I am not writing a legal treatise, I leave the topic here. My father caught the gold fever, and early in the spring of 1849 started with an ox-team across the plains to the gold-fields of California. He returned in the winter of 1851-2, having been moderately successful. For many years I had been a sufferer from neuralgia. Its painful development was in the forehead. I was a pale and emaciated specimen of the genus homo, weighing less than 150 pounds. My father was of the opinion that the air of the Pacific Coast was rich in ozone, and his physical appearance indicated that his judgment was sound. "Go west, my son," he said; "go to Oregon--not to California--for you would amount to nothing as a miner. You will be subject to a continual alkaline bath on the plains, and this will prepare you for the renovating effects of the salubrious air of the Pacific Coast." My father was not a physician, but I readily consented to take his prescription, provided he would pay the doctor's bill. This he willingly consented to do. I soon found three other young men who had the Oregon fever in its incipient stages. It soon became fixed and constitutional, and they determined to go. A wagon was soon constructed under my father's direction--light but strong, with a bed water-tight and removable, so that it could be used as a boat for ferrying purposes; a strong cover for the wagon, and a tent which in case of storm could be fastened to the wagon to supplement the effectiveness of the cover. Each furnished a span of light, tough and dark-colored horses. White was not allowed on account of their alleged want of toughness and durability. Each was allowed two full suits of clothes and no more, and two pair of double blankets and no more. The object was to prevent overloading. Each was to have a rifle or shotgun, or both, and a pistol and sheath-knife. I am thus particular, because in this day of railroads and Pullman cars, these things are fast passing from memory. On the first of March, 1852, we left Sturgis, Michigan. Our first point of destination was Cainesville on the Missouri River. We did our own cooking and slept in our wagon when the weather was clement; at hotels and farm houses when it was inclement. None of us had ever tried our hand at cooking before, and our development along that line had a good deal of solid fact, and but little poetry in it. We could put more specific gravity into a given bulk of bread than any scientific cook on earth. Taken in quantity, it would test the digestive energies of an ostrich; but we took it in homeopathic doses. We lived in the open air and survived, as our knowledge of the culinary art rapidly increased. The moral of this mournful tale is:--mothers, teach your sons to do at least ordinary cooking; they may many times bless you in the ever-shifting, and strenuous conflict of life.