Not long after coming we started a public library. Mother and I covered all the books, this being considered an economical necessity. Somewhat later Arcata formed a debating society that was really a helpful influence. It engaged quite a wide range of membership, and we discussed almost everything. Some of our members were fluent of speech from long participation in Methodist experience meetings. Others were self-trained even to pronunciation. One man of good mind, always said "hereditary." He had read French history and often referred to the Gridironists of France. I have an idea he was the original of the man whom Bret Harte made refer to the Greek hero as "old Ashheels." Our meetings were open, and among the visitors I recall a clerk of a commander in the Indian war. He afterwards became lieutenant-governor of the state, and later a senator from Nevada—John P. Jones.
An especial pleasure were the thoroughness and zest with which we celebrated the Fourth of July. The grown-ups did well in the daylight hours, when the procession, the oration, and the reading of the Declaration were in order; but with the shades of night the fireworks would have been inadequate but for the activity of the boys. The town was built around a handsome plaza, probably copied from Sonoma as an incident of the Wood sojourn. On the highest point in the center a fine flagstaff one hundred and twenty feet high was proudly crowned by a liberty-cap. This elevated plateau was the field of our display. On a spot not too near the flagstaff we planned for a spectacular center of flame. During the day we gathered material for an enormous bonfire. Huge casks formed the base and inflammable material of all kinds reached high in the air. At dark we fired the pile. But the chief interest was centered in hundreds of balls of twine, soaked in camphene, which we lighted and threw rapidly from hand to hand all over the plaza. We could not hold on to them long, but we didn't need to. They came flying from every direction and were caught from the ground and sent back before they had a chance to burn. The noise and excitement can be easily imagined. Blackened and weary boys kept it up till the bonfire was out and the balls had grown too small to pick up. Nothing interfered with our celebrations. When the Indians were "bad" we forsook the redwoods and built our speaker's stand and lunch tables and benches out in the open beyond firing distance.
Our garden was quite creditable. Vegetables were plentiful and my flower-beds, though formal, were pleasing. Stock-raising was very interesting. One year I had the satisfaction of breaking three heifers and raising their calves. My brother showed more enterprise, for he induced a plump young mother of the herd to allow him to ride her when he drove the rest to pasture.
Upon our arrival in Uniontown we found the only church was the Methodist. We at once attended, and I joined the Sunday-school. My teacher was a periodically reformed boatman. When he fell from grace he was taken in hand by the Sons of Temperance, which I had also joined. "Morning Star Division, No. 106," was never short of material to work on. My first editorial experience was on its spicy little written journal. I went through the chairs and became "Worthy Patriarch" while still a boy. The church was mostly served by first-termers, not especially inspiring. I recall one good man who seemed to have no other qualification for the office. He frankly admitted that he had worked in a mill and in a lumber-yard, and said he liked preaching "better than anything he'd ever been at." He was very sincere and honest. He had a uniform lead in prayer: "O Lord, we thank thee that it is as well with us as what it is." The sentiment was admirable, but somehow the manner grated. When the presiding elder came around we had a relief. He was wide-awake and witty. One night he read the passage of Scripture where they all began with one accord to make excuses. One said: "I have married a wife and cannot come." The elder, looking up, said, "Why didn't the pesky fool bring her with him?"
In the process of time the Presbyterians started a church, and I went there; swept out, trimmed the lamps, and sang in the choir. The preacher was an educated man, and out of the pulpit was kind and reasonable; but he persisted that "Good deeds were but as filthy rags." I didn't believe it and I didn't like it. The staid pastor had but little recreation, and I am afraid I was always glad that Ulrica Schumacher, the frisky sister of the gunsmith, almost always beat him at chess.
He was succeeded by a man I loved, and I wonder I did not join his church. We were good friends and used to go out trout-fishing together. He was a delightful man, but when he was in the pulpit he shrank and shriveled. The danger of Presbyterianism passed when he expressed his doubt whether it would be best for my mother to partake of communion, as she had all her life in the Unitarian church. She was willing, but waited his approval. My mother was the most saintly of women, absolutely unselfish and self-sacrificing, and it shocked me that any belief or lack of belief should exclude her from a Christian communion.
When my father, in one of his numerous trades, bought out the only tinshop and put me in charge he changed my life and endangered my disposition. The tinsmith left the county and I was left with the tools and the material, the only tinsmith in Humboldt County. How I struggled and bungled! I could make stovepipe by the mile, but it was a long time before I could double-seam a copper bottom onto a tin wash-boiler. I lived to construct quite a decent traveling oilcan for a Eureka sawmill, but such triumphs come through mental anguish and burned fingers. No doubt the experience extended my desultory education.
The taking over of the tinshop was doubly disappointing, since I really wanted to go into the office of the Northern Californian and become a printer and journalist. That job I turned over to Bret Harte, who was clever and cultivated, but had not yet "caught on." Leon Chevret, the French hotelkeeper, said of him to a lawyer of his acquaintance, "Bret Harte, he have the Napoleonic nose, the nose of genius; also, like many of you professional men, his debts trouble him very little."
There were many interesting characters among the residents of the town and county. At times there came to play the violin at our dances one Seth Kinman, a buckskin-clad hunter. He became nationally famous when he fashioned and presented elkhorn chairs to Buchanan and several succeeding Presidents. They were ingenious and beautiful, and he himself was most picturesque.
One of our originals was a shiftless and merry Iowan to whose name was added by courtesy the prefix "Dr." He had a small farm in the outskirts. Gates hung from a single hinge and nothing was kept in repair. He preferred to use his time in persuading nature to joke. A single cucumber grown into a glass bottle till it could not get out was worth more than a salable crop, and a single cock whose comb had grown around an inserted pullet breastbone, until he seemed the precursor of a new breed of horned roosters, was better than much poultry. He reached his highest fame in the cure of his afflicted wife. She languished in bed and he diagnosed her illness as resulting from the fact that she was "hidebound." His house he had never had time to complete. The rafters were unobstructed by ceiling, so she was favorably situated for treatment. He fixed a lasso under her arms, threw the end around a rafter, and proceeded to loosen her refractory hide.