I asked her whether she thought the creature was simply trying to pay Bringham Young a visit, but had found her husband instead. Charlotte exhaled with affectionate exasperation, shook her head, and ran her hand softly down the side of my face as she walked past me to pick herbs for our supper—God knows how or where.

I would give a hundred lifetimes to again see the way her face rested against my side in the moonlight next to our open window; in those earliest days, I could watch her breathe all night and listen to the waters run.

We were only compelled to leave this house when I was elected as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention; it was not a position I sought, but rather one for which I was put forward simply by virtue of my legal experience and judgeship. Never would have I elected to leave that house!

The convention was in Monterey, where Charlotte and I had, as I mentioned, honeymooned; I refused to leave her behind and, truth be told, the land was yet too lawless to consider doing otherwise, though that line of reasoning never would have flown with dead-shot Charlotte. I sold the temporary relocation as a chance to revisit our honeymoon, but I knew full well what Charlotte saw: a return to the sea.

The trip was to be as temporary as the final document was to be long: at over 300 pages, the California Constitution is one of the longest in the world. During my first speech on the floor, I urged a model that hewed as closely as possible to the our fine, Federal model, but the proceedings were hijacked by those intent on mistrusting elected officials at every possible turn; I left that convention determined never to become one of their venal tribe!

I also left that convention a poorer man. In my haste to make my way down to Monterey with Charlotte, I enlisted my good friend, Sheriff McKinstry to ship a few trunks with what belongings we would not need immediately. All the clothing and home wares arrived without so much as a wrinkle or a scratch—but the final trunk we never saw again.

In it was just about everything I cherished, excepting my wife: all of my papers, a number of letters of marque, all of my journals, all of my books, $1,500 in coined gold and—most horribly—Charlotte's treasured little library of textbooks.

[He gazes off into the distance as a vein in his neck begins to pulse visibly.]

All of it: sunk at the bottom of the Carquinez Strait—or so I was told. The money was terrible enough to lose, but Charlotte...Charlotte no longer had her books.

[He drinks slowly, until he remembers his rhetorical purpose and regains momentum:]

Suffice it to say I forgot myself and overpacked.

Yet, the nature of this mistake is two-fold: on the one hand, I have a heightened understanding of the infernal powers of this temptation, given my leadership position on multiple journeys across the North American continent, and yet still fell victim to it; on the other, while I knew damn well the wisdom of my own advice and perhaps I fancied myself experienced enough to ignore it, I cannot fathom waiving the most basic of instructions a seasoned guide might have to offer on so perilous an undertaking. A greenhorn must know his hue!