which to lay my head, I used to pray to God, and I always had enough to eat. That is what we do now in this time of trial. The world is against us, but we trust in God."

"And keep our powder dry," I said, thinking of the skill with which the weak points in the armour of the United States Legislature had been picked out for attack.

"Yes; that is God's will," the President answered, in the grave, quiet tones he had spoken throughout. "We shall do our best, and never give up the fight as long as a man remains among us. But it will all be His direction, and with the consciousness that we are pleasing Him.

I have throughout given the President's views in his own words; but no description could convey a just idea of the quiet assurance and tone of simple confidence with which they were spoken. This Westmoreland yeoman evidently has faith of a kind that removes mountains; and as it is in measure shared by all his people, the final struggle with Mormonism, upon which the United States are bent, is likely to prove a tough one.

CHAPTER IX.

BY THE GOLDEN GATE.

GRAPES at fivepence a pound are an early and satisfactory indication that we have left the bare brown Sierras behind us, and have reached a valley land flowing with milk and honey. Honey is mentioned here only because it belongs to the quotation. I suppose it is made somewhere in the States, but I have not met with it on any table, nor anywhere seen a beehive. But milk is abundant, and of a quality unknown in London. At the roadside station where grapes at fivepence a pound were dispensed by a benevolent negro wearing a snowy-white apron, milk stood in jugs on a table in company with most excellent custard and apple-tarts, large, flat, and round. The milk baving been standing half an hour there was an inch of thick cream at the top, and what followed did not seem to have suffered from this concentration. Five

pence a glass was the price of the milk, but that had evidently less reference to its intrinsic value than to the habitude in this neighbourhood of regarding ten cents as the lowest denomination of coin in which it is possible to deal. Everything cost ten cents-the grapes by the pound, the custard and apple-pie by the slice, and the milk by the glass. In England fivepence for a glass of milk taken in a country place might be regarded as dear; but in a lordly California it was really a condescension on the part of the benevolent negro and his family to take so small a coin. Two days later in San Francisco one and eightpence was demanded and promptly paid for two glasses of thin milk and two half-rolls of plain bread.

In truth, the United States is the dearest country in the world to travel in. I have made a careful computation, and find that a dollar, nominally valued at four shillings, will buy of the necessaries and luxuries of life exactly as much as a shilling will in England. Money is easily made here, wages are high, profits are large, and the country is full of men grown suddenly rich. A dollar here or there is a matter not worth the expenditure of time for its consideration.

It is a broad, significant fact that a fivecent piece, value twopence-halfpenny, is

practically the lowest coin current in the States, and that it will sometimes buy for you what a penny would bring in a more effete country. There are, of course, cents; but except to buy stamps, and in New York an evening paper, you might as well be without them. Where the currency practically begins in everyday life is with the quarter, value one shilling. With these liberally dispensed on the slightest provocation one can get along comfortably through the little needs and services of the day.

Last night, strolling about the town, I stopped to hear a street hawker, who with leathern lungs and considerable humour was disposing of his wares. He was selling a parcel of plated jewellery and a pack of cards, the price being half a dollar. During the time I stood by he found at least twenty customers. No hawker in his senses would get up in the streets of London, or any other large English town, and attempt to sell things which he valued at two shillings. Sixpence would be a pretty high figure for such an audience as he would gather, and a penny a still more popular sum. Yet here in this Californian crowd two shillings were handed up almost as rapidly as he could pocket them. This is all very well for the Californians, but

for slow-witted Englishmen a too rapid succession of experiences is apt to stun.

An English gentleman in the city took his wife for a walk in the Chinese quarter. In a neat little cafe the lady drank a cup of tea, for which one dollar was demanded. After this the gentleman thought he would have his hair cut. On returning to his hotel he sent for the barber, who cut his hair, shaved, shampooed him, and charged him two dollars and a half! It is true that in this case the gentleman was what the late Mr. G. P. R. James was wont to call "a belted earl." But making due allowance for that fact, ten and sixpence for cutting and shaving seems dear.

San Francisco has sown its wild oats of '49, and is now one of the most staid cities in the States. The newspapers are quite tame as compared with the smaller sheets published east. For days, and even weeks, there has been no shooting, nor even any "holding up." On the day of my arrival I had what promised to be an opportunity of being present at a shooting match, a domestic institution which had hitherto eluded personal observation. Like Mr. Charles Russell, who in his journeying over the States has been "just outside" of four railway accidents, I have been just too soon or too late for shootings, whether retail in