in his company in the United States, and of being on the same plateau before Sebastopol when he was there, for a still longer period, many years before, I never spent three weeks there with General Green. The Duke was described as "professing, but showing, little enthusiasm." However, these matters are of very slight interest or importance; only one wonders how many of the readers of this sort of literary work believe in it. One of our party has, according to a local paper, become a clergyman, and now rejoices in the style and title of "the Bishop," by which he is universally addressed by the party.