ouldn't hold out
forever.

The Indians was always around, but we never minded them--always lookin'
in the windows.

General William G. Le Duc--1850, Ninety-two years old.

I arrived at St. Paul on the steamboat Dr. Franklin. Among the travelers
on board the boat were Mr. and Mrs. Lyman Dayton and a brother of
Goodhue, the Editor of the Pioneer Weekly Newspaper. The principal, if
not the only hotel at that time, was the Central, a frame building about
twenty-four by sixty feet, two stories kept by Robert Kenedy. It was
used as a meeting place for the legislature, court, and public offices,
until something better could be built. Here I found quarters, as did Mr.
and Mrs. Dayton.

A few days after my arrival, I was walking along the high bank of the
river in front of the Central House in conversation with a large robust
lumberman who had come out of the woods where he had been all winter
logging and was feeling very happy over his prospects. Suddenly he
stopped and looking down on the flowing waters of the Mississippi, he
exclaimed, "See those logs." A number of logs were coming down with the
current. "What mark is on them? My God, that is my mark!--the logs are
mine! My boom has broken! I am a ruined man." He went direct to the
hotel and died before sun down of cholera, the Doctor said. He was
hurriedly buried and there was a cholera panic in St. Paul. The next day
while walking in front of the hotel, Mrs. Dayton called from an open
window excitedly to me, "Come and help me quick. Mr. Baker has the
cholera!" (Mr. Baker was a boarder at the Central and a school teacher
at that time.) Mrs. Dayton was frightened and said she had given him all
the brandy she had and must have some more. I got more brandy and she
insisted on his taking it, altho' he was then drunk. He recovered next
day and I have never heard of a case of cholera in Minnesota since that
time.

I hired a little board shack about twelve by sixteen feet at the
Northeast corner of Third and Roberts Streets, St. Paul, and put out my
sign as Attorney and Counselor at Law, but soon discovered there was
little law business in St. Paul, not enough to sustain the lawyers
already there and more coming with every boat. My business did not pay
the monthly rent, $9.00, so I rented a large house on the southwest
corner and started a shop selling books and stationery, and in this
succeeded in making a living.

On the 22nd day of July '50, a number of citizens of St.