CHAPTER XIII.

FURTHER ABNORMITIES.

E come gli stornei ne portan l'ali
Nel freddo tempo a shiera larga e piena;
Cosí quel fiato gli spiriti mali

Di quá, di lá, di giú, di sú gli mena :
Nulla speranza gli conforta mai;

Non che di posa, ma di minor penor.

-Dell Inferno.

In Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead, Charon compels all to strip before entering his boat; the rich man of his wealth, the vain man of his foppery, the king of his pride and kingship, the athlete of his flesh, the partrician of his noble birth and his honors, the philosopher of his disputatiousness, his rhetorical flourishes, his antitheses and parallelisms, and all his wordy trumpery. None may go to the regions of the dead even with a rag of clothes on.

Now there are many in California who would like to take with them there all they have, who are tremblingly fearful of dying and leaving the wealth they love so much; who cannot bear the thought of parting with it even after death; and so they leave it to be dissipated by lawyers and executors, instead of devoting it themselves to some useful and noble purpose. Many large estates have, in this way been scattered, which doubtless wrung the souls of their former owners as they looked up, watchful and wistful, at the hapless flow of their dear ducats. After all, there is a not wholly unjust law of compensation applicable to savage and civilized, poor and rich, the past and the present; even the most tormented in life may find relief in the.

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sweets of death. Let him beware who takes to himself more than his share of good, for upon him the gods will lay a corresponding quota of evil.

To a gold-laden ass all doors open. But the wealthwinners of California were not asses, whatever may prove to be some of their descendants, who like an oyster have much mouth but no head. Their lives, it is true, were too much like the life of an ass, enticed to drag its load by the fodder held before it, and which sees nothing but the fodder. They worked for money as if they had a wolf in their stomachs. Some were made wealthy by their avarice; others were made avaricious by their wealth. There were men among them of whom it might be said, as it was of Jeremy Taylor, "His very dust is gold"; there were others of whom we are compelled to admit, "His very gold is dust."

Wealth does not accumulate in the hands of a community by accident, nor by divine interposition, neither does literature, art, nor science. Because men will so and so is not a sufficient reason for their doings; all human actions are the result of cause, and individuals will to act, or they act, because of that cause. It was the application of the principles of political economy to social philosophy, though carried not quite so far as at the present time, that made the Wealth of Nations of Adam Smith so long the popular and powerful exponent of economic principles.

Early in the sixties there arose a race of bonanza kings with silver souls; silver were their friends, and silver were their enemies, for to be worthy their consideration at all, they must be of silver; silver was their meat and meditations; their doors were barred with silver, and silver paved their way to the final abode of souls. There was a whiskey demon and a silver demon, and these two demons fought; the silver demon caught the whiskey demon, but the whiskey demon gnawed out the vitals of the silver demon. Great is whiskey, and great is silver, but the greatest

MORAL STANDARD OF THE TIMES.

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of all is the bonanza king who gives his best friend points that direct him the shortest road to ruin.

Then spawned speculation, all kinds of gambling being in vogue in saintly circles and rabble congregations-all except the honest old-time games, such as faro, monte, and poker. And there were established among the sand-hills society shops, where the undying reign of fashion set in; and politician shops, where fat offices were sold; and peculation shops, where office-holders might turn an honest penny, and pay the purchase-money for their place.

There were some good fellows among the latter-day rich men, but not many. They were generally of the Gripus order; some hard drinkers among them, who when in their cups did not always treat with distinguished courtesy their guests; who were well enough satisfied to let Lucullus sup with Lucullus. Avarice gnawed at their vitals like the parasite in the stomach of a shark. Banks sprang up whose caterpillar was a steamboat or a grog-shop, and dignified dames sat in stately parlors whose grub was the laundry. These later overwhelmingly rich ones were quite different from the free-hearted and free-handed of the flush times, who, like Ali Baba, would not take the time to count their gold, but measured it. The enormous wealth of the former seemed rather to create a hunger for more money, with a gnawing appetite ever increased by what it fed on. Then perhaps they would grow covetous of fame and higher social standing, and so flit about, hither and thither, restless, and perhaps reckless, in search of something which, when found, only added to their unappeased desires.

Along the pathway of nations, savage and civilized, we see every community with its moral ideal which acts as an individual cohesive force holding society together. It seems of less importance what the ideal is than that there should be one. Theft was the moral standard round which revolved all virtue in the mind

of an Apache, while the Comanche would probably have placed murder first. In ancient Greece, far above female chastity was patriotism, while with us the relative importance of the two virtues is reversed. Spain's strongest social bond was loyalty, that and its ill-favored companion, religious bigotry. In the days of pious vigils, and self-crucifixions, humility was at a premium, while later boldness and bravery were the highest virtues.

Now, although the chief object of every one present was money, wealth was not their highest admiration. Gold was plentiful. All started on an equality. If in the scramble some filled their pockets while others did not, the former were lucky, and that was all. All of them were still men, good men or bad men as they were before, and not one whit changed; nor were they in the eyes of any there present special objects of adoration. Temperance, chastity, piety, none of these assuredly were the moral ideal of the time, neither was patriotism, asceticism, nor any of the soft amenities of life.

What then was that paramount virtue worthy the devout admiration of this august rabble? It was a quality for which I find no single exact expression in any vocabulary. It was a new quality for worshipful purposes, and made up of several common qualities. Take from extravagance its love of display, from prodigality the element which tends to the destruction of its possessor, and from munificence every appearance of charity, and we approach the opposite of what is commonly called meanness, which was the exact opposite of the moral ideal of the time. Generosity, open-handedness, large-beartedness, here was the ideal; and if it ran its possessor upon the shoals of bankruptcy, or into a drunkard's grave, it was lamentable, but no such black and accursed evil as parsimoniousness, stinginess, niggardliness, or in a word, meanness. There was nothing in the world so If a debtor was unfortunate and

mean as meanness.

could not pay; all right, better luck next time. If he was thoroughly competent and honest he could obtain credit anywhere, twice as much as before. But if he was a mean man, if he had resorted to any trick, or subterfuge, or had attempted to cover any cunning; or if he was low in his ideas, grovelling in his tastes, close-fisted and contemptible, a mangy dog were better than he.

As in other abnormal accomplishments, so in profanity, the miner aimed at the highest excellence. The ordinary insipid swearing he scorned, and so invented new terms of blasphemy befitting his more exalted ideas. Since the days of Cain God was never so cursed. Profanity was adopted as a fine art, and practised with the most refined delicacy and tact. From morning till night men mouthed their oaths and then swallowed them. The language of blasphemy, with its innumerable dialects and idioms, developed into a new tongue, which displayed great depth and variety, with delicate shades befitting the idiosyncrasies of individual swearers. The character of the man was nowhere more clearly defined than in the quality and quantity of his oaths; one who could not or would not swear was scarcely a man at all, and but little better than a pious hypocrite or a woman. Among the most cultivated blasphemers, who made swearing a study, euphony was first of all regarded; and this was effected by alliteration, an adjective followed by a substantive both beginning with the same letter. The style though studied might be of the simple or florid cast, but it was sure to be both original and effective.

Not that all men swore, or that all the swearing of the world during this epoch was done here; I only claim that it was here original, if not abnormal and artistic.

Oaths have their mood and tense and number, their individuality, and nationality. There is the sportive