ived at home, the truth
of the trite saying that "A prophet is not without honor save in his own
country" was soon to be brought to his attention. While he had been feted
and honored abroad, while he had every reason to believe that his
petition to the European governments for some pecuniary compensation
would, in time, be granted, he returned to be plunged anew into vexatious
litigation, intrigues and attacks upon his purse, his fame, and his good
name. On November 27, 1856, he refers to his greatest cross in a letter
to Mr. Kendall:--

"I have just returned from Boston, having accomplished the important duty
for which I alone went there, to wit, to say 'yes' before a gentleman
having U.S. Commissioner after his name, instead of 'yes' before one who
had only S. Commissioner after his name; and this at a cost of exactly
twenty dollars, or, if the one dollar thrown away in New York upon the S.
Commissioner be added, twenty-one dollars and three days of time, to say
nothing of sundry risks of accidents by land and water travel.

"Well, if it will lead to a thorough separation of all interests and all
intercourse with F.O.J., I shall not consider the time and money lost,
yet, in conversation with Mr. Curtis, I have little hope of a change in
Judge Curtis's views of the point in which he decides that Smith has an
inchoate right, and our only chance of success is in the reversal of that
decision by the Supreme Bench, and that after another year's suspense....

"I wish there was some way of stopping this harassing, paralyzing
litigation. I find my mind wholly unfit for the studies which the present
state of the Telegraph requires from me, being distracted and irritated
by the constant necessity for standing on the defensive. Smith will be
Smith I know, and, therefore, as he is the appointed thorn to keep a
proper ballast of humility in S.F.B.M. with his load of honors, why, be
it so, if I can only have the proper strength and disposition to use the
trial aright.... Write me some encouraging news if you can. How will the
present calm in political affairs affect our California matters?"

The calm to which he referred was the apparent one which had settled down
on the country after the election of Buchanan, and which, as everybody
knows, was but the calm before the storm of our Civil War. He has this to
say about the election in a letter to the Honorable John Y. Mason, our
Minister to France:--

"I may congratulate you, my d