tion being called to the advantages of a cheap and efficient substitute for bone-black in discoloring sugar liquids, he after many experiments perfected and patented the process now universally used in sugar refineries, of hydrated alumina. In connection with the sale and employment of this patent he visited the principal sugar refineries in the United States and Cuba.

Visiting New York the following year, on official business from California, he resigned his position in Washington, and accepted that of Deputy Secretary of State of New York, which in turn he resigned in December, 1859, and returned by the Southern Overland Route to San Francisco to carry out an enterprise which he had long had in contemplation-building street railroads. At the session of the Legislature of 1861, the bill incorporating the "North Beach and Mission Railroad," which he had proposed, was introduced; and at once encountered the venomous opposition of rival companies, lobby members and interested parties in San Francisco. The war was virulent and bitter. The progress of the bill was fought at every step, its passage impeded in each branch of the Legislature, and the most strenuous efforts made to obtain the Executive veto. It was urged that the project was a mere swindling job, and would be no accommodation to the traveling public. Signatures to petitions against the railroad, were industriously hunted up by agents hired to manufacture opinion hostile to the "infamous Tucker Bill." To meet objections raised against the road through so narrow a street as Kearny, he drew up, and caused to be offered, a bill providing for the widening of that street. This proposition, now so successfully consummated, brought upon his head anew the anathemas of the property holders along the route. though opposed and discouraged by those who should have aided him, he persevered, finally organizing and building the now most prosperous railroad in the city-its passenger traffic far exceeding that of any other, thus proving it to have been a work of the first public utility.

Al

About this time his health failing him, Dr. Tucker took the position of Surgeon on the Nicaragua Steamship

line. Visiting New York again in 1863, he married the lady to whom he had become engaged while in Havana, three years before-the daughter of Albert Havemeyer Esq., of New York, and returned to California. Ilaving some mining interests on the Comstock vein, he went to Virginia City, Nevada, and being offered the care of the hospital at that place, remained and entered into a large and lucrative practice, holding at different times the positions of Physician to the State Insane Asylum, Coroner of Storey County, and City and County Physician of Virginia. Here, when cutting and shooting were daily occurences, he performed many bold and successful surgical operations. During the war, as Commissioned Assistant Surgeon U. S. A. at that post, he had charge of the Barrack hospital and examination of recruits, and always has been, in act and word, an undeviating friend to the Union.

In the spring of 1865, with his family he left Virginia City and passed the summer in the East. Shortly after his return to San Francisco the ensuing fall, he was appointed by President Johnson, Surgeon of the U. S. Marine Hospital, a position he still holds to the satisfaction of the authorities at Washington. At the time of the memorable earthquake in October, 1868, being then in charge of this hospital, his utmost presence of mind was called into requisition. The structure, one of the largest in the city, was racked and shattered. As there was every indication that the hospital would fall under repeated shocks, he took the responsibility of removing the patients to safer quarters at his own expense, a procedure which was approved by the Department at Washington, and the building was subsequently condemned by the government architects.

Another of his projects of public beneficence was the purchase of a valuable tract of land in Alameda, on the opposite side of the bay from San Francisco, where in the spring of 1867, he established a private Insane Asylum. Conducted on humane and philanthropic principles, it has proved a blessing to the afflicted, where in many cases, delicacy seeks for that shelter in a private institution which a public State establishment cannot afford. The

Doctor, in his leisure hours, has indulged a taste for mechanics, and among other trifles obtained a patent for a machine sewing simultaneously two seams, or parallel rows of stitching.

Our sketch must necessarily be confined to mere brief allusions to the many public measures of which Dr. Tucker is the originator. His life has been one of continual activity, and the talisman of his uniform success is to be found in the happy combination of an affable address with great persistency of purpose, and an intuitive knowledge of men. He had hardly become of age when he arrived in California, but his intrinsic merits speedily raised him to an eminence seldom reached except through painful toiling and experience. A nervous restlessness of temperament, and the courageous, almost reckless, spirit of adventure which has ever impelled him to rapid achievement in a multiplicity of enterprises, is not at first apparent under a quiet, unaffected exterior. His tastes. at once refined and manly, are equally displayed in art subjects and yatching, in which latter amusement he is an enthusiast and skillful amateur. As a friend, he is faithful and companionable. Entertaining in conversation, he is, as well, a forcible writer, having been a frequent contributor to the press, generally on scientific subjects, and wielding, like his brother in New York, a vigorous and caustic pen. Enjoying an enviable popularity, surrounded by the most charming domestic influences, and having earned by years of public service the confidence of the government, his usefulness in the future promises to be as positive as his power for good has hitherto been widereaching and acknowledged.

EDMUND RANDOLPH.

BY WILLIAM H. RHODES.

NAME radiant with revolutionary glories, a lineage

A famed for great men in great causes, for more

than five generations. Edmund Randolph was born in Virginia in the year 1818, and died at San Francisco at the early age of forty-two. He was an offshoot of the Virginia Randolphs, and inherited the chief traits of character of those extraordinary men. His father, grandfather, and great grandfather, were lawyers, and he himself early studied the same profession. He was liberally educated, having graduated at William and Mary's College shortly before settling in New Orleans, where he read law, and received the appointment of Clerk of the Circuit Court of the United States for the Circuit of Louisiana. During his residence in New Orleans, he married the daughter of a leading physician of that city, Dr. Meaux.

He continued to practice law until the news from California woke up within him aspirations of a broader usefulness and a loftier ambition than he could gratify at home; and early in 1849 he turned his eyes towards the West, and reached these shores in the course of that year. Before he left New Orleans, he began to exhibit talents of a very superior order, both as a learned lawyer and an eloquent advocate, and gave promise of those splendid attributes of a finished debater that lifted him above all competitors. He had scarcely landed in Cali