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promise to be destroyed, and for the new civilization to be retarded for a century or forever. Just now, while the air seems full of the electric tension of free thoughts and brave impulses, seems the time to insure the happy result. And to one who believes in his age, who sees that here, and soon, there might be clearer inspirations than ever before, the question comes with all the deeper significance: Shall our people be a people of high intelligence, in a more and more prosperous country, or a crude, ignorant, mob-ridden population, in an out of the way, neglected corner of civilization, visited, like some barbarous island, for its natural scenery, and fled from as soon as possible?

If there be any way to determine this question, except by insuring beyond a peradventure the broadest opportunities for education, it must be by some new way undiscovered as yet by any nation. Not that there is any mystic virtue in towering buildings, or apparatus, or imposing forms; but there is a virtue in the gathering together of trained and vigorous intellects, together with the written representatives of such in every age, in all the world's literature, and bringing within the charmed circle of their influence a multitude of youth, drawing them by the gentle persuasions of science and culture into the good old compact of high service to humanity.

There never was a time when a fortune might do so much for society. Nor is it any visionary dream that points out its possibilities. The fut

ure years are surely coming, and their days will be as plain, common-sense, practical facts as the Mondays and Tuesdays of the present. Their suns will rise and set, and the air will still sweep back and forth in its rhythmical tides the breath of the mountains and the answering breath of the sea; and the earth will bear the footprints of multitudes of men. What shall those multitudes be? A sordid, half-barbarous horde, wrangling over the contemptible prizes of their animal existence? A scattered handful of cleanlived and thinking men, dragging a vexed lifetime in a population they cannot help? Or a prosperous, vigorous, intelligent community, such as already the globe has borne on a few of its most favored garden spots of civilization? One seems to see the question trembling in the balance of the fates, and, poised above the scale that bears all our hopes, the golden weight of some splendid fortune ready to decide the issue.

But, if we are to judge by the past, it is hardly reasonable to expect that wise public use will be made of our great fortunes in this country. It is rather the mere dust of the balance, the slow accumulations of small influences, mote by mote and grain by grain, that turns the scale of the fates. And, after all, the best things of the future will probably come, as the best things of the past have come, through the sturdy and patient work, little by little, of many coöperating brains and hands, each quietly adding to the common store whatever small help it can. E. R. SILL.

TO ETHEL.

Who has not seen the scarlet columbine,
That flashes like a flame among the ferns,
Whose drooping bell with rich, warm color burns,
Until its very dew-drops seem like wine?
In thy dark eyes the blossom's soul doth shine,
On thy bright cheek doth live its splendid hue;
Of all the wild-wood flowers that ever grew,
Thou'rt like but one-the dainty columbine.
So, when the welcome wild-flowers come again
Among the gold, and white, and blue, there'll be
One blossom with a ruby glow, and then,

Gath'ring its brightness, will I think of thee,
For, looking on the treasure that I hold,
I'll see it hides, like thee, a heart of gold.

S. E. ANDERSON.

OLD CALIFORNIANS.

"In those days there were giants in the land: mighty men of power and renown. BIBLE.

car that smokes along the plain far below.

The cowards did not start to the Pacific | is one of the distinguished party in the palace Coast in the old days; all the weak died on the way. And so it was that we had then not only a race of giants, but of gods.

It is to be allowed that they were not at all careful of the laws, either ancient or modern, ecclesiastical or lay. They would curse. They would fight like dogs-aye, like Christians in battle. But there was more solid honor among those men than the world will ever see again in any body of men, I fear, till it approaches the millennium. Is it dying out with them? I hear that the new Californians are rather common cattle.

Do you know where the real old Californian is?-the giant, the world-builder?

He is sitting by the trail high up on the mountain. His eyes are dim, and his head is white. His sleeves are lowered. His pick and shovel are at his side. His feet are weary and

sore.

He is still prospecting. Pretty soon he will sink his last prospect-hole in the Sierra.

Some younger men will come along, and lengthen it out a little, and lay him in his grave. The old miner will have passed on to prospect the outcroppings that star the floors of heaven.

He is not numerous now; but I saw him last summer high up on the head-waters of the Sacramento. His face is set forever away from that civilization which has passed him by. He is called a tramp now. And the new, nice people who have slid over the plains in a palace car, and settled down there, set dogs on him sometimes when he comes that way.

I charge you treat the old Californian well wherever you find him. He has seen more, suffered more, practiced more self-denial, than can now fall to the lot of any man.

I never see one of these old prospectors without thinking of Ulysses, and wondering if any Penelope still weaves and unweaves, and waits the end of his wanderings. Will any old blind dog stagger forth at the sound of his voice, lick his hand, and fall down at his feet?

