summer breeze on both sides. During the principal part of the year we are engaged in the various pursuits of literature, art, science, agriculture, commerce, law, and the contemplation of the heavenly bodies. Our distinguished president belongs to the bench-a position to which he does great credit. Although profoundly versed in the intricacies of the judiciary, he is by no means ignorant of music and polite literaHe has a fine eye for scenery, and generally a good appetite after a long day's journey. On every subject he is thoroughly genial and entertaining; abounding in conversational resources, always in a pleasant humor, and ever ready to contribute to the happiness of others. Long life to his Honor the Judge! There are few better men in this world-certainly few who could not be better spared.

ture.

The bar is also honorably represented in our Association. We have among us several very respectable lawyers, in whose general good conduct we take considerable pride. Not one of them has ever been known to appropriate the blankets, saddle, bridle, spurs, or boots of any other member to his own use; and I do not hesitate to say that, in any case not involving an additional title to my property in Oakland, I would as soon trust in the honor of any of these gentlemen as in that of any other class, not excepting Collectors of Customs, Members of Congress, and Senators of the United States.

The only physician attached to our party is our cook, one Dr. CAMPBELL, a very worthy personage of African descent. In the art of preparing prescriptions of fish-chowder, broiled steaks, slap-jacks, and puddings, I defy any medical man in existence to compete with Doctor Campbell. The great beauty of his system is that he invariably cures every body, and has never been known to charge an extravagant price for writing illegible Latin. His pills of chopped venison, mashed potatoes, and onions, rolled in the gravy, and covered with a nicelybrowned coating of flour, are the very best dinner pills ever invented. I have known them to

bring men to life who could not possibly have existed for fifteen minutes longer without perishing of hunger. Apart from the color of his skin-which must have been very nearly black originally, but which, by long accumulations of grease, smoke, and soot, aided by exposure to the weather, has become somewhat piebald-the Doctor is not, strictly speaking, a handsome man; nor is his costume calculated to improve the general effect of his figure. The great importance of the art which he professes, and in which his soul is wrapped, has given something of a grave cast to his features, naturally not very symmetrical; and constant stooping over pots, pans, and kettles, together with a chronic "rheumatiz," so stiffened his joints, that there is but one left of which he can make any particular use, and that is at the extremity of his back-bone. The Doctor is also afflicted with a "misery in the head," the exact nature of which I have never been able to ascertain. It may be constitutional, or the effects of accidentprobably a contusion of the brain, caused by some brilliant idea that struck him in early youth on the subject of his great future Mission in the culinary line. Every morning when he gets up he is only "tolerable, thank God!" The "rheumatiz" troubles his bones, and the "misery" is in his head; but when he gets the fire under full headway, and the pots, pans, and kettles bubbling, fizzing, and steaming, a trifling dose from the blue keg sets him all right; the "rheumatiz" and the "misery" are forgotten; a genial smile irradiates his countenance, his dusky skin glistens, and he hobbles around from pot to kettle, and from kettle to frying-pan, stirring up the savory messes, mumbling quaint anecdotes, or humming over the plantation melodies of his early youth, in a manner highly instructive and entertaining. By-and-by all is ready except a pot of refractory potatoes that will not get done. The Doctor stirs them, rakes the coals under them, piles on another stick or two of wood, gives them another stir, and then, in a voice of gravity becoming the importance

life-long and hazardous explorations from the cupboard to the kitchen, from the hen-yard to the frying-pan, from the cooking-stove to the table. Others, at the close of day, wrap the drapery of their couch around them and lie down to pleasant dreams. Not so Tom. More indefatigable than the midnight astronomer, who peers at the stars through monster telescopes, he rises in the dead of night, drags forth his pocket-stove, strikes a light and cooks a snipe.

In camp he is the best of companions-ever jolly in the midst of afflictions. It is a greater pleasure to see him starve on rounds of venison, baked deer's heads, ribs of elk, and marrowed toast, than to see other men feed. He luxuriates in the dirt, smoke, and savory odor of camp. His face beams with good-nature and grease; his voice assumes an oleaginous unction; he is prolific in anecdotes of by-gone dinners, and swells with a surplus of genial humanity and broiled venison. Long life to Tom Fry! Surely he will never stop living while his appetite lasts. On the sad day when it may please Providence to knock him into pie, he will at least be rid of one affliction-never more suffer from hunger or thirst. Should it be his misfortune to fall into evil hands, poor fellow, which all the saints forbid! I trust he may be properly done up in batter, with a sprinkling of nutmeg. If he should be called for at an untimely hour, it will certainly be by the ghost of a fat capon.

As many incomprehensible things happen in the course of our annual expeditions, it has become necessary to enlist in the service a gentleman of a metaphysical turn of mind-one Mr. PHIL WILKINS, who is a famous hand at abstruse

questions. I think his brain must be constructed somewhat in the fashion of a cobweb, it possesses such an extraordinary faculty for catching at the various troublesome problems that buzz around the circle of humanity. Combined with this trait, his propensity for argument is perfectly incorrigible; and, indeed, now while I write, I am haunted by a fear that he will suddenly appear before me, and not only dispute every word I say, but prove that words are merely arbitrary signs, possessing intrinsically no more meaning than sticks and stones. It is a favorite theory of his, that, if it were not for the sake of commerce, we might as well talk to one another by means of punches and blows as by oral or written signs-a fact which I am not at all prepared to dispute. I have no doubt that, upon entering the world, Mr. Phil Wilkins must have questioned the right of mankind to propagate the human species; and that, being unable to obtain a satisfactory solution of his proposition, he set to work and devoted his infancy to the grand question of sleep. When he woke up, in the due course of years, it is supposed that he astonished and confounded his nurse by demanding to be informed-"What, after all, is sleep?" For the last thirty years of his life he has given himself completely up to logical analysis. He considers the mysteries of nature and creation generally in a philosophical point of view. When he has arrived at that point, however, various others present themselves, like the points of the Rocky Mountains, dim in the distance, and upon each he becomes lost in a fog of argument. He arrives at a conclusion that there is considerable doubt whether there is such a thing as a conclusion, and concludes not to conclude, but to argue the point in a different aspect, and show that, after all, points are no points. When men of this genius, as Sir Richard Steele observes, "are pretty far gone in learning, they will put you to prove that snow is white, and when you are upon that topic can say that there is really no such thing as color in nature." And what is Nature? Upon that point there has been a great diversity of opinions from the days of Plato and Aristotle down to the days of our excellent friend Phil Wilkins; but he is learned in them all, and can take all sides of the question, and defeat his opponent upon any. He was never yet known to be convinced. Truth will not convince him, for therein arises a question to his speculative mind as to the exact nature of truth. Is it Perfection, or is it the fountain of Perfection? Is it the negative of Error, or is it the positive of Actuality? All these matters must be duly weighed and considered; and he will weigh and consider them all night long-destroying your rest, filling your brain with dreadful difficulties which you never can get over, answering the most timid suggestion by a flood of argument on the opposite side, and maintaining what you dare not dispute with all the tenacity of an advocate at law. When you avow that you are convinced, and beg for quarter, he turns upon you like Cap