Some one proposed Vallew's name as a candidate for the Legislature. He
rose to his feet with a clouded face, and in an angry voice said:
"Mr. President, I am surprised and mortified. I have lived in this
county more than seven years, and I have never had any difficulty with
my neighbors. I did not know that I had an enemy in the world. What have
I done, that it should be proposed to send me to the Legislature? What
reason has anybody to think I am that sort of a man? To think I should
have come to this! To propose to send me to the Legislature, when it is
a notorious fact that you have never sent a man thither from this county
who did not come back morally and pecuniarily ruined!"
The crowd saw the point, and roared with laughter, Coffroth, who had
served in the previous session, joining heartily in the merriment.
Vallew was excused.
Coffroth grew fatter and jollier; his strong intellect struggled against
increasing sensual tendencies. What the issue might have been, I know
not. He died suddenly, and his destiny was transferred to another
sphere. So there dropped out of California-life a partisan without
bitterness, a satirist without malice, a wit without a sting, the
jolliest, freest, readiest man that ever faced a California audience on
the hustings--the typical politician of California.
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