people arguing with
him about something; and Magnus in a dreadful pucker to know what to do.
In one group were Judge Horace Stone, N.V. Creede and Forrest Bushyager,
then a middle-aged man, and an active young fellow of twenty-five or so
named Dick McGill, afterward for many years the editor of the Monterey
Centre _Journal_. These had a petition asking that the county-seat be
located at Lithopolis, Judge Stone's new town, and they wanted Magnus to
sign it. I suppose he would have done so, if it had not been for the
other delegation, consisting of Henderson L. Burns and Doctor Bliven,
who had another petition asking for the establishment of the county-seat
permanently "at its present site," Monterey Centre. They took me into
the confabulation as soon as I weighed anchor in front of the house; and
just as they had begun to pour their arguments into me they were joined
by another man, who drove up in a two-seated democrat wagon drawn by a
fine team of black horses, and in the back seat I saw a man and woman
sitting. I thought the man looked like Elder Thorndyke; but the woman's
face was turned away from me, and I did not recognize her at first. She
had on a new calico dress that I hadn't seen before. It was Virginia.

The man who got out and joined the group was a red-faced, hard-visaged
man of about fifty, dressed in black broadcloth, and wearing a beaver
hat. He had a black silk cravat tied about a standing collar, with high
points that rolled out in front, and he looked rich and domineering. He
was ever afterward a big man in Monterey County, and always went by the
name of Governor Wade, because he was a candidate for governor two or
three times. He was the owner of a big tract of land over to the
southwest, next to the Gowdy farm the largest in the county. He came
striding over to us as if whatever he said was the end of the law. With
him and Henderson L. and N.V. Creede pitching into a leatherhead like
me, no wonder I did not recognize Virginia in her new dress; I was in
such a stew that I hardly knew which end my head was on.

Each side seemed to want to impress me with the fact that in signing one
or the other of those petitions I had come to the parting of the ways.
They did not say much about what was best for the county, but bore down
on the fact that the way I lined up on that great question would make
all the difference in the world with me. Each tried to make me think
that I should always be an outsider and a