We were asked by the steward to put our names in this book, but as we were not a steamship, nor even a schooner, we hesitated. After luncheon our hospitable hosts showed us the house; it was vastly convenient, but we did not take it, not even for a week.
The busy and hard-working young lawyer had not forgotten his business. The case at which he worked several hours a day was this: A certain half-negro, half-Dane sea-captain named Leidesdorf had done so good a business between St. Thomas and San Francisco in the early forties that he had made money. He had the good-luck to be in San Francisco when gold was discovered, and came to own a piece of ground in the then small town which struck the fancy of one of the "Argonauts of '49." Sea-Captain Leidesdorf promised to sell this piece of land to Captain Folsom for a certain sum, and was paid that money, but he started home in his ship for St. Thomas before the transaction was completed, and died just before landing.
Hence confusion and New York lawyers. His old mother, Anna Maria Sparks, who could neither read nor write, demanded boxes of jewels and barrels of gold. The price had gone up every hour since Captain Folsom made the first treaty. Should she allow her son's great fortune to escape her? A shrewd old Danish lawyer, Judge Feddersen, said no. So poor Captain Folsom kept paying and paying, and other heirs sprang up. My husband had been twice to Santa Cruz before on this business; I only came in at the finish. Finally, one payment remained, and he said that I might see that; so he drove me up a hill to a humble shanty where sat a drunken Danish soldier on a three-legged stool awaiting his share, and it was paid to him — $20,000 in gold. He was not a Populist or a Silverite; he distrusted paper,
