Project Gutenberg's Stories by American Authors, Volume 10, by Various

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Title: Stories by American Authors, Volume 10

Author: Various

Release Date: February 8, 2010 [EBook #31227]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STORIES BY AMERICAN AUTHORS, VOL 10 ***

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Stories by American Authors

VOLUME X

_PANCHA_
BY T. A. JANVIER

_THE ABLEST MAN IN THE WORLD_
BY E. P. MITCHELL

_YOUNG MOLL'S PEEVY_
BY C. A. STEPHENS

_MANMAT'HA_
BY CHARLES DE KAY

_A DARING FICTION_
BY H. H. BOYESEN

_THE STORY OF TWO LIVES_
BY JULIA SCHAYER

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1896

COPYRIGHT, 1884, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

_The Stories in this Volume are protected by copyright, and are
printed here by authority of the authors or their representatives._

[Illustration: Hjalmar H. Boyesen]

PANCHA: A STORY OF MONTEREY.

BY T. A. JANVIER.

_Century Magazine, September, 1884._

When the Conde de Monterey, being then Viceroy of this gracious realm
of New Spain, sent his viceregal commissioners, attended by holy
priests, up into the northern country to choose a site for an outpost
city, there was found no spot more beautiful, none more worthy to be
crowned, than this where the city of Monterey stands to-day. And so
the commissioners halted beside the noble spring, the _ojo de agua_,
that gushes out from its tangle of white pebbles in what now is the
very heart of the town; and the priests set up the sacred cross and
sang a sweet song of praise and thankfulness to the good God who had
so well guided them to where they would be; and the colonists entered
in and possessed the land.

This all happened upon a fair day now close upon three hundred years
gone by. From century to century the city has grown, yet always in
accord with the lines established by its founders. The houses
a-building now are as the houses built three hundred years ago; and,
going yet farther into the past, as the houses which were built by the
Moors when they