“I am afraid you are right, and as I have invested in San Diego all I
have in the world, I see no hope; nothing but hard-featured poverty
staring me in the face,” said Mr. Holman, sadly.

“If it were owing to natural laws of the necessities of things that San
Diego is thus crippled, our fate would seem to me less hard to bear,”
said Don Mariano; “but to know that the necessities of commerce, the
inevitable increase of the world’s population, the development of our
State, all, all demand that Southern California be not sacrificed, _and
yet it is_, and our appeals to Congress are of no avail! All this adds
bitterness to our disappointment. Yes, it is bitter to be reduced to
want, only because a few men, without any merit, without any claims upon
the nation’s gratitude, desire more millions.”

Thus the disheartened friends discoursed, fully realizing their terrible
proximity to that financial disaster which was sure to overtake them. In
the generosity and kindness of their hearts, they felt added regret,
thinking of so many others who, in San Diego, were in the same position
of impending ruin; so many good, worthy people, who certainly did not
deserve to be thus pitilessly sacrificed; so many who yet clung to the
hopes of '72, when all rushed to buy city lots; so many out of whose
hopes three years of disappointment had not quenched all life. The
failure of Jay Cook in the fall of ’73 had made the financial heart of
America shrink with discouragement and alarm, but San Diego did not
realize how much her own fate was involved in that sad catastrophe, and
continued her gay building of proud castles in the air and humble little
cottages on the earth—very close to the earth, but covered with fragrant
flowers, with roses, honeysuckles and fuchsias. These little one-story
wooden cottages were intended for temporary dwellings only. By and by
the roomy stone or brick mansions would be erected, when the Texas
Pacific Railroad—the highway of traffic across the continent—should
bring through San Diego the commerce between Asia and the Atlantic
seaboard, between China and Europe. San Diego lived her short hour of
hope and prosperity, and smiled and went to sleep on the brink of her
own grave, the grave that Mr. C. P. Huntington had already begun to
excavate, to dig as he stealthily went about the halls of our National
Capitol “offering bribes.” But such “foul work” was then only surmised
and scarcely believed. It was reserved for Mr. Huntington himself to
furnish proof that this was the fact. His letters were not published
until years after, but the world has them now, and the monopoly, with
all its power, cannot gainsay them.

The three friends were yet discussing this painful topic of their
pilgrimage, when Mr. Mechlin observed that Don Mariano was looking very
pale, and asked if he felt ill.

“Yes,” Don Mariano replied; “I feel very cold. I feel as if I was frozen
through and through. When we were at the Governor’s office I felt very
warm, and when we came out my clothing was saturated with perspiration.
Now I feel as if I had been steeped in ice.”

“This won’t do. You must change your clothes at once,” said Mr. Mechlin.

Mr. Holman also became alarmed at seeing the bluish pallor of his face.

“Why, this is a congestive chill,” said he, hurrying off to call the
doctor, who resided at the hotel, and who fortunately was at home.

Prompt and efficient medical attendance saved Don Mariano’s life, but he
was too ill to leave his bed for several days. His two friends remained
with him, writing home that business matters detained them.

Doña Josefa did not feel anxious; she thought that her husband was busy
negotiating a loan on his land, and this detained him.

Gabriel and Lizzie also were in constant attendance, and thus the sick
man was kept in a cheerful frame of mind, a thing much to be desired in
sickness always, but more especially in his case, accustomed as he was
to be surrounded by a loving family.

Still he was anxious to return home. Reluctantly the doctor allowed him
to do so, hoping that the salubrious climate of Southern California
would be beneficial. But he said to him:

“I let you go on condition that you pledge me your word to be very
careful not to get into a profuse perspiration and then rush out into
the cold air. If your lungs had not been originally so healthy and
strong you could not have rallied so soon, if ever; but they are yet
filled with phlegm, and the least cold might give you pneumonia.” To
Gabriel the doctor repeated the same words of warning, adding: “Not only
is the condition of your father’s lungs very precarious, but also that
of his heart. He must not task either too much.”

Gabriel was thoroughly alarmed at hearing the doctor’s opinion, and
immediately wrote to his mother how careful his father ought to be, and
how she should watch him.

Don Mariano tried to be careful, but having been very healthy all his
life, he did not know how to be an invalid, nor guard against fresh
colds.

About two weeks had elapsed since his return from San Francisco, when a
notice that many of his city lots would be sold for taxes brought Don
Mariano to town. He still held to the belief that a railroad to San
Diego would surely be built at some future day, but had ceased hoping to
see that day. However, he would willingly have waited for a rise in real
estate before selling any of his city property, but he saw it was
ruinous for him to pay taxes—taxes for town property and taxes for
squatters—it was too much; so he reluctantly concluded that it would be
best to lose a great many lots (yes, whole blocks), permitting them to
be sold for taxes, hoping to redeem them on the following year if Tom
Scott was more successful with the Texas Pacific. Mr. Mechlin and Mr.
Holman did the same, and many other unlucky ones followed their
discouraging examples. Thus city lots by the hundreds were sold every
year.

