If so far as the golden Californian land this book of mine shall reach, it may, perchance, fall into the hands of some who, from their number, can select the veritable hero, the “Cousin Will” of my story. If so, I would ask them to think as leniently² as possible of his faults, herein recorded, for the moustached Will of California, whose generous conduct wins the love of all, is hardly the same wild, mischievous³ boy, who once kept our home in a perpetual state of excitement.

 

The tears were scarcely yet dried, which he had shed over his mother’s coffin⁴, when he came to us, and in one corner of his green, oval trunk, there lay a tress of soft brown hair, which he had severed⁵ from that mother’s head. He was the son of my mother’s only sister, who, on her death-bed had committed him to the guardianship⁶ of my father, asking him to deal gently with her wayward boy, for beneath his faulty exterior⁷ there lay a mine of excellence⁸, which naught⁹ save words of love could fathom¹⁰.

 

Without meaning to be so, perhaps, my father was a stern reserved man, never seeking the confidence of his children whose real characters he did not understand. It is true he loved us—provided for all our wants, and, as far as possible, strove to make us what the children of a New England 40Presbyterian deacon ought to be; but he seldom petted us, and if Carrie, with her sunny face and chestnut¹¹ curls, sometimes stole up behind him and twined her

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