AMERICAN SUPERIORITY 285 



God's earth, the "Stars and Stripes" to the breeze of his 

 free and mighty country! 



My dear father, in speaking of Griinhagen and Emil 

 Bottcher, you make the remark that such inconsistency 

 of fate annoys you. Not so with me, nor do I believe 

 that any Californiari thinks it strange. One has to pass 

 here through many different stages. An example may 

 here suffice: 



The hand-cart, which I procured last year, was the 

 property of a German, who had made the round sum of 

 one thousand dollars with it, inside of a year and a half. 

 He was, and is yet, an honorable, industrious man and 

 appeared to me, who at the time was a sick, broken-down 

 and almost penniless individual, to be in a position, which 

 I might have envied. About the same time I went to 

 Alameda, he disposed of his cart and invested his money 

 in a horse and dray, (freight truck, it is called in some 

 places), and with the remaining sum he bought a small 

 piece of property in San Francisco. A few weeks after 

 his happy change, misfortune overtook him. His dray 

 was destroyed in a fire, his horse was killed by a fall a 

 few days after, and to complete his ill luck, there ap- 

 peared the rightful owner to the property he had thought 

 to be his own, and proved to him, that he had been made 

 the victim of an unscrupulous swindler. In consequence, 

 the poor man had to let go his hold, give up his lot, and 

 furthermore he was unable to bring the deceiver to jus- 

 tice. When I happened to 1 e in San Francisco some four 

 weeks ago, I met him on the street, sick with fever and 

 penniless. T gave him five dollars, which he gratefully 

 accepted. "Which of us to-day, do you suppose, will envy 

 the other, he or I? And, it' you tell anybody of it here, 

 you hardly gain attention, as such occurrence is not at 

 all rare. The Yankee, if at all interested, will remove 

 his chewing tobacco and exclaim: "Well! California is 

 a great country!" I have not heard from Griinhagen 

 within six months and Emil BOttcher has gone to the 

 Society Islands, as his brother informs mo. 



