for
I have not the money to pay the carman." "Certainly," the good man
added, and so the trunks were brought up. On the next day I looked
around for quarters. I found a small house, thirty feet by sixteen,
for an office, at eighty dollars a month, and took it. It had a small
loft or garret, in which I placed a cot that I had purchased upon
credit. Upon this cot I spread a pair of blankets, and used my valise
for a pillow. I secured a chair without a back for a wash-stand, and
with a tin basin, a pail, a piece of soap, a toothbrush, a comb, and
a few towels, I was rigged out. I brought myself each day the water
I needed from a well near by. I had an old pine table and a
cane-bottomed sofa, and with these and the bills which had passed the
Legislature, corrected as they became laws, and the statutes of
the previous session, I put out my sign as an attorney and
counsellor-at-law, and began the practice of my profession.

Soon afterwards I found my name mentioned as a candidate for the State
Senate. The idea of returning to the Legislature as a Senator
pleased me. The people of the county seemed to favor the suggestion.
Accordingly I made a short visit to neighboring precincts, and finding
my candidacy generally approved I went to work to make it successful.
At the election of delegates to the county convention, which was to
nominate candidates, a majority was returned in my favor. Several of
them being unable to attend the convention, which was to be held at
Downieville, a distance of about seventy miles from Marysville, sent
me their proxies made out in blank to be filled with the name of any
one whom I might designate. To one supposed friend I gave ten proxies,
to another five, and to a third two. When the members met, just
previous to the assembling of the convention, it was generally
conceded that I had a majority of the delegates. But I had a new
lesson in manipulation to learn. Just before the opening of the
convention my supposed friend, who had the ten proxies, was approached
by the other side, and by promises to give the office of sheriff
to his partner--an office supposed to be worth thirty thousand a
year--his ten votes were secured for my opponent. The one to whom
I had given five proxies was promised for those votes the county
judgeship. So when the convention voted, to my astonishment and that
of my friends, fifteen of my proxies were cast for my opponent, Joseph
C. McKibbin, afterwards a member of Congress,