fifty-pound sack of self-raising flour and carry it
through the town, preceded by music, and deliver it to the winner of the
bet. Of course the whole camp was present and full of fluid and
enthusiasm. The winner of the bet put up the sack at auction for the
benefit of the United States Sanitary Fund, and sold it. The excitement
grew and grew. The sack was sold over and over again for the benefit of
the Fund. The news of it came to Virginia City by telegraph. It produced
great enthusiasm, and Reuel Gridley was begged by telegraph to bring the
sack and have an auction in Virginia City. He brought it. An open
barouche was provided, also a brass band. The sack was sold over and
over again at Gold Hill, then was brought up to Virginia City toward
night and sold--and sold again, and again, and still again, netting
twenty or thirty thousand dollars for the Sanitary Fund. Gridley carried
it across California and sold it at various towns. He sold it for large
sums in Sacramento and in San Francisco. He brought it East, sold it in
New York and in various other cities, then carried it out to a great
Fair at St. Louis, and went on selling it; and finally made it up into
small cakes and sold those at a dollar apiece. First and last, the sack
of flour which had originally cost ten dollars, perhaps, netted more
than two hundred thousand dollars for the Sanitary Fund. Reuel Gridley
has been dead these many, many years--it is the old story.

In that school were the first Jews I had ever seen. It took me a good
while to get over the awe of it. To my fancy they were clothed invisibly
in the damp and cobwebby mould of antiquity. They carried me back to
Egypt, and in imagination I moved among the Pharaohs and all the shadowy
celebrities of that remote age. The name of the boys was Levin. We had a
collective name for them which was the only really large and handsome
witticism that was ever born in that Congressional district. We called
them "Twenty-two"--and even when the joke was old and had been worn
threadbare we always followed it with the explanation, to make sure that
it would be understood, "Twice Levin--twenty-two."

There were other boys whose names remain with me. Irving Ayres--but no
matter, he is dead. Then there was George Butler, whom I remember as a
child of seven wearing a blue leather belt with a brass buckle, and
hated and envied by all the boys on account of it. He was a nephew of
General Ben Butler and fought gallantly a