Page:California Inter Pocula.djvu/696

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

their vile breath has not yet left the body, and though their staggerings betoken corporeal animation. "I have bought my ticket through," said a poor heart-broken wretch as he stood upon the wharf in conversation with a friend while waiting the departure of the steamer. He was a young man, not yet thirty, tall, well built, and intellectual, but his dress betokened poverty. Broken sentences came through quivering lips; despair was pictured in his iace, and in his eyes stood moisture wrung by misfortune from the heart. *' I have bought my ticket through," he said, "but I shall not go home. Seven years I have spent in California, and all that time I have drunk to excess. What is home to me now—home without hope ? Doubtless I shall join Walker, in Nicaragua; I care not what becomes of me! " So have sunk from sight a hundred thousand and more of the immigration of the first decade.