the presence of the painted Jezebels, and the walls adorned with pictures of female figures with opulent undraped charms, and bands dispensed loud music to devil-inspired dancers, and the smoky air was thick with oaths and imprecations. " There is nowhere else to go," the solitary and forlorn would say, and when compelled to choose between their miserable homes and these flaunting halls of hell, the average conscience became quite pliable and accommodating.
In such society and with such surroundings it was almost impossible for one to live and never drink ; and he who in righteous wrath repudiates the idea as absurd knows nothing about it. Man must associate with his fellows; he cannot long remain alone. Neither can he live long individual and peculiar in his habits unless he be possessed of a hermit's nature — and I know of no hermit who ever came to California. Hence it is, sooner or later, he is bound to fall into the ways of those about him. An invitation to drink, in those days, was almost equivalent to a command, and to decline was frequently to give offense. He who refused was deemed either prudish or churlish, neither of which qualities his companions were disposed long to tolerate. The honest miner, the unshaven, woollen-shirted, drinking, swearing man was the social ideal, it was dangerous for a man to pretend to be better than his fellows. Often men have been mobbed in the mines for wearing a stovepipe hat, or black coat, or for shaving his chin, or for doing in any way as others did not do. Then if you accept an invitation to drink w^ith others } ou must sometimes return the compliment; failing to do so is worse than not to drink at all.
The English custom which, within the bounds of respectability, limited drinking to dinner and evening did not here obtain. Having just dined was oftener an excuse for declining than a pretext for accepting. Dinner did not divide the day as in older and more staid communities; there was as much to be done
