I received yours of Septr 29 and Octr 2d a few days ago. I have been too much crowded since I left here for San Francisco, five days after [126] my arrival—to write you—having previously written four or five times. Meantime I have continued well, and have got along very smoothly with my business—that is with my personal responsibilities, but have been very much vexed with law business and the general ruinous condition of the estate, for which I am not responsible. I have got pretty good command of the machinery and shall soon knock something out of it or burst the boilers. It is not as hard to get control of it as I expected to find it, because, chiefly I don’t really have to take anybody else’s place, or get anybody else’s knowledge. There was nobody here in command—the acting Superintendent was a mere book-keeper, locum tenens pro tempore, and there was nobody here who knew much about the estate. The reason being that nobody had settled here. This sojourning habit of the people who are here is shown in their want of interest in the fixed qualities of the place. Nobody knows what the trees and plants are. They are all like ourselves—strangers. And the business has been managed under the same influence. In a month, there will not be a man of the old central administration left, yet I shall have discharged but one—and he an absentee. Nobody was fixed: all had plans more or less definite, for going somewhere else, and as they see that I don’t particularly need them, they go. I make it a favor to me that they stay as long as they do, yet of course, it gives a considerable advantage to me in having matters established in my own way, easily. Whether the mines can be made to pay handsomely, with labor at $3.50 a day, and all purchased materials to be hauled 85 miles over the plains, I don’t know. It don’t look any more promising than it did in New York, I must confess. But the estate has some great advantages and I don’t despair.

The Constitution is not advertised; the Golden City is, to leave Nov 3d from San F. I judge that the Constitution will be leaving Panama shortly after the 3d Jan’y and the Golden Age after the 13th and I should think if you will be quite ready by the latter part of December, you had better have enquiries made and arrange, according to the boat on the Atlantic side, so as to strike one of them. Mr Billings who left here a fortnight since with his wife (Miss Parmley) offered to do anything for you—and there is nobody better, except that having been very successful in the high times of California & kept it up well since, he has no idea of economizing expense anywhere. (It was characteristic of him that finding the barber’s chair was the most comfortable place on the steamer the last time he went East, he asked the barber how much he made during a trip, and immediately gave him the whole amount, and took possession of the chair for the trip, and the rest of the passengers went unshaved). Still tell him what you want and he will do it—especially in getting you the best ship & the best rooms in the ship. I still think two state rooms en suite, with six berths, would be best, paying second cabin fare for Bridget but giving her your spare berth, which I presume, under these circumstances [127]would not be charged for. That is you would pay five fares 1st cabin & one, second cabin, Bridget going to secd cabin table.

I don’t know that I can help you any further, except by sending you some money, which I will do in course of a week. Come when you find most convenient. If I am right in my calculation of the steamers sailing the next chance for the Constitution and Golden City, would be leaving New York early in Feby, which would bring you here at the best time of year. The sooner you come the better for me, but the later, the less discomfort you will have here. There seems to be nothing better than for you to take what you can get at the inn during the winter. The rooms are small, stove-heated, and the house not over-clean or quiet, but you would, I think, take up about all the second story, and so could live pretty much by ourselves. Mrs Pieper is still there and has the best rooms. She is not well. I think Pieper will rent a little house beforelong. The house changes hands this week—the French cook leaves—and it may possibly turn out a good deal worse than it is now, but I should think it nearly an even chance that it would be better—cleaner at least. After all, it’s about as good as Salisbury. It is possible we shall not be able to get the furniture up during the winter. If it were here before you arrived, I might fit up a couple of rooms or three—at the office—there are several unoccupied.

As to our final residence, I have rather tended since I last wrote to think that it would be best that we take a knoll at the head—South—of the Princeton plateau and make a triple establishment Ranch, Residence, Office. I’ve seen a pretty good place for it there—with the new village between us and the Princeton mines, and the dusty roads well off to right and left. It is airy and I should have fewer steps to meet all demands, on an average, and be more with you, than under any other arrangment. It would also be the least expensive for us and the estate, and that is of increasing importance in my mind.

I shall want very much to get in new, decent, people with families, and to break up some of the present settlements and squatter-ations. There’s a lot of Italians here in the valley, who seem to have adopted the old California habits and with odd Yankees, Southerners and Mexicans—none really settled here—keep up the old customs—gambling, rowing, yelling and fighting. There’s a big row with yells and pistol-shots going on now. There’s a grave yard back of the inn, with twenty or thirty graves. “There’s only one man in that lot that didn’t die a natural death—in his boots.” I would prefer to have you live somewhere else than here, as soon as convenient, and would like to have some neighbors that you wouldn’t be afraid of letting the children get among. I think we can bring it about in course of the year. There are a good many elements that would rapidly crystallize upon a healthy centre. For that reason we should avoid the present centres and yet not put ourselves in an eccentric position.

The two most vexatious circumstances are that in every place [128]which would be otherwise tempting the ground is rocky and stoney and the least disreputable trees have been cut off. It angers me to see how all the tolerable, big trees have been wasted—and still are being wasted, though I am checking it. The trees don’t look nearly as badly to me, as they did at first. I don’t know why, but I see considerable beauty in them, and, in the shrubs especially, great promise for the spring. Indeed, the spring must be glorious here—spring and early summer. I want to know more about the plants, and hope you may bring some information, for I can’t find anyone here, who knows one from another. You will find an ample field in which to exercise your mineral-mania, if it lasts. My table is loaded with quartz. Granite & slate are jammed together in the valley and the quartz is squeezen through fissures of both. I see serpentine ledges too, I think.

Come well-prepared to ride in the dust and among briars. Beyond them, it is fine. The moon-lit mountains are superb, and there is no malaria.

X Private

It is not at all pleasant to me, I must say, to think of the children being with Miss Errington on Staten Island. She will, it strikes me, see enough of them, and they of her after you get off, while there are those, whose life is really embittered for want of seeing more of them.

I would rather you staid six months longer than not accomplish what I understood to be your determination at Hartford. Six months is but little between 35 & 45—it is almost a life-time in importance between 70 & 80. It is the saddest thing in my life that I have to disappoint such appeals as this enclosed. At the same time I don’t think I have any right to urge you to regard them, and don’t want you to understand or feel that I do so, or intend to do so. But refraining from that, I do ask everything else that is possible, without bringing upon you the feeling that I am unkind. You may think father so, but surely you can bear that for a few weeks.

Things are worse here than I dare say to anybody but you—and to you with a caution. There is not a mine on the estate that is honestly paying expenses. The $60,000 a month profit of last spring was partly a piece of good luck in one of the mines & a good deal, throwing every expense possible into the future & making no preparations for the future.

[129]

The stock was at 45 at last accounts. If that was its legitimate price, when the real facts are known—which I am now reporting—it should fall much lower. Yet I should think the property worth over 45—to keep. I think it an even chance that in five years we get our 30,000 dollars out of it.