Don Mariano saw his city property thus sacrificed before his eyes at
public sale, just as he had seen his cattle buried under the snow. He
submitted in both cases to the inevitable without a murmur; but this
time the blow seemed heavier. He was pecuniarily less able to bear it,
and being in bad health and discouraged, his misfortunes were more
depressing. He rode home saddened indeed.

Victoriano, who was now able to be about (but said he _mistrusted_ his
legs), was with him.

“Father, why don’t you use some of that money Clarence sent you? I am
sure he would approve your doing so, and feel glad, _very_ glad, indeed,
that you did it,” said Victoriano, when they had driven for a long time
without uttering a word.

Don Mariano turned sharply and said: “Why should I use Clarence’s money?
If I had delivered the cattle to Fred Haverly, as it was agreed I
should, then I would have a right to take from Clarence’s money the
price of the cattle delivered. But having delivered no cattle, I take no
money.”

“Everett was saying that Clarence distinctly stated to his father that
the cattle in the Alamar rancho with your brand were all his, and would
be driven as soon as the weather permitted. Mr. Darrell thinks that the
cattle lost belonged to Clarence, and not to you.”

“Mr. Darrell is wrong, then. I cannot expect to be paid for cattle I did
not deliver.”

“But he says you had sold them already. If they were lost on the way it
was neither your fault nor your loss.”

“No, but was my misfortune, not Clarence’s.”

“The cattle were going to Clarence’s mines, which goes to prove that
they had been bought by him.”

“I cannot view the matter like that,” Don Mariano said, and Victoriano
saw his mind was settled upon the subject, and it was best not to annoy
him by insisting in opposition.

When they arrived home they found that Doña Josefa had received a
telegram from Gabriel, sent the night before, saying that he, Lizzie and
the baby would spend Christmas and New Year’s Day at the rancho. This
was glad news, indeed, and most unexpected, for inasmuch as Lizzie had
just been down on a visit and hurried back, so that Gabriel would not be
all alone on Christmas, they did not think that Lizzie would want to
take the trip so soon again. But Lizzie would travel many more miles to
be with her family. And the reason that Gabriel had for coming was,
moreover, a most powerful one.

He had one day casually met the doctor who attended his father, and
after inquiring whether Don Mariano was better, added:

“I tell you frankly, Don Gabriel, your father may yet live many years,
but he is in danger, too, of dying very suddenly.”

“How? Why so?” Gabriel asked, pale with alarm.

“Because his heart may give out if his lungs don’t work well, and as he
is not very careful of himself, you see he might task his heart with
heavier work than it can perform. If he is kept from excitement and gets
rid of all that phlegm which has accumulated in his lungs, he will be
well enough. So write to him to be careful in avoiding colds,” said the
doctor.

“I will go and tell him so myself,” Gabriel said.

“That is right. The case is serious, I assure you.”

This short dialogue brought Gabriel home.

From the time he had entered the bank he had never been absent from it
one minute during office hours, so a three weeks’ vacation was readily
granted to him.

All the Mechlins would come to Alamar to pass the holidays. George told
his father that they might as well go back to their home again since his
lameness did not require daily medical attendance.

Mr. Mechlin replied that they would decide upon that after New Years,
but he was evidently pleased at the prospect of returning to Alamar.

The Alamar house looked once more as it had in the days of old, before
squatters invaded the place; it was full of people, and music and
laughter resounded under the hospitable roof. Mercedes, however, sat
silent, and though she smiled her own sweet smile, it was too sad; it
failed to deepen the cunning little dimples as it did in other days. The
Don and Mr. Mechlin, too, were not as cheerful as they used to be. In
that visit to San Francisco “_a change came over the spirit of their
dream_,” and it seemed to have come to quench the light of their lives.

But the young people wanted to decorate the house with green boughs and
have a huge Christmas-tree, and the Don himself went to help them to get
pine branches and red “_fusique_” berries. The tree would be in honor of
his two grandchildren; they were now eighteen months old, and the proud
mammas said they were so intelligent that they would surely appreciate
the tree.

Everett, Alice, Rosario and Victoriano were the committee on
decorations; Carlota, Caroline, Lucy and Webster were the committee on
refreshments. While the laughter of the young people came ringing out
through the parlor windows, Don Mariano and Mr. Mechlin slowly walked up
and down the back veranda in earnest conversation.

“Yes,” Mr. Mechlin said, as if to reiterate some previous assertion,
“yes, I have lived my allotted term; my life is now an incumbrance—nay,
it is a burden on those who love me. If I were not living, George could
take his wife, his mother and sister, to reside in New York, but because
I cannot live in that climate, all those dear ones remain in this
exile.”

