I owned up. What was the use of pride about a tin kettle. This friend was my backer. He had set me up on this claim and put me, after a fashion, on my feet. He had come to see how I was getting along. While on this visit a man of some standing from a camp up the river came along looking for a stray cow. My friend asked him to dinner--one of my dinners--graced by about the worst baking of bread I ever accomplished. My friend did not realize what he was about when he asked the future Lieutenant-Governor of the State of California to that dinner. But when he sat down to my board and when they tried to eat my bread, he sorrowed in secret and gave me some good and forcible advice afterward relative to culinary and domestic matters. In these matters he was a very particular man. During his stay he inaugurated a reign of neatness and for me one of terror and discomfort. He put his whole mind on cooking and covered the stove with dishes. He was an animated bill of fare. He scoured all the tinware brightly. I was quite surprised at the new, fresh look of things, and in secret thought seriously of reform, and hoped he wouldn’t stay long. But the man didn’t enjoy eating his elaborately prepared meals so much as I did. He worked too hard getting them up. He exhausted too much of his force in planning, worrying, and cooking. He worked his mind in too many channels at once. He lacked repose. There’s where I had the best of him. I was reposeful, and if you please so to term it, lazy. He is dead--I am alive. There’s the result of different mental conditions. It is noon. I have no clock to tell the hours, but we acquire a faculty of feeling when noon arrives. The rain has ceased temporarily, but it will soon recommence, for which I am glad, as it will prevent work on the claim during the afternoon. Having eaten dinner, finishing with a piece of my mince pie, it occurs to me that this is a good time to write home. It’s hard work writing home. I put it off for weeks and months. It lays a load on my mind. I receive at times letters from people complaining of my neglect. I know I ought to write, but what is there to write? Nothing but the same old story “Hope soon to do well.” I have written in this strain for the last six years until I am tired and sick of it. It is of no use telling any more about the country. All that has been told. If my people only knew how much I suffered in this endeavor to be dutiful, perhaps they would not insist on my writing more than the line, “I am still alive; yours truly.” Thousands more of letters from California wanderers would have been received by anxious relatives had they been content with this. But you were expected to write. Bricks without straw.