t
was a lovely Chinese floss silk shawl." His talents as a giver of
dinners were in evidence at that early age, and his father made use of
them in connection with the law business. There was a French _chef_, at
a salary of ten thousand dollars a year. High prices and scarcity
served only as spurs to the young Petronius.

"Such dinners as I gave I have never seen surpassed anywhere," he
complacently recorded in later years. Some one spoke to the elder
McAllister of the admirable manner in which his son kept house. "Yes,"
was the sapient retort. "He keeps everything but the Ten Commandments."

Two years of California, and then he returned East. At that period of
his life the idea of the Diplomatic Service as a career appealed to him.
Mr. Buchanan was going to England as Minister, and Ward McAllister
applied to President Pierce for the post of Secretary of Legation. He
was _persona grata_ with Buchanan, he had the influence necessary to
push his petition, and the matter seemed settled. But just then along
came his father, who wanted to be made Circuit Judge of the United
States for the State of California. Two appointments at the same time to
one family were out of the question, so the young man stepped aside as
became a dutiful son. But see Europe he would, and if he could not go in
the Government's service and at the public expense as a dabbler with
official sealing wax, he would go as a private citizen. The record he
preserved of that journey gives a marvellous picture of the man.

In London he met a Californian, in with all the sporting world, on
intimate terms with the champion prize-fighter of England, the Queen's
pages, and the Tattersalls crowd. Chaperoned by this curious countryman,
McAllister's first introduction to London life took the form of a dinner
at a great house in the suburbs. It was a strange house and a strange
company, more in keeping with the eighteenth century than the middle of
the nineteenth. The rat-pit, the drawing of the badger, the bloody
battling of the bull terriers, the high betting, the Gargantuan eating
and drinking and shouting, the smashing of glasses and plates, the
imperturbable footmen in green and gold liveries calmly replacing in
their chairs the guests overcome by strong potations--it was a picture
for Hogarth's pencil at its best, or Gillray's at its craziest.

The intimation is that, in the course of this and similar adventures,
McAllister was defraying his own expenses and t