ness of the times was denied him. The rains of winter dampened his anticipations and drowned his energies; the cold, coast winds cut into his vitals, and the hot, summer sun of the valleys withered his hopes, and left him despondent and nerveless. With heart sunk within him, every blow he struck was echoed by his rattling bones. Disgusted with himself and all the world, and heaping curses on the country, he returned home, if he could get there, covered with shame, or eked out a broken-hearted existence in the land he so heartily hated.
The very qualities most conducive to prosperity in older communities were to some extent out of place here; men thrived on what elsewhere would prove their destruction. Old maxims were as useless as broken crockery. True, among the shrewder spirits there was a method in their madness, and sometimes seemingly rash and headlong speculation was the result of well-laid schemes. There were times when a general advance in prices rose into a mania, and then whatever a man bought, real estate or merchandise, was sure to yield him a profit a week, or a day, or an hour afterward. All this seemed to one newly arrived a bedlam of insane speculation, and speedy convulsion was predicted.
At first there were no fixed customs in the country to which every comer must in a greater or less degree adapt himself Every man's conduct was regulated by his own tastes rather than by preëstablished rules of society. Fashion never found more indifferent votaries. But the romance and irksomeness of this kind of life gradually wore away; woman came to the rescue, and the proprieties, suavity of manners, and staid customs of older societies came into general observance. Society separated into strata; something like caste appeared, and the components of the community became more and more individualized.
Most of those who came hither were in the maturity of manhood, with more or less skill and experience
