Return to San Francisco--Ship Amusements--Preparing for Lecturing
--Valuable Assistance Secured--My First Attempt--The Audience Carried
--"All's Well that Ends Well."
CHAPTER LXXIX.
Highwaymen--A Predicament--A Huge Joke--Farewell to California--At Home
Again--Great Changes. Moral.
APPENDIX.
A.--Brief Sketch of Mormon History
B.--The Mountain Meadows Massacre
C.--Concerning a Frightful Assassination that was never Consummated
CHAPTER I.
My brother had just been appointed Secretary of Nevada Territory--an
office of such majesty that it concentrated in itself the duties and
dignities of Treasurer, Comptroller, Secretary of State, and Acting
Governor in the Governor's absence. A salary of eighteen hundred dollars
a year and the title of "Mr. Secretary," gave to the great position an
air of wild and imposing grandeur. I was young and ignorant, and I
envied my brother. I coveted his distinction and his financial splendor,
but particularly and especially the long, strange journey he was going to
make, and the curious new world he was going to explore. He was going to
travel! I never had been away from home, and that word "travel" had a
seductive charm for me. Pretty soon he would be hundreds and hundreds of
miles away on the great plains and deserts, and among the mountains of
the Far West, and would see buffaloes and Indians, and prairie dogs, and
antelopes, and have all kinds of adventures, and may be get hanged or
scalped, and have ever such a fine time, and write home and tell us all
about it, and be a hero.
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