h expecta-
tion, he could ill brook the disappointment that too frequently awaited his arrival, and the hopes and failures that followed only ripened him for any excess.
As a rule everybody arrived in California poor ; many of them remained poor, undergoing more or less sufFerhig ; and yet there never was what might prop- erly be called a poor class upon the coast. Spread out before the adventurer were metal-vemed hills and fertile valleys ; and with such fair provisions, united with health and strength, he was rich though he had not a dollar, and did not know where his dinner was to come from.
To the wise man no circumstances could offer greater inducement for the exercise of self-control, for indul- gence was always attended with great risk to health and life ; and yet, self-control was about the last thing of which men there were thinking. Money they wanted ; behavior was unrestricted. And yet, it soon became apparent that in one sense the penalties of extravagance and dissipation were not exacted with the same regularity in the new community as in the old. Rioting was not attended by disgrace ; poverty did not necessarily follow prodigality, nor want, pov- erty. There were bushels of gold in the placers, the property of any one who would take it out, and the penniless of to-day might be the envied possessor of a pocket-full to-morrow. The hnprovident sometimes seemed to succeed as well as the careless.
Obviously this tendency to gratify present desires at the expense of the future arose from immediate surroundings. Reckless expenditures and unbridled passions were qualities not inherited from the middle classes of staid communities. Improvident English- man and thrifty German, alike, on touching California soil seemed to lose self-control, and seize proximate pleasures regardless of future penalties. Too many of them, like Ulysses in the island of Calypso and in the halls of Circe, forgot their Penelope, and gave
