“Hello, Andy! Bet you never seen a name with so many s’s in it,” said the hotelkeeper.
“Oh yes, I have!” said Andy. “‘Ass!’”
Any intellectual job—of which there were few—was given to me. I was called “Boston,” and was supposed to have a great amount of book learning, so it was my extreme pleasure to be the clerk of the polls at a Presidential election in Strawberry Valley. There were seven voters, and six voted early. They were Republicans. After casting their ballots, they stationed themselves at different positions, one hundred feet from the polls, and, cocking their Winchesters, sat there all day. The one Democrat rotated about that voting place until the sun had fairly set, but it was no use; he was not allowed to vote. I was forced to turn in a unanimous majority for Rutherford B. Hayes.
One Sunday there was nothing to do. I was loafing around the gateway in my working clothes when the stage arrived. I noticed that the driver looked cross. The passenger—“a dam’ Britisher”—who sat on the seat beside him, had evidently “got his goat,” for, contrary to his usual habit, he unstrapped the trunk from the back and dropped it into the dust of the road. The Englishman, looking hopelessly around, spied me, and said in the manner he obviously kept for service:
“My good fellow, give me a hand with this luggage?”
I was perfectly willing, so I hoisted it on my shoulder and carried it upstairs, where he fished in his pocket and handed me a quarter. To give a tip in California in those days was an insult, but I was an Easterner and it only amused me to take it and thank him in a respectful manner. After staying long enough to try all his British contraptions for hunting and fishing (with no result), he gave up in despair when the salmon refused to rise to a fly, but could be caught in myriads with the old-fashioned bait—their own eggs—and left, seeming to feel a personal injury.
Some time later I went to San Francisco to be at one of the celebrations of the Harvard Club, when who should sit next me at dinner but our Englishman. I had an important part in the evening’s doings and he asked my name, saying he was Sir Rose Price. Then giving me a searching glance, he said:
“I’ve met you before some place? In town?” To an Englishman, “town” is London.
I said, “No, I met you in Siskiyou County, in the north of the state.”
“Oh, but you are mistaken. I met no gentlemen there.”