Vancouver, when another illusion happened
to me in the shape of a party of gentlemen and ladies, in ball-dresses,
dress-coats, white kids, and elaborate hair, who entered the parlor to
wait for further accessions from the hotel. They were on their way with
a band of music to give some popular citizen a surprise-party. The
popular citizen never got the fine edge of that surprise. I took it off
for him. If it were not too much like a little Cockney on Vancouver's
Island who used the phrase on all occasions, from stubbing his toe to
the death of a Cabinet Lord, I should say, "I never was more astonished
in me life!"

None of them had ever seen me before,--and with my books and maps about
me, I may have looked like some public, yet mysterious character. I felt
a pleasant sensation of having interest taken in me, and, wishing to
make an ingenuous return, looked up with a casual smile at one of the
party. Again to my surprise, this proved to be a very charming young
lady, and I timidly became aware that the others were equally pretty in
their several styles. Not knowing what else to do under the
circumstances, I smiled again, still more casually. An equal uncertainty
as to alternative set the ladies smiling quite across the row, and then,
to my relief, the gentlemen joined them, making it pleasant for us all.
A moment later we were engaged in general conversation,--starting from
the bold hypothesis, thrown out by one of the gentlemen, that perhaps I
was going to Boise, and proceeding, by a process of elimination, to the
accurate knowledge of what I was going to do, if it wasn't that. I
enjoyed one of the most cheerful bits of social relaxation I had found
since crossing the Missouri, and nothing but my duty to my journal
prevented me, when my surprise-party left, from accompanying them, by
invitation, under the brevet title of Professor, to the house of the
popular citizen, who, I was assured, would be glad to see me. I
certainly should have been glad to see him, if he was anything like
those guests of his who had so ingenuously cultivated me in a far land
of strangers, where a man might have been glad to form the acquaintance
of his mother-in-law. This is not the way people form acquaintances in
New York; but if I had wanted that, why not have stayed there? As a
cosmopolite, and on general principles of being, I prefer the Dalles
way. I have no doubt I should have found in that circle of spontaneous
recognitions quite as ma