him?
Less and less become the contents, until at last the result is known — two ounces they think it is, but call it an ounce, and their fortunes are made. Yet for every one who wins, let it be remembered, ten fail. And wliat means failure such as this ? It means a slice of life thrown to the dogs, a measure of capabili- ties emptied upon a dunghill, capabilities of enjoying, of improving ; it means grayer hairs, deeper furrowed lineaments, and stifler limbs, with no results in acqui- sition worth living for. And besides this loss of time, of hope, of energy, it means bankruptcy, a long unpaid and unpayable score at the butcher's and a dozen other like places ; it means in the man and all his affairs demoralization, if not indeed dissipation and death.
The absence of cant and fanaticism, and the liberalized views of the people on all subjects saved California from most of those festering disputations and argu- ments to which the question of slavery gave birth in other states of the confederacy. Here all the world met as on neutral ground, ignoring bootless argument on topics foreign to their immediate purpose. Ques- tions of social policy were based for the most part on utilitarian principles ; doctrines and dogmas were left to those who had more leisure to discuss them. While many were in favor of the admission of California as a slave state, the majority were decidedly opposed to it; yet northerners were not disposed to quarrel with slaveholders for bringing with them their servants, and permitting them to work for their masters as long as they pleased. In the mining districts and in the towns tnere were many slaves, who of course could leave their masters at any moment, and did in the end leave them, yet for the time and midst the hubbub of contending events they preferred bondage to a sever- ance of old ties.
In this pandemonium plunge, ten centuries of cul- ture and superstition were flung to the winds. There were new thoughts, new hearts, new dress
