stanford, leland stanford in wisconsin is exchanging letters with his brothers. they're saying come out here, the getting is good. stanford's law office burns in a fire, he loses his files, he loses his law books, and he decides i don't want to be a lawyer, i'm going to california. he goes to california and joins his brothers. he borrows money from them, he opens a shop in the mountains called stanford and smith and sells to miners. stanford is a taciturn businessman. he's practically wordless. anybody who met him reported the same thing, he has five words an hour. he is laconic to the point of pathology. [laughter] but he's an amiable behind the cash register, and he deals straight, and so he succeeds rapidly as a shopkeeper. he moves his shop to sacramento, the capital of california. now, the capital of california in the mid 1850s had the enormous population of 12,000 people. it's a cow town, but he becomes the grocer in town who sells the best goods. next door to him there's another shop which is a hardware store called huntington and hopkins run by a couple of