Nothing of the sort. He has not heard from home for twenty years. He would not find even the hearthstone of his cabin by the Ohio, should he return. Perhaps his own son, a merchant prince or the president of a railroad,

And though he may die there in the pines on the mighty mountain, while still feebly searching for the golden fleece, do not forget that his life is an epic, noble as any handed down from out the dusty eld. I implore you treat him kindly. Some day a fitting poet will come, and then he will take his place among the heroes and the gods.

But there is another old Californian, a wearier man, the successful one. He, too, is getting gray. But he is a power in the land. He is a prince in fact and in act. What strange fate was it that threw dust in the eyes of that old Californian, sitting by the trail high up on the mountain, and blinded him so that he could not see the gold just within his grasp a quarter of a century ago? And what good fairy was it that led this other old Californian, now the banker, the railroad king, or senator, to where the mountain gnomes had hidden their gold of old?

What accidental beggars and princes we have in the world to-day? But whether beggar or prince, the old Californian stands a head and shoulder taller than his fellows wherever you may find him. This is a solid, granite truth.

A few years ago a steamer drew into the Bay of Naples with a lot of passengers, among whom were a small party of Americans. The night had been rough and the ship was behind time. It was ten o'clock already, and no breakfast. The stingy Captain had resolved to econ

omize.

A stout, quiet man, with a stout hickory stick, went to the Captain and begged for a little coffee, at least, for his ladies. The Captain turned his back, fluttered his coat-tails in the face of the stout, quiet man, and walked up his deck. The stout, quiet man followed, and still respectfully begged for something for the ladies, who were faint with hunger. Then the Captain turned and threatened to put him in irons, at the same time calling his officers

around him.

The stout man with the stout stick very quietly proceeded to thrash the Captain. He thrashed him till he could not stand; and then thrashed every officer that dared to show his

face, as well as half the crew. Then he went down and made the cook get breakfast. This was an old Californian, “Dave Colton," as we used to call him up at Yreka.

Of course, an act like that was punishable with death almost. "Piracy on the high seas," and all that sort of offense was charged; and I know not how much gold it cost to heal the wounded head and dignity of the Captain of the ship. But this California neither knew the law nor cared for the law. He had a little party of ladies with him, and he would not see them go hungry. He would have that coffee if it cost him his head.

Dear Dave Colton! I hear he is dead now. We first got acquainted one night in Yreka while shooting at each other.

And what a fearful shooting affair that was! Many a grizzled old miner of the north still remembers it all vividly, although it took place more than a quarter of a century ago. It would make the most thrilling chapter of a romance, or the final act of a tragedy.

To crowd a whole book briefly into a few words, the Yreka miners insisted on using all the water in Greenhorn Creek by leading it through a great ditch from Greenhorn over to Yreka Flats. The Greenhorn miners, about five hundred strong, held a meeting and remonstrated with the miners of Yreka, who numbered about five thousand. But they were only laughed at.

Some worthless fellows got drunk and went to Yreka, boasting of their work of destruction. They were arrested by Dave Colton, then Sheriff of Siskiyou County, and thrown into prison. The news of the arrests reached us at Greenhorn about dark, and in half an hour we were on our way to the county-seat to take the men out of jail. Some of our own men were half drunk, others wholly so, and all were wild with excitement. Nearly all were armed with sixshooters. We ran forward as we approached the jail, pistols in hand. Being nimble-footed and having no better sense, I was among the first.

Sheriff Colton, who had heard of our coming, and taken up position in the jail, promptly refused to give up his prisoners without process of law; and we opened fire. The Sheriff and his posse answered back-and what a scatterment! Our men literally broke down and swept away board cabins and fences in their flight! I know of nothing so cowardly as a mob.

But there were some that did not fly. One, Dr. Stone, the best man of our whole five hundred I think, lay dying in the jail-yard along with a few others; and there were men of our party who would not desert them. The fight lasted in a loose sort of fashion for hours. We would fight a while and then parley a while. We were finally, by some kind of compromise not found in law books, allowed to go back with our prisoners and our dead and wounded. This was known as the "Greenhorn War."

So, on the 23d day of February, 1855, they threw themselves into a body, and marching down, to a man, they tore out the dam and sent the water on in its natural channel. I say to a man, and, I might add, to a boy. For I, the only boy on Greenhorn, although quietly offici-him ating as cook in the cabin of a party of miners from Oregon, was ordered to shoulder a pickhandle by the red-headed leader, Bill Fox, and fall in line. I ought to admit, perhaps, that I gladly obeyed-for it flattered me to be treated as if I were a man, even by this red-headed Irish bully and desperado.

