g of my experiences in San Francisco
eight years after.

My first recollections are complimentary to the citizens of San
Francisco--that is, for their universal courtesy to women and
children; but this is a characteristic of the people, and I will
illustrate it in a small way. It was the custom in those days for
ladies to go shopping prepared to carry all they bought home with
them, and I used to accompany my mother on her shopping expeditions.
The streets and crossings were in a dreadfully muddy condition, and
women and children were carried over the crossings, and never was
there wanting a gallant gentleman ready to fulfil this duty, for a
duty it was considered then by all men to be attentive to women.

What induced me to write these maybe uninteresting incidents, was the
last very interesting sketch of early life in San Francisco by my
friend, Mr. D. W. Higgins, giving an account of the doings of the
"Vigilance Committee," and the shooting of "James King of William,"
as I remembered him named, and the subsequent execution of Casey for
that cold-blooded deed. Cold-blooded it was, for I was an
eye-witness, strange to say, of the affair, as I will now relate.

I might premise by saying that my father was an enthusiastic
Britisher. But he was a firm believer in the American axiom,
though--"My country, may she ever be right; my country right or
wrong," and I, his son, echo the same sentiments. It is this
sentiment that makes me have no love for a pro-Boer. It was this
pride of country that caused him to go to the expense of
subscribing for the _Illustrated London News_ at fifty or
seventy-five cents a number, weekly, and I was on my way to Payot's
bookstore to get the last number, with the latest account of the
Crimean War, then waging between England and France against Russia. I
was within a stone's throw of Washington and Montgomery Streets, I
think, when I was startled by the sharp report of a pistol, and
looking around I saw at once where it proceeded from, for there were
about half a dozen people surrounding a man who had been shot. I, of
course, made for that point, being ever ready for adventure. The
victim of the shooting was James King of William, editor of the
_Evening Bulletin_ newspaper, and the assassin was a notorious
politician named James Casey, proprietor of the _Sunday Times_,
but a very illiterate man for all that.

The cause of the shooting was that James King of William had in his
paper stated