son of romance, and his travels will serve scientific or economic purposes only when Shakspeare shall be recognized as prince of statisticians. He gives us little of theory or history, and is inclined to let the world wag in future as it pleases without encouragement or hindrance from him; but merely reflects the romantic character of the age by binding up together his reminiscences of Californian and of Indian life, and casting them before us to twitch in a moment into two opposite hemispheres our minds already distracted by multitudes of other equally romantic books, in which we delight, and which are in spite of all that can be said against them the distinguishing and proper glory of the literature of our time, In Rome we should do as the Romans do, and in the nineteenth century we cannot do better than read and write as many novels as possible, and put all our observations and speculations into romantic forms.

From the series of sketches which make up the agreeable miscellany of Dr. Palmer's new book, we can notice but a few, which will be sufficient to convey some impression of its careful literary finish, and of its general composite character, as a work both of memory and imagination engaged upon most widely diversified materials.

He reached California in 1849, a physician by profession, with little to aid him but six letters of introduction. Five of these were deli

vered, and as a result, 'Five gentlemen, friends of the family, were most happy to see me. Five gentlemen congratulated me on arriving so early; I had fortune by the forelock. Five gentlemen considered this a splendid country-great openings for young gentlemen of enterprise and talent, especially doctors'-half the population, they said, were ill fees enormous-in a week would be overrun with patients- knew some lovely water-lots for investments and numerous other conversational fragmentary items and suggestions, closing up with the assurance that they were very busy-getting up lumber'Come and see them-take care of myself, old fellow-by-the-by, as I was new to the place, liable to be bewildered, tempted-would just throw in a friendly hint-gambling in San Francisco universal and without bounds-all classes fling themselves madly into the giddy whirl of drink and play-doctors, lawyers, editors, judges, professors, divines faro, roulette, rondo, keeno, monk, lansequenet, bluff-soulabsorbing, dreadful, lasciate ogni sepranza voi chi v'entrate-Dante, you know all right—take care of myself. And that was all I got out of five of these friends of the family.' With his sixth letter he fared better, and was soon in sufficient practice. The preceding design represents one of his first cases.

Hell

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A ball-room heroine, a Creole girl from New-Orleans, was stabbed in the shoulder by a jealous Chilena. The doctor was called upon to attend the beautiful and now blaspheming vixen, who, between the sharp stitches of his suture-needle, cursed alternately her rival and her Adams' revolver that had hung fire. The wound was healed, but our author was no physician to so bad a mind as that of the Creole vengeful spit-fire, who had scarcely escaped from his hands, when at a dishevelled masked-ball she struck her Chilian enemy a fatal blow with a bowie-knife.

Introduced by this adventure to the orgies of the place, Dr. Palmer soon learned and witnessed the incidents of "The Fate of the Farleighs.' Amid the revels he detected a tall and singularly graceful young English woman, who seemed strangely out of place there, and hopelessly wretched-who moved in the dance, grave, pale, and abstracted, with no apparent interest in it or consciousness of it. 'How like the very

ghost of a bacchanal, with her motions merely, but not emotions, she flung herself desperately into the brave abandon of the Spanish dance, flashing her soft, white shoulders, beautifully balancing her pensile arms, proudly careering her conquering neck.' This woman, a refuse from the English home of her husband and from the society of her acquaintances, had come to see her fate out,' to dazzle and dance her life away in all the rudeness of Californian adventure. Her proud spirit, however, remained to her, and when her husband also made his ap pearance in California, she found his approach intolerable. Whether

it were a sense of injury or of remorse, she only flamed with passion. But this was but for a moment; soon she turned ashen pale, with a deep, dangerous, and despairing hate; her health and beauty departed at once; arsenic was attempted, but the doctor came just in time to pump it up; but impatient for the end, the sequel soon came, and her corpse was recovered from the river.