I remember that on the march to the dam the quiet, peace-loving men of Quaker proclivities were found still at work. On their declining to join us, Fox ordered his men to seize them and bear them along in front; so that they should be the first exposed to the bullets of Yreka.

Had the mob dispersed after destroying the dam, no blood would have been shed. But, unfortunately, the Wheeler brothers rolled out a barrel of whisky, and, knocking in the head, hung the barrel with tin cups and told the boys to "pitch in." A fool could have foreseen the result.

We threw up earthworks on Greenhorn, and waited for the Sheriff, who had been slightly wounded, to come out and attempt to make arrests. But he never came. And I never met any more till his trouble in Naples. I wonder how many of us are alive to-day! I saw the old earthworks only last year. They are almost leveled now. The brown grass and weeds covered them. As I climbed the hill to hunt for our old fortress, a squirrel scampered into his hole under the wall, while on the highest rock a little black lizard basked and blinked in the sun and kept unchallenged sentinel.

I remember when we came to bury the dead. The men were mighty sober now. We could not go to town for a preacher, and so one of our party had to officiate. burial I ever saw. first began to read. could not get on. Bible and tried to finish the chapter; but his voice trembled too, and pretty soon he choked up and hid his face. Then every man there cried, I think. They loved Dr. Stone so. He was a mere boy, yet a graduate, and beautiful and brave as a Greek of old.

That was the saddest The man broke down who His voice trembled so he Then another man took the

Ah, these, the dead, are the mighty majority | courage and good sense. He tried to keep me of old Californians! No one would guess how back and out of danger. He told me that I numerous they are. California was one vast was of no account in the fight, and only in the battle-field. The knights of the nineteenth way. But when I was shot down at his side in century lie buried in her bosom; while here a charge through the chaparral, he took me in and there, over the mountain-tops, totters a his arms and carried me safely aside. He lone survivor, still prospecting, cared for me afterward, too, till I got well. How glad I was to find him still alive! When you go up to Soda Springs, jump out of the stage at Sweetbrier Ranch, only a few miles this side of Soda, and look him up. Do you think him an illiterate boor? He is of one of the best families in New York, a gentleman, and a scholar.

"And I sit here, at forty year,

Dipping my nose in the Gascon wine."

There is an older Californian still-"the oldest inhabitant," indeed. I knew him, a lusty native, a quarter of a century ago in the impenetrable forests and lava beds around the base of Mount Shasta. He, too, is dead; dead in spirit at least, if not altogether in fact.

If valor is a virtue, let us at least concede❘ that to the red man of the California mountains. There were battles fought here between the miners and red men before General Canby was ever heard of. They were bloody battles, But they never got to the ears of the world. If Captain Jack with his handful of braves held the United States army at bay for half a year, you may well understand that we miners met no boy's play there when these Indians were numerous and united.

too.

But this "old Californian," as I knew him there, is utterly extinct. About the fisheries of the McCloud, and along the stage road on the head-waters of the Sacramento River, you see little houses now and then not unlike our miners' cabins of old. There are the homes of the few remaining Indians of Northern California. There is a little garden and straggling patches of corn about the door; two or three miserable ponies nibble about the barren hills hard by, and a withered, wrinkled old squaw or two grunts under a load of wood or water as she steps sullen and silent out of the path to let you pass. And that is about all. Her husband, her sons, are dead or dying of disease in the dark, smoky cabin yonder. He accepted the inevitable, and is trying to be civilized. Alas! long before that point is reached, he will have joined his fathers on the other side of dark

ness.

I spent a few weeks at Lower Soda Springs, near Mount Shasta, last summer, in sight of our old battle-ground in Castle Rocks, or Castillo del Diablo, as it was then called. I tried to find some of the men who had fought in that little battle. But one white man remained, Squire Gibson. At the time of this fight, which took place on the 15th day of June, 1855, he was married to the daughter of a friendly chief, and, as he was the only alcalde in all that county, was a sort of military as well as civil leader, and in the battle was conspicuous both for

A few years ago, one of his wealthy sisters came out to visit the old man from the Eastern States. From San Francisco she telegraphed her approach and the probable day of her arrival at his mansion.

She came; but she did not find him. Squire Gibson had long contemplated prospecting the rugged summit of an almost inaccessible mountain. He felt that the time had come for this work, as his venerable maiden sister, with all her high ideas of "family," approached. He called his spouse and his tawny children about him, bade them take up their baskets and go high, very high up into the mountains, for acorns. And the gray old Californian sinched his little mule till she grunted, tied a pick, pan, and shovel to the saddle, and so pointed her nose up the peak, and climbed as if he was climbing for the morning star.

