kicked off his boots, and walked ‘slick’ into bed. This was done quietly and deliberately, but in less time than it took to light the gas. I felt that I was becoming uncertain as to the reality of things. Was I at Drury Lane, looking on at the transformations of a pantomime? or was I dreaming that I was at Cairo? [Sidenote: _A Bed-room Companion._] As the balance of probability did not appear to be in favour of either of these suppositions, I took off my boots, and placed them on the outside of the door. As I closed the door a voice came to me from the bed at the further side of the room. Its tone was manly and friendly: ‘Sir,’ it said, ‘if that is the only pair of boots you have with you’ (it was so; for I had sent my luggage on to St. Louis), ‘I would advise you to keep them inside the room, and have them cleaned on your feet in the morning. The last time I was here I put mine outside the door, and never saw them again; and so I had to go barefooted till I could get another pair.’ I thanked the speaker for his advice, and acted upon it. My next care was to provide for the safety of my watch and pocket-book, which contained three hundred dollars in greenbacks. This I did by putting them into the pocket where I had my handkerchief, which I then took out of my pocket, as if there was nothing in it (but the watch and pocket-book were in it), and placed it under my pillow. I have no doubt but that my companion saw through what I was doing, for he now addressed me a second time. ‘Before you go to sleep, I suppose you would like to know who is in the room with you; and yet I hardly know how to describe myself. For the last four or five years I have been on this side the mountains. For the fifteen years before that I had been in California; and I began life in the old States as a lawyer. In the early days of California, I went out as one of a company for digging and mining. There were seven of us, and five of the seven were lawyers. I came over the mountains to help the North in putting down the rebellion. I made a great heap of money in California, and I have lost a great heap in bad speculations since I have been over here. But I have got a scheme on its legs by which I hope to make again as much as I have lost. That, sir, is what I am—and I wish you good night. My name is——’ I could not catch the word, but I afterwards ascertained it, and found that my first bed-room companion added modesty to his other merits, and had not told me how great a man he was in his own State.