well-lined
pockets, the admiration of the girls, the envy of his former companions, and the special object of interest of the old folks. It was grand and heroic to be of California. Tamely to settle in the slow old home after participating in the glories of gold-digging, gambling, and free fighting was out of the question. Nor were home and friends and occupation to the more enlightened from the larger cities, ever again the same after a residence in San Francisco. Speculation and commercial pursuits after the old fashion offered no attractions after having: made three or four fortunes with lightning rapidity one after another, though they were swept away by fire as fast as made. So gradually the contemplated brief sojourn lengthened into a fixed residence, the family was sent for, and then apparently for the first time the husband and father opened his eyes to the iniquity around him and went to work in company with wife and daughter to bring about a better state of things. And this moral morass was reclaimed almost as speedily as it w^as formed. Healthy plants could not grow in a swamp of festering corruption The question was shnply should the country be reclaimed to virtue or should vice prevail. And now the easy citizen and loose moralist becomes a reformer. If the country is worth making his home in — and do his best he can- not live away from it — then it is worth purifying and directing in its young growth. So public gambling is suppressed, prostitution driven from the more promi- nent thoroughfares, libraries are founded, churches built, and schools established ; charitable institutions spring up, and the ocean air, as it passes through the streets of the city and over the bay, toward the labor- ers in the valleys and in the mines, carries with it less of pollution and blasphemy than formerly ; a long breath of it may now be taken without suffocation.
Enough sudden fortunes were made, enough rich deposits unlocked, to keep alive the flame of expecta- tion. Who knows, thought the patient unsuccessful
