when the Territory of California was admitted as a State. A procession was formed, in which I participated at the side of a gentleman to whom I was not introduced. Silently we walked on, influenced and absorbed by the significance of the historical moment, when my companion abruptly remarked: "It's a long time that I have not seen you." I was astonished and answered: "I never saw you all my lifetime." "And is not that long enough?" retorted my companion in the most mellifluous accents of green Erin. That day we got very much. acquainted.

The third experience was in the rooms of the Vigilance Committee, where we discussed the case of Mr. Stuart. The meeting was addressed by Jim Dows, and I recollect distinctly the words: "Gentlemen, to hang a man is a temporary and transitory matter, but the principles which we represent here are eternal."

After these experiences I considered myself sufficiently acclimatized. I became a

citizen and fervent admirer of Squibob, whose untimely end I have regretted for years, until, being introduced into the Bohemian Club by Mr. Bowman and Tommy Newcomb, I discovered the place where Squibob's ghost is still walking.

My Bohemian friends, the fight for existence has not always been to me an easy matter. We all have had times when care for material things overpowered us, when we became disgusted by unprovoked jealousies. When those cares of the outer material world became discouraging I withdrew to ideal Bohemia. But Bohemia was not only to me an asylum against material cares; it was also a shrine consecrated to literature, from where new vistas opened into the realms of the bold, original American humor, so well represented inside these walls, and outside by men like Mark Twain, Bill Nye, and many others of world-wide fame. I received here new conceptions of many things; and if I count a few triumphs in literature, I owe them to Bohemian conver

sations, to ideas which I imbibed (with other things) in the halls of this institution.

THE SKELETON IN ARMOR.

I ALWAYS was touched to my very heart by the beautiful lines written by Longfellow on "The Skeleton in Armor." I felt a burning desire to know more about the skeleton. I began to study the Iceland Eddas, the Saemundur, and the Snorri Sturleson Edda, the most ancient numbers of the Jolly Giant, and other reliable documents of history. In the course of this reading I succeeded in diverting the subject from all romance and establishing the following historical facts.

Many thousand years ago, when the giant elk was not fossil, but trod in flesh. and blood the mossy bogs of ancient Ireland, when the mastodon and the rhinoceros tichorrhinus roamed through the majestic primeval forests of sauerkraut that then

covered all northern Europe, there, on a beautiful site, embellished by a meridian cutting the coast line of the Baltic, lived a pious knight named Hans Meyer. Like all the knights of the period, Hans Meyer was in love, and, according to the enthusiastic custom of the country, killed off all the dear relations of his lady love. By an unaccountable neglect he omitted to kill his motherin-law, and this proved to be the beginning of a long series of misfortunes.

The Baltic hero grew restless. He wanted to travel far away from his home into distant climes where there were no mothers-in-law. He wanted to emigrate and settle in the East Indies, where a wise law ordered widows to be burned, and decimated in this judicious way the contingent of elderly ladies. The simple-minded but thoughtful hero foresaw that he might go around the Cape of Good Hope, or cross the Isthmus of Suez with the India mail. Either way he would most necessarily want funds. To obtain them, he imitated the