ratic member of the Legislature of the State of New York, from
Washington county, and was chosen by that body to deliver the oration
on Washington's birthday. His name was George Washington Sherwood. He
was elected to the Constitutional Convention of California, and wrote
its first Constitution, copied after that of his native State, New York.
The Northern element prevailed in that convention, and California came
in a free State by its unanimous vote. Broderick headed the Northern
sentiment; Gwin, who had been a United States Marshal in Mississippi,
the Southern. I met him often. He would come into a bar-room and say: "I
did not come here to dig gold, but to represent you in the United States
Senate." He would then say: "Come up all, and take a drink." I thought
that was a strange way to inspire the people with the idea that he was
the proper person to represent them in the United States Senate. He was
elected, with Colonel Freemont, the first two United States Senators
from California. At the next election for United States Senators,
Broderick got absolute control, and although Gwin had fought him
bitterly, they were the two senators to be elected again. Broderick had
the magnanimity to induce his friends to go for Gwin and had him elected
with him, and Gwin showed his ingratitude by going at once to Washington
and securing from Buchanan the control of all the appointments of the
government in the State of California. So when Broderick came there,
there were none to give his friends. Gwin was afterward very prominent
in the rebellion. He went out in a boat in Charleston harbor, crying out
from it his advice to Major Anderson, advising him to surrender at the
time of the attack on Fort Sumter. (This is a matter of history that
occurred after the time of which I am writing.)

A BULL FIGHT.

There were bills posted about the city that three of the most celebrated
fighters of Mexico would have an exhibition in the evening, and combat
with animals. As my friend and myself never had seen one we thought we
would go. It was an amphitheatre, with circular seats about the pit,
with thick planks around it, the seats commencing about twenty feet from
the bottom of the pit. There was a door at the side of the pit, which
was raised by pulleys, which admitted the bull. They were wild ones. Our
seat was about the fifth row back. The house was crowded and brilliantly
illuminated. Then the bull-fighters were in the pit, one on horseba