I recently spent several hours at the house of a friend in San Francisco, watching the play of emotion on the wrinkled face of an aged Argonaut as he listened while our host and I were discussing the various characters of the story of Poker Jim. Needless to say, old time memories were revived in the mind of the poor old man. I shall never forget his tear dimmed eyes as he looked up at me and said, reverently, “Doc, I knowed ’em well--your pa, an’ your gran’pa, an’ Poker Jim an’ all on ’em.” As I sit here in my quiet study harking back to my last trip to the mountains and valleys of Tuolumne and Calaveras, there appears before my mind’s eye a picture of the old golden days brought down to the year 1900. In the foreground, at the door of his rude log cabin, stands that dear old octogenarian, “French Tom” of Tuolumne, gazing toward the green verdured hills on the opposite bank of the river, just where Moccasin Creek debouches into the swift running crystal waters of the Tuolumne. He shades his poor old eyes with his hand, and looks long and earnestly at a man who is slowly passing along the old Yosemite trail. When he reached the summit of the hill the man turned and stood limned against the brilliant morning sky, a ghost of happier days. Long past three score and ten, bent and withered, crippled with the “rheumatiz,” with pick on shoulder and pan and grub wallet by his side, “Dixie” was still pursuing the Golden Fleece. On the morrow--Sunday--Tom and Dixie would meet and talk it all over, and tell each other the same old wonderful lies of enormous golden finds, and “saltings” of the tenderfoot, that they had been exchanging since ’49. “Good luck, old pard!” and “The same to you!” were wafted gently down the beautiful valley to the heart-full wanderer who had come home after so many years. Dixie vanished over the brow of the hill, and Tom dove into his tumble-down shack to prepare the breakfast of fish fresh from the river to which he had invited his doctor friend. And the picture that my memory paints is no longer possible, for dear old Dixie has gone over the Divide, to dig for gold at the foot of eternal rainbows in the placers of the Great Beyond. And I am glad that I went in quest of childhood’s memories while it was yet time. Out of the Valley of Shadows, Mnemosyne--most puissant goddess of them all--leads forth a procession of misty familiar shapes that bring the warmth of affection to my heart and the smile of welcome to my lips. And they smile back at me in that quiet way which friendly shadows have.