t strides and
that the future is full of promise.

CHAPTER VII

INCIDENTS IN PUBLIC SERVICE

At twenty-two I found myself Register of the Humboldt Land Office, with
offices on the first floor of a building at Eureka, the second story of
which was occupied by a school. An open veranda extended across the
front. When I first let myself into the office, I carelessly left the
key in the lock. A mischievous girl simply gave it a turn and I was a
prisoner, with a plain but painful way of escape--not physically
painful, but humiliating to my official pride. There was nothing for it
but ignominiously to crawl out of the window onto the veranda and
recover the key--and that I forthwith did.

The archives of the office proved interesting. The original Register was
a Missouri Congressman, who had been instructed to proceed to Humboldt
City and open the office. Humboldt City was on the map and seemed the
logical location. But it had "died aborning" and as a city did not
exist. So the Register took the responsibility of locating the office at
Eureka, and in explanation addressed to the President, whom he
denominated "Buckhannan," a letter in which he went at length into the
"hole" subject. The original draft was on file.

I was authorized to receive homestead applications, to locate land
warrants, to hear contests, and to sell "offered land." The latter was
government land that had been offered for sale at $1.25 an acre and had
not been taken. Strangely enough, it embraced a portion of the redwood
belt along Mad River, near Arcata.

But one man seemed aware of the opportunity. John Preston, a tanner of
Arcata, would accumulate thirty dollars in gold and with it buy fifty
dollars in legal-tender notes. Then he would call and ask for the plat,
and, after considerable pawing, he would say, "Well, Charlie, I guess
I'll take that forty." Whereupon the transaction would be completed by
my taking his greenbacks and giving him a certificate of purchase for
the forty acres of timber-land that had cost him seventy-five cents an
acre, and later probably netted him not less than three hundred dollars
an acre for stumpage alone. Today it would be worth twice that. The
opportunity was open to all who had a few cents and a little sense.

Sales of land were few and locations infrequent, consequently
commissions were inconsiderable. Now and then I would hold a trial
between conflicting claimants, some of them quite important. It was