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the Second-Street cut, real estate south of Market Street was falling rapidly. And it was not only the giant proportions of the approaching luminary increasing in mathematical proportion; nay, the member of the returning party even discovered a second moon, a satellite of our earth hitherto unknown to astronomers. The officers of the Barbary Coast Survey, it is true, had, by an algebraic formula perfectly known to themselves, succeeded in influencing the perigee in a way to make the moon fall on England; but our esteemed brother Caxton, with a penstroke and a little printer's ink, removed the whole danger. Some pretend that the moon, having spent all her financial power in railroad tickets, was not able to reach England and had been precipitated into the Atlantic Ocean. This probably did happen to that second moon seen by the members of the Cliff House party, as this second moon is missing since that time. Now, imagine the disturbance of the moon suddenly arriving in this country with a

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cargo of undesirable immigrants, not one of them with a letter of introduction to Frank Pixley!

Thus the great Caxton saved the country; on another occasion he saved the planet. You must recollect that in the year A. D. 1865 a chemist had discovered a substance, otherwise useless, that would ignite the hydrogen of the ocean. Now, in itself a burning ocean would prove an assistance to the McKinley bill,, and, by cutting off import, greatly favor home industry; but, unfortunately, the fire would communicate to rivers and wells, and thereby prevent bathing, cleaning of bottles, painting in water-colors, and prove a great distress to our Fish Commissioners. Our Bohemian brother Caxton, whose watchful eye had espied the danger in time, offered from his own pocket an amount of millions that would have astonished even a Californian, as well as a corner drug-store, to the chemist to desist from his diabolical plan to set fire to the ocean; and as this malevolent

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chemist asked for more millions and two drug-stores, our brother Caxton threw him from the platform of a railroad-car passing Cape Horn, which feat he also executed by a small quantity of printer's ink.

I am sorry to say that our Bohemian brother Caxton did not succeed in saving the unfortunate miner who drank the water contained in a geode and became petrified and fossilized in a time of twenty minutes. But his publication of the event has gone far to warn the public against that most insidious drink-water.

What shall I say in praise of the powerful McCracken Bungletoe, alias Tommy Newcomb, who, in his great victory of mind over matter, left Mestayer under the table, and with one foot on the body of the slain warrior and the other in the spittoon, asked for another horn of whisky? Or the great Apache chief and ancient mariner, RearAdmiral Cremony? But the latter has a worthy successor in nautical lore in the inimitable Bromley, under whose flag I dared

to round Cape Horn so persistently that my head began to swim.

In regard to tactics on a more or less dry land, we have General Barnes, who, as the Leonidas of the nineteenth century, fought in that terrible Amador war.

Alas! we cannot deny that many of the old members are no more with us; some have paid their tribute to nature, some have reformed their morals. But that wellorganized army of young Bohemia which I see before me is a guarantee that the future will be like the past, and that a bright time is in store for old Bohemia.

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