Excerpt: One June morning, when I was a boy, Captain Eben Latham came to our house, and the first gossip he unloaded was, that ?them stories about finding gold in Californy was all true.? It was ?wash day? and our folks and some of the neighbors were gathered in the ?wash house? while the colored help soused her fat black arms in the suds of the wash tub. That was the first report I heard from Cal...