vessels of the largest
class lay at anchor in the early days. I was in San Francisco again in
1854. Gambling houses had disappeared from public view. The city had
become staid and orderly.

CHAPTER XVI.

RESIGNATION--PRIVATE LIFE--LIFE AT GALENA--THE COMING CRISIS.

My family, all this while, was at the East. It consisted now of a wife
and two children. I saw no chance of supporting them on the Pacific
coast out of my pay as an army officer. I concluded, therefore, to
resign, and in March applied for a leave of absence until the end of the
July following, tendering my resignation to take effect at the end of
that time. I left the Pacific coast very much attached to it, and with
the full expectation of making it my future home. That expectation and
that hope remained uppermost in my mind until the Lieutenant-Generalcy
bill was introduced into Congress in the winter of 1863-4. The passage
of that bill, and my promotion, blasted my last hope of ever becoming a
citizen of the further West.

In the late summer of 1854 I rejoined my family, to find in it a son
whom I had never seen, born while I was on the Isthmus of Panama. I was
now to commence, at the age of thirty-two, a new struggle for our
support. My wife had a farm near St. Louis, to which we went, but I had
no means to stock it. A house had to be built also. I worked very
hard, never losing a day because of bad weather, and accomplished the
object in a moderate way. If nothing else could be done I would load a
cord of wood on a wagon and take it to the city for sale. I managed to
keep along very well until 1858, when I was attacked by fever and ague.
I had suffered very severely and for a long time from this disease,
while a boy in Ohio. It lasted now over a year, and, while it did not
keep me in the house, it did interfere greatly with the amount of work I
was able to perform. In the fall of 1858 I sold out my stock, crops and
farming utensils at auction, and gave up farming.

In the winter I established a partnership with Harry Boggs, a cousin of
Mrs. Grant, in the real estate agency business. I spent that winter at
St. Louis myself, but did not take my family into town until the spring.
Our business might have become prosperous if I had been able to wait for
it to grow. As it was, there was no more than one person could attend
to, and not enough to support two families. While a citizen of St.
Louis and engaged in the real estate agenc