In 1858, the outlook for business brightened in Los Angeles; and Don Abel Stearns, who had acquired riches as a _ranchero_, built the Arcadia Block, on the corner of Los Angeles and Arcadia streets, naming it after his wife, Doña Arcadia, who, since these memoirs were commenced, has joined the silent majority. The structure cost about eighty thousand dollars, and was talked of for some time as the most notable business block south of San Francisco. The newspapers hailed it as an ornament to the city and a great step toward providing what the small and undeveloped community then regarded as a fire-proof structure for business purposes. Because, however, of the dangerous overflow of the Los Angeles River in rainy seasons, Stearns elevated the building above the grade of the street and to such an extent that, for several years, his store-rooms remained empty. But the enterprise at once bore some good fruit; to make the iron doors and shutters of the block, he started a foundry on New High Street and soon created some local iron-casting trade. On April 24th, Señora Guadalupe Romero died at the age, it is said, of one hundred and fifteen years. She came to Los Angeles, I was told, as far back as 1781, the wife of one of the earliest soldiers sent here, and had thus lived in the pueblo about seventy-seven years. Some chapters in the life of Henry Mellus are of more than passing interest. Born in Boston, he came to California in 1835, with Richard Henry Dana, in Captain Thompson's brig _Pilgrim_ made famous in the story of _Two Years before the Mast_; clerked for Colonel Isaac Williams when that Chino worthy had a little store where later the Bella Union stood; returned to the East in 1837 and came back to the Coast the second time as supercargo. Settling in San Francisco, he formed with Howard the well-known firm of Howard & Mellus, which was wiped out, by the great fire, in 1851. Again Mellus returned to Massachusetts, and in 1858 for a third time came to California, at length casting his fortune with us in growing Los Angeles. On Dana's return to San Pedro and the Pacific Coast in 1859, Mellus--who had married a sister of Francis Mellus's wife and had become a representative citizen--entertained the distinguished advocate and author, and drove him around Los Angeles to view the once familiar and but little-altered scenes. Dana bore all his honors modestly, apparently quite oblivious of the curiosity displayed toward him and quite as unconscious that he was making one of the memorable visits in the early annals of the town. Dana Street serves as a memorial to one who contributed in no small degree to render the vicinity of Los Angeles famous.