[6o MY LIFE 



me of her dearest friends to baptize their children with, a 

 distinction of the highest kind. 



While in San Francisco I had agreed to give a lecture on 

 " Spiritualism/' under the management of Mr. Albert Morton, 

 and I went over on Sunday, June 5, and had an audience of 

 over a thousand people in the Metropolitan Theatre. The 

 title of my lecture was, " If a Man die, shall he live again? " 

 The audience was most attentive, and it was not only a better 

 audience, but the net proceeds were more than for any single 

 scientific lecture I gave in America. I had spent the morning 

 in the fine Golden Gate Park, where I saw some eucalyptus 

 trees over sixty feet high, with numerous acacias and other 

 greenhouse plants growing out of doors. I also had a fine 

 view of the extensive sandhills, covered with huge clumps of 

 blue and yellow tree-lupines, which produced a spendid effect. 

 The interesting seances I had here will be described later on. 



Returning to Stockton, I went with my brother and his 

 daughter for a few days in the Yosemite Valley. The journey 

 there — two hours by rail and two days by coach — was very 

 interesting, but often terribly dusty. The first day we were 

 driving for nine hours in the foothills, among old mining 

 camps with their ruined sheds and reservoirs and great gravel 

 heaps, now being gradually overgrown by young pines and 

 shrubs. Here and there we passed through bits of forest 

 with tall pines and shrubby undergrowth, but generally the 

 country was bare of fine trees, scraggy, burnt up, and the 

 roads insufferably dusty. At 9 p. m. we reached Priest's 

 (two thousand five hundred feet elevation), where we had 

 supper, bed, and breakfast. 



Next day was much more enjoyable. The road was won- 

 derfully varied, always going up or down, diving into deep 

 wooded valleys with clear and rapid streams, then up the 

 slope, winding round spurs, crossing ridges, and down again 

 into a valley, but always mounting higher and higher. And 

 as we got deeper into the sierra, the vegetation continually 

 changed, the pines became finer both in form, size, and beauty. 

 At about three thousand feet we first saw the beautiful Doug- 



