nmoved by misfortune, they live among the fair
beauties of the South. Heaven spreads their peace and fame upon the arch
of the rainbow, and smiles propitiously at their triumph, THROUGH THE
TEARS OF THE STORM.

THE CALIFORNIAN'S TALE

Thirty-five years ago I was out prospecting on the Stanislaus, tramping
all day long with pick and pan and horn, and washing a hatful of dirt
here and there, always expecting to make a rich strike, and never doing
it. It was a lovely region, woodsy, balmy, delicious, and had once been
populous, long years before, but now the people had vanished and the
charming paradise was a solitude. They went away when the surface
diggings gave out. In one place, where a busy little city with banks
and newspapers and fire companies and a mayor and aldermen had been, was
nothing but a wide expanse of emerald turf, with not even the faintest
sign that human life had ever been present there. This was down toward
Tuttletown. In the country neighborhood thereabouts, along the dusty
roads, one found at intervals the prettiest little cottage homes, snug
and cozy, and so cobwebbed with vines snowed thick with roses that the
doors and windows were wholly hidden from sight--sign that these were
deserted homes, forsaken years ago by defeated and disappointed families
who could neither sell them nor give them away. Now and then, half an
hour apart, one came across solitary log cabins of the earliest
mining days, built by the first gold-miners, the predecessors of the
cottage-builders. In some few cases these cabins were still occupied;
and when this was so, you could depend upon it that the occupant was the
very pioneer who had built the cabin; and you could depend on another
thing, too--that he was there because he had once had his opportunity
to go home to the States rich, and had not done it; had rather lost
his wealth, and had then in his humiliation resolved to sever all
communication with his home relatives and friends, and be to them
thenceforth as one dead. Round about California in that day were
scattered a host of these living dead men--pride-smitten poor fellows,
grizzled and old at forty, whose secret thoughts were made all of
regrets and longings--regrets for their wasted lives, and longings to be
out of the struggle and done with it all.

It was a lonesome land! Not a sound in all those peaceful expanses of
grass and woods but the drowsy hum of insects; no glimpse of man or
beast; not