Hurdy-gurdy player or not, he was a very entertaining, agreeable fellow. I only hope all the fraternity are like him (perhaps they are, if one only knew them), and attain ultimately to such a respectable position in life, dignifying their instruments with the name of Italian fiddles, and reserving them for the entertainment of their particular friends. I was on my way to Slate Range, a place some distance down the river, but the next day I only went as far as Oak Valley, traveling the last few miles with a young fellow from one of the Southern States, whom I overtook on the way. He had been mining, he told me, at Downieville, and was now going to join some friends of his at a place some thirty miles off. At supper he did not make his appearance, which I did not observe, as there were a number of men at table, till the landlord asked me if that young fellow who arrived with me was not going to have any supper, and suggested that perhaps he was “strapped,” “dead-broke”--_Anglicé_, without a cent in his pocket. I had not inferred anything of the sort from his conversation, but on going out and asking him why he did not come to supper, he reluctantly admitted that the state of his finances would not admit of it. I told him, in the language of Mr. Toots, that it was of no consequence, and made him come in, when he was most unceremoniously lectured by the rest of the party, and by the landlord particularly, on the absurdity of his intention of going supperless to bed merely because he happened to be “dead-broke,” getting at the same time some useful hints how to act under such circumstances in future from several of the men present, who related how, when they had found themselves in such a predicament, they had, on frankly stating the fact, been made welcome to everything.