it is that we are more fully up to the times in every-
thing, much more, all things put together, than al-
most any other community.
It is easy to understand how men and women thus thrown together, strangers to each other, stranger's in ideas, speecli, and traditions, without the substra- tum, as a social foundation, which only can coalesce as society slowly develops, fail to have that interest in each other and that intense loyalty which charac- terizes older and more settled communities. Society here is a malformation, or rather it is yet not society, but only materials for society; yet nowhere will the people quicker or more heartily unite for the public good; nowhere are they more free and social than here; nowhere is there less clap-trap and ridiculous apings of things traditional than here.
Strangers coming together cannot immediately em- brace and become brothers. They have too little in common, see too many faults in each other; will not mellow on the insta.nt asperities of character. The seeds of lasting friendship are usually planted in early life, and matured in a soil of warm and tender sympathy, in order to produce a plant which will endure the storms of selfishness that beat upon it in after life. Once the social heart of California lay so imbedded in gold that it could not throb. The passions were let loose, and a moral leprosy infected the people like an epi- demic. But all this passed away, as every epidemic passes, after having weeded society of some of its weaknesses, and left it in fair condition for permanent growth.
To the great majority of the pioneers the Sierra was a sphinx propounding a riddle, which they must answer. Thousands laid down their lives in the at- tempt, for there were the lion's claws to tear the un- successful venturer in pieces. Of rare celestial beauty was the face and bosom of the goddess as she lured men to their destruction; of dark ferocity was she as she lapped them to their fin