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The most interesting circumstance, which proves how curiously goodness and wickedness are sometimes blended together, remains to be stated. She left to her son, the offspring of her marriage, a large legacy, which she had industriously hoarded, signing the will with her assumed name and a fearful appendage-Lucy Mason, the lost.'

In reflecting on the character of San-Franciscan society in 1849, Dr. Palmer remarks: 'It was strange how soon, and how surely, the original Satan in every new arrival asserted himself. An amusing instance follows. One Gossage, who went to California in a white neck-cloth from an apostolic circuit in Alabama, and for a time dis

pensed pious tracts from a green bag, had within a year become a notorious master of the gambler's games-brag, bluff, and poker. And reckless, too, as notorious; for one night, when his trunk in the attic was totally empty, he boasted in a company of congenial gentlemen, that it contained five thousand dollars in the famous gold coin known as 'Moffat's kine.' A young man, who was playing the part of an amused spectator,' questioned the statement; whereupon Gossage affirmed, in a grammatical style that we trust he had acquired since he left the pulpit, that facts is facts, and opinions as is opinions is worth backing. The result was a bet, a matching of piles, and the deposition of four hundred dollars in the hands of a mutual friend : whereupon, the company started toward the roof of the house to explore the trunk. At the top of the first flight, Gossage stopped, and had scruples about going on and claiming the wager, because he was betting on positive certainty. His opponent made a facetious reply, and on they went up another flight. There Gossage stopped again, was overflowing with honorable sentiments, and wished to exposterlate' with his young friend and brother, who was 'apperiently a person of feeling and refinery.' He told him that he was making a 'rayther resky' entrance upon life in that new civilization, and he was 'agreeable to let him up.' The 'brother' returned thanks, confessed that he was touched by such tokens of kind consideration, but nevertheless preferred not to be let up from a bet, which at least had been so fortunate as to gain for him the acquaintance of his honorable friend. Thus compliments were exchanged as the third flight was mounted. There Gossage stopped again, changed his mood, and wished to know how far the gentleman meant to carry this joke. If the gentleman was in earnest, the gentleman must excuse him, but he considered the gentleman a damned fool.' He began to talk about 'insinerwations,' and was evidently inclined to provoke a quarrel, which should introduce some deus ex machina to release him from the meshes which were drawing too closely about him. His young opponent made no other reply, than to ask him whether he lived inside the house, or out on the roof,' and on they went till the door of the chamber was reached. There Gossage again turned, and with his hand on the knob, declared entreatingly: 'You'd better not.' Another expostulation followed as the lid of the trunk was about to be raised, but at length the emptiness of the trunk and of its owner's boasting were alike exposed. What would a sage, a Plato, or a Macchiavelli have said, if he had been caught precisely in the circumstances of the baffled gambler? Would it have been any thing wiser than this? Boys,' said Gossage out of the corner of his eye, 'you've got me this time, where the hair's short!'

6

Among the adventurers who flocked to California, men of genius

were doubtless more frequent than they are in old and established countries, and there too genius was unrestrained from assuming the quality of eccentricity. Mr. Mill would not have complained in SanFrancisco that there was no chance for individuality and peculiarity of character. In fact, there was no chance for any thing else. Mr. Karl Joseph Krafft is presented to us by Dr. Palmer as a sort of romantic hero, talented, interesting, odd, and of the sort which in novels of old-fashioned life we feel sure will do something wonderful, and die supernaturally. How will he succeed in a chaotic new world, a whirling eddy bordering the great oceanic course of empire?

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He comes from Germany to San-Francisco, touching, however, on his way, at ports in every quarter of the globe, enters a mercantile house, becomes indispensable to his employer by detecting his tricks, marries his daughter, makes a fortune, loses it by one sublime failure 'a sort of Paradise Lost among the epics of speculation,' is thrown upon his wits, and begins a new career by turning beggar for several invalids who are worse than himself. Thus he snaps his finger in announcing his plan :