ng, and
oftentimes dislionest in their dealings, they were not more so than other men, and they usually managed to escajDe detection and punishment. Seldom a Jew was seen in jail, or in a mob, or intoxicated, though upon the slightest pretext many of them would fail in business, and compromise with their creditors.
Like the Chinese, they lived and accumulated wealth where more lax or lavish gentiles starved. This was to their honor, and to the shame of the spendthrifts. Often in early times in mhiing districts, forgetting their fathers and their fathers' faith, they drank, and gambled, and raced horses, and swore, and frequented houses of prostitution. Then they were fine fellows, and the noble American miner voted the Jew as good as the white man. Then the finger of scorn was removed, and ostracism no longer talked of in the charmed circles of commerce.
The Pike county man — which term was finally ap- plied indiscriminately to emigrants from the western states — could not mingle with the mixed population of California without becoming in some degree toned down ; the angles of the New Engiander w^ere in like manner rounded ; even the Jew, eschewing old clothes, was often less mercenary than his neighbor, and at- tained a fair degree of manhood. Indeed, there are many Jews in California to-day who are far above the average American or European in liberality and high- minded public spirit. But notwithstanding the tincture given to society by the Englishman, the Frenchman, the German, Irish, Scotch, Swiss, Spaniard, Italian, and even the Chinaman, the Anglo-American has ever been the dominant mind. An intermixture of European, Asiatic, and African elements alone never would have made a Californian. It may have been a staid English colony like Australia, or the field of unprogressive fiery revolutions, like Spanish America, but it never would have experienced that season of speculative energy which has driven it so swiftly on- ward. The European is sedate, conservative, method-