Squire Gibson, I beg your pardon for dragging your name and your deeds before the heartless world. Believe me, old friend and comrade, it is not to trade upon it or fatten my own vanity. But do you know I have been waiting for ten years for you to die, so that I might write you up and do you a turn for your kindness to a hair-brained boy more than twentyfive years ago? It is a fact. But it begins to look now as if you are going to outlive me; you there in the high, pure air, and I here in the pent-up city. And so I venture to put you in this sketch, and name you as one of the uncrowned Californian kings!

I count it rather odd that I should have found even one man in this region still, after so long a time, for of all wanderers the Californian is the veriest nomad upon the face of the earth. Perhaps it is a bit of that same daring and endurance which took him to California that still leads him on and on and on, through all the lands and over all the seas; for I have found him in every quarter of the globe.

And wherever I have found the Californian, I have found him a leader; not an obtrusive one, but a man who, when a man is needed, quietly

steps forward, takes hold the helm, and guides the ship to safety.

Once on the Rhine, between the armies of France and Germany, I got into great trouble with the authorities. The military police, who were arresting everybody they could lay hands on, had got me into their clutches and were trying to read a whole lot of mixed-up manuscript which constituted the main part of my luggage, in order to find out what sort of a man I was; for I could not talk a word of either French or German. I think they must have been poorly educated, for they could hardly read it. But they tried and tried with all their might. And the harder they tried the madder they got; and they laid the blame all on to me.

They were about to iron me and march me off for a spy, when an American stepped up and laid down the law in a way that made them open their eyes. He was a Californian, and my trouble was over. He could not talk a word to them no more than I; but they soon saw that although he could not talk in any of their six or seven tongues, he could at least fight in any language under the sun.

I am reminded here of two Californians, who, short of money and determined to see the Holy Land, went with Cook, the tourist. They were the horror of all the staid old orthodox parties, but in less than a week they were the leaders of the company.

They wanted to pump out Jacob's Well, and get down to the bed-rock. They were perfectly certain it was only a prospect-hole. And when they came to Mount Sinai they found quartz indications, and declared that all that side of the mountain from which the tables for the Ten Commandments were supposed to have been taken, would pay ten per cent. They pretended to find plenty of gold in the rock one morning, and made the whole party believe that they intended to set up a forty-stamp mill, and have it thundering down that same cañon Moses is supposed to have descended with the Laws!

There are many of the wandering children of the dear old Pacific Coast in art, and at work, all over the world. I have known as many as five of the eight or ten theaters in the city of New York to have either Californian actors or Californian plays on their boards all at the same time. And in the army and the navy! Consider the deeds of the old Californians there. When one speaks of California, her northern sister, Oregon, is of course included.

But perhaps it is in the financial world that the old Californian takes first rank. Yon elevated railroad, that stretches down the streets of New York, was built and is owned by an exmayor of San Francisco. Down yonder, at the

|

end of the Island of Manhattan, where the "bulls" and "bears" guide the finance of the world, there is one little Californian who stands next to the head of the class. And if ever Jay Gould misses a word, this man will spell it, and turn him down, and take his place.

When Chicago was howling as if it would go mad at this man for buying the wheat which she wanted to sell, and paying for it, too, in good Californian gold, I, who had never seen him, thought him some six-foot monster who had stumbled on to a mine and was making a very bad use of his money. On the contary, he is not strong, physically, and his face is as refined and sympathetic as a girl's.

Why, there is a whole bookful of good deeds marked to the credit of this modest little Californian away up and above the stars, although he is angry if any one tells of them on earth. I had rather have his record, notwithstanding the wrath of Chicago, than that of any published philanthropist whose skinny statue stands in the parks of the world.

Two little facts let me mention. More than fifty years ago the very brightest of all the young men of the city of New York married the daughter of the then wealthiest and most distinguished of her great merchants. Fifty years bring changes. This bright young man was no longer the head of the city. He was no longer a banker. He was poor, and all his idols lay broken and behind him. He was still a gentleman. But, says the Spaniard, "who is there so poor as a poor gentleman?"

Well, fifty thousand dollars were handed this good and worthy old gentleman by this old Californian, who is not willing to ever let his own name be published in connection with the gift.

The other circumstance is of less import to any one but myself. A new and unskilled dealer in stocks, an utter stranger, found himself one morning routed, "horse, foot, and dragoons." Half desperate, he rushed down to the old Californian, and asked his advice.

Advice? He gave his advice to this stranger in the shape of three hundred shares of Western Union. These shares in a few days turned out a profit of nearly three thousand dollars. And still he will not permit his name to be mentioned in this connection. Very well; I will not give you the name of this "old Californian." Neither will I give you that of the venerable banker who received the fifty thousand dollars. But I see no reason why you may not have the name of the embarrassed speculator who received the three thousand dollars' worth of "advice." You will find it subscribed at the end of this rambling sketch.

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