TO OAKLAND,
quite a nice town then—now a great city. My brother had told me of an old friend of his over there, Judge McKee, and I called on him. I found him to be an intense Southerner. His wife was a Miss Davis, from Mississippi, a kinswoman of Jeff Davis, afterwards President of the Confederacy. It so happened that there was to be a gathering of young people at his house that night and they were all Southern people. Of course I was not slow to accept an invitation to remain over. Such a company of fire-eating Southerners I had no idea could be gotten together in California. All the talk was about secession. All the songs were of the South. I heard Dixie for the first time. I had been boarding with a New Bedford Yankee—an abolitionist, a South hater. It required only a hint on the part of my new friends to make a great change in my living. I went to Oakland College, selected a room, and two days later I was out of the great city and over the bay where every week I could visit my Southern friends and talk "secesh." The more we talked, of course, the madder I got and when the war broke out a few weeks later, the spirit of rebellion was hot within me. It was a time of great excitement and great danger. On a Friday night I went over to the city. The next morning as I was dressing, I thought I heard an unusual tone in the voices of the newsboys and I heard excited voices on the street and in the hotel. When I reached the sidewalk I heard the cry: "Here's the Morning Call! All about the great battle of Bull Run." "Federal troops falling back on Washington, pursued by the Rebel army. Rebel army marching on the Capital." My first impulse was to shout: