Page:California Inter Pocula.djvu/696

their vile breath has not yet left the body, and though their staggerings betoken corporeal animation. "I have bought my ticket through," said a poor heart-broken wretch as he stood upon the wharf in conversation with a friend while waiting the departure of the steamer. He was a young man, not yet thirty, tall, well built, and intellectual, but his dress betokened poverty. Broken sentences came through quivering lips; despair was pictured in his iace, and in his eyes stood moisture wrung by misfortune from the heart. *' I have bought my ticket through," he said, "but I shall not go home. Seven years I have spent in California, and all that time I have drunk to excess. What is home to me now—home without hope ? Doubtless I shall join Walker, in Nicaragua; I care not what becomes of me! " So have sunk from sight a hundred thousand and more of the immigration of the first decade.