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Show 8 PERSONAL ADVENTURES investment, his whole career having been marked by one uninterrupted series of failures and mishaps. Desponding in temperament, and, when under the influence of his rnorbid fancies, querulous as an old 'voman, his foibles and eccentricities, combined with the difficulty he experienced in expressing himself in English, afforded infinite amusement to those who, gifted with less good nature than a keen perception of the ridiculous, rendered him the incessant butt of their uno·enerous 0 witticisms. · Having attempted to sketch the Swede, the portrait would be incomplete without its attendant shadow, Mr. Eugene O'Reilly, a good-hearted fellow in the n1ain, but, like the generality of his countrymen, somewhat addicted to the perpetration of practical jokes -in a word, the Mickey Free of our company. Possessed of an inimitable talent for mimicry, the peculiarities of Wettermark acquired an additional raciness in the imitations of the Irishman, who seemed to hang upon his every accent, and to make him IN CALIFORNIA. 9 the one great study of his life. It is iinpossible to describe the irresistible effect of the rnanner in which, in the Swede's imperfect English and inflated style of reasoning, he represented him as attempting to reconcile the inconsistency of his admiration for the despotic institutions of Germany with his service of a republic-an anomaly, by the by, not unfrequently to be witnessed now-a-days in men of much greater celebrity than poor "r ettermark. "' O'Reilly was not without his own 'veaknesses, the most prominent and inconvenient of which was a rather exaggerated estimate of his vocal powers. Without a note in his voice that coulq be strained into the execution of the simplest air, and without the slightest ear for rnusic, he was perpetually inflicting upon us his prirnitive notions of melody. Fie accepted the roar of laughter with which these displays 'vere usually received, as a testirnony of the high degree of appreciation in which we held them; and, indeed, if he had been susceptible enough to divine the truth, I ques- B5 |