Letter the Eighth
Life and Characters at Indian Bar
From our Log Cabin, Indian Bar,
October 20, 1851.
Having seen me, dear M., safely enthroned in my beautiful log palace with its outer walls all tapestried with moss, perhaps you would like a description of the coronation-dinner!
You must know that "Ned," the Paganini of the Humboldt, (who, by the way, is almost an historic, or, better perhaps, naval, character, inasmuch as he was cook on board of the Somers when her captain performed his little tragedy, to the horror of an entire nation,) had been in such a state of ecstasy ever since he had heard of the promised advent of Mrs. ——, that his proprietors, as Ned grandly calls them, had serious fears of being compelled to strait-jacket him.