constant training at the Mission
during the six weeks preceding the contest, and such was the interest
taken in the matter that thousands visited that sacred locality daily to
pick up such morsels of information as they might, concerning the
physical and scientific improvement being made by the gubernatorial
acrobats. The anxiety manifested by the populace was intense. When it
was learned that Stanford had smashed a barrel of flour to atoms with a
single blow of his fist, the voice of the people was at his side. But
when the news came that Low had caved in the head of a tubular boiler
with one stroke of his powerful "mawley" (which term is in strict
accordance with the language of the ring) the tide of opinion changed
again. These changes were frequent, and they kept the minds of the
public in such a state of continual vibration that I fear the habit thus
acquired is confirmed, and that they will never more cease to oscillate.

The fight was to take place on last Sunday morning at ten o'clock. By
nine every wheeled vehicle and every species of animal capable of
bearing burthens, were in active service, and the avenues leading to the
Seal Rock swarmed with them in mighty processions whose numbers no man
might hope to estimate.

I determined to be upon the ground at an early hour. Now I dislike to be
exploded, as it were, out of my balmy slumbers, by a sudden, stormy
assault upon my door, and an imperative order to "Get up!"--wherefore I
requested one of the intelligent porters of the Lick House to call at
my palatial apartments, and murmur gently through the key-hole the magic
monosyllable "Hash!" That "fetched me."

The urbane livery-stable keeper furnished me with a solemn,
short-bodied, long-legged animal--a sort of animated counting-house
stool, as it were--which he called a "Morgan" horse. He told me who the
brute was "sired" by, and was proceeding to tell me who he was "dammed"
by, but I gave him to understand that I was competent to damn the horse
myself, and should probably do it very effectually before I got to the
battle-ground. I mentioned to him, however, that I was not proposing to
attend a funeral; it was hardly necessary to furnish me an animal gifted
with such oppressive solemnity of bearing as distinguished his "Morgan."
He said in reply, that Morgan was only pensive when in the stable, but
that on the road I would find him one of the liveliest horses in the
world.

He enunciated the truth.

The br