nterest, whether he is discoursing upon animate
or inanimate nature.

Arrived in Oregon, an eight months' journey from Washington, the
settlers were obliged to make a provisional government for themselves,
to which the Tennessee lawyer lent an able hand. He relates an incident
of the first collision between law and license. They selected for
sheriff the famous Joseph L. Meek, a man of the best possible temper,
but as brave as a lion. The first man who defied the new laws was one
Dawson, a carpenter, scarcely less courageous than Meek himself. Dawson,
who had been in a fight, disputed the right of the sheriff to arrest
him. The sheriff simply replied:--

"Dawson, I came for you."

The carpenter raised his plane to defend himself. Meek wrested it from
him. Dawson picked up his broad axe, but on rising found himself within
a few inches of Meek's cocked revolver.

"Dawson," said the sheriff, laughing, "I came for you. Surrender or
die."

Dawson surrendered, and from that hour to the present, Oregon has been
ruled by law. In the course of five years the pioneer had brought under
cultivation a good farm in Oregon, which supported his family in great
abundance, but did not contribute much to the reduction of those
Tennessee debts, which he was determined to pay if it took him all his
life to do it.

The news of the gold discovery in California reached Oregon. He
organized another wagon-train, and in a few months he and another lawyer
were in the mining country, drawing deeds for town lots, from sunrise to
sunset, at ten dollars a deed. They did their "level best," he says, and
each made a hundred dollars a day at the business. Again he assisted in
the formation of a government, and he was afterwards elected the first
governor of the State of California. At present, at the age of
seventy-five, his debts long ago paid, a good estate acquired, and his
children all well settled in life, he amuses himself with discounting
notes in the Pacific Bank of San Francisco. Every person concerned in
the management of a bank would do well to consider his wise remarks on
the business of banking. When a man brings him a note for discount, he
says, he asks five questions:--

1. Is the supposed borrower an honest man? 2. Has he capital enough for
his business? 3. Is his business reasonably safe? 4. Does he manage it
well? 5. Does he live economically?

The first and last of these questions are the vital ones, he thinks,
though the oth