California have in those days? What did it have?
Here was this great empire that—
I remember reading the Reverend Dr. Sieffer in his remarkable book—and say, there's a book that I want to recommend to you boys. It's all right to read a lot of fiction, and I guess I appreciate a rattling good story, say like a Western novel where the hero prevents this fellow from running off his boss's stock, as much as anybody; but if you're going to improve your mind—and what is after all more characteristic of American life than improving our minds?—and if you're going to improve your mind, what a fellow needs is real constructive and historical stuff.
And Reverend Sieffer—I can't remember just what he called his book, and fact is, busy like I am with all my business interests, I don't hardly get time enough to sit down and improve my mind like I'd like to, but it was a book about the Purposes of God as Shown in American History.
And the picture he gave of California in the days before it was combined with the main streams
