With the close of 1850, the two years in which I had expected to make $100,000 and return home to relieve my family and resume my studies expired. So far from accomplishing my object, I not only had made noth ing, but I was several thousand dollars in debt. I began to get discouraged. To be sure, I was not yet 25 years old and having a good constitution I was likely to have time enough to repair my mistakes and come out all right if I could only get a proper start_My letters from home continued as frequent, as loving and solicitous for my welfare ... as they could pos sibly be; . . . though I returned their love with interest, I had found the world so totally different from what I had expected, and myself so incon gruous with every other phase of humanity_I considered myself a fraud and a mistake, incapable of achieving success in anything. . . . For weeks together, I had not a dollar in my pocket. I had no room of my own, but slept by permission on a table in a friend's loft, with my old overcoat for a pillow and my blankets for bedding. I boarded on credit for six weeks, at six successive restaurants, none of whom I then paid, though intending to do so when able; but before that time, the fire came and destroyed some of them.38 One day I found a forgotten balance due the old firm at a bank amounting to $7.16. What a God-send that seemed to me! ... Four months of this wretched existence did I endure, finding nothing to do, and moping about, discouraged, blue and despondent. At last, in early May, I decided to try the mines once more. My friend, Dr. Galen Burdell, lent me $25 to pay my passage on the steamer West Point to Marysville, on my way to the Yuba River. On the passage I was accosted by an exceed ingly green young Vermonter by name George Howe, of Woodstock. He was a perambulating interrogation point, and finding out who I was, he stuck to me forthwith closer than a brother. He had just been admitted to the bar of Vermont, and had married the sister of the Willards, who kept the famous Willard's Hotel in Washington, D. C. Finding himself $800 in debt he had come to California to make just that sum and therewith to return to his wife and profession. He carried out his programme within two years, though the first one was lost, like many another in getting a foot hold. As he was evidently an honest, hard-working fellow, we joined hands at once in agreeing to work together in the mines. Before reaching Marys ville, we had taken two more young men into our mess. One of these was John P. Hale Wentworth, a nephew of the former Senator John P. Hale, of New Hampshire. Wentworth also proved a good man, though it took