WASHINGTON TO SAN FRANCISCO 165 



On reaching Stockton, on Saturday evening, I found a letter 

 from Senator Leland Stanford, one of the Californian mil- 

 lionaires whom I had met at Washington, inviting me to visit 

 him at his country house at Menlo Park on the following 

 Monday. Senator Stanford's father was a large farmer near 

 Albany, New York State, who was also the first railroad con- 

 tractor in America. Up to twenty years of age he had lived 

 and worked for his father. He then became a lawver, and 

 when his studies were completed, went to Wisconsin to prac- 

 tice. A few years later he removed to California, where he 

 had several brothers who were merchants, and after keep- 

 ing a store of his own, and thus acquiring business knowledge, 

 he joined them. In 1861 he became Governor of California 

 and President of the Central Pacific Railroad Company, of 

 which he was one of the founders, and by means of which, 

 with the large State and Union subsidies to help its con- 

 struction and the enormous grants of land which became of 

 value through the making of the railroad, he acquired his 

 great fortune of five or six millions sterling. 



When I met him and Mrs. Stanford in Washington, 

 through the introduction of Mrs. Beecher Hooker, it was as 

 a spiritualist, and to talk about spiritualism. Their only son, 

 a youth of sixteen, had died three years before at Florence, 

 and they both assured me that they had since had long-con- 

 tinued intercourse through several different mediums, and 

 under circumstances that rendered doubt impossible. Senator 

 Stanford has shown himself throughout his life a man of ex- 

 ceptional ability and intellectual vigour, and would hardly 

 be imposed upon in such a matter. 



Mr. Stanford met me at the station, and drove me to his 

 house, about a mile and a half. It is a large, roomy cottage, 

 luxuriously furnished, with very wide verandahs shaded by 

 trees and awnings, carpeted and furnished so as to form open- 

 air rooms, very delightful in a California summer. The 

 grounds are spacious and fairly wooded with some old pines 

 and large eucalypti, as well as many beautiful shrubs. For 

 some distance round the house there are grass lawns, as green 

 and smooth as any I have ever seen, with beautiful borders 