“But why should you call it exile? They don’t think it is; and even if
it were, my friend, you have no right to cut your life off at your
will,” said Don Mariano.

“Why not? Life is a free gift, and often a very onerous one. Why keep
it, when to reject it would be preferable? when it would release others
from painful obligations?”

“But are you sure that the grief and horror of knowing that you took
your own life would not be a million times worse than the supposed exile
you imagine to be so objectionable?”

“Perhaps so; but I assure you, since I have lost all my money, and when
I am too old to make another fortune, my health has begun to fail again.
I hate life without health, and these constant annoyances of financial
difficulties will end by prostrating me on a sick-bed again. Now, when I
have lost nearly all the money I invested in San Diego, now they come
down on me to pay a note of ten thousand dollars which I endorsed, with
five others. Why don’t the others pay their share? I am willing to pay
two thousand dollars, but not the entire sum.”

“I don’t see why you should, either. What does your lawyer say?”

“He shrugs his shoulders, caresses his side-whiskers, and says he
_thinks_ that some of the other indorsers are insolvent, because their
property has depreciated so much that it would bring nothing if sold;
while those that have some means, no doubt, put everything out of their
hands, so I am left alone to pay the entire sum.”

The sad dialogue of the grandpapas was now interrupted, as they were
called to witness the glee of the babies at the sight of the illuminated
Christmas-tree. When the surprise of first sight was over, little
Mariano Mechlin stretched out both hands for the colored candles. His
uncle Tano gave him a tin trumpet, teaching him how to blow it;
whereupon baby Mechlin gave the company a blast, and looked so surprised
at his own performance, and gazed around so triumphantly and yet so
perplexed, that he made everybody laugh. Josefita looked at her cousin
distrustfully and gave her arms to her papa, as if she thought Marianito
was entirely too martial for the vicinity of peaceful babies like
herself. Gabriel took her near the tree to select any toy she liked. She
fancied a string of bright balls, which her father gave her. The babies
were allowed to be in the parlor for nearly an hour, and they were so
bright, trying to repeat what was taught them, that it was really
amusing to watch them. Marianito sang for the company; all were
surprised to hear so young a baby sing so well. None enjoyed more
heartily their cunning ways than the two grandfathers, especially Don
Mariano, and both babies clung to him when the nurses came to take them
to bed.

When the babies had made their exit, the children of larger growth had
their music and dancing until ten, supper being then announced. On
returning to the parlor, after supper, the clock upon the mantel struck
twelve; at the same time a curtain ran up, and an altar was disclosed to
view, tastefully decorated in the Roman Catholic style, having statues
of the Virgin Mary, the divine infant, enveloped in fleecy drapery, and
St. Joseph standing by his side. Behind the cradle were three magi, and
further off, the hills of Judea were seen. As all the company were Roman
Catholics, all entered into the spirit of the commemoration, and joined
with true feeling in the carol led by Mrs. Darrell and Alice. Other
sacred songs were sung, and then all retired for the night; the Darrells
promising to come on the following evening to have another dance,
because—said Victoriano—it must be celebrated that they had heard from
Clarence, and that he had found his legs, meaning that he (Tano) had
again the use of his limbs.

Christmas Day was passed very happily, and in the evening the young
people assembled in the parlor for a dance. Don Mariano excused himself
to Mr. Mechlin, saying he felt badly, and thought that he ought to be in
bed.

At about eleven o’clock he sat up in bed and looked around as if wishing
to speak. Gabriel and Mercedes were sitting by his bed, and promptly
asked if he wished for anything.

“The sins of our legislators have brought us to this,” he exclaimed,
leaning back. Presently he said: “Call your mother, my son.”

Gabriel called his mother, who being in the next room, talking with Mrs.
Mechlin, was quickly by his side.

“Call Elvira and Tano. Call Carlota and Rosario and George. Call all,
all, quickly! I fear, my beloved son, I fear I am dying! Bring all my
girls; I must bless them all!”

Mercedes had her arms around him. He looked at her lovingly.

“My baby, kiss me. Tell Clarence I bless him with my last breath.” His
voice began to fail him, but his eyes seemed glowing with an intensity
that was startling. He sat up again, looking at each one of the anxious
faces around his bed. “God bless you all, my beloved ones,” said he,
hoarsely.

“Papa, darling, can’t we do something to relieve you?” asked Mercedes.
He shook his head and whispered:

“Too late. The sins of our legislators!”

“Do you feel pain, father?” Gabriel asked.

“Not now,” he whispered, extending his hand to George as if to say
good-by. He looked again to see whether every one of his family was
there; he forgot no one; he seemed anxious to see them all for the last
time. He extended his arms to his wife; she came to him. “Pray for me,”
he whispered, moving his lips as if in prayer, and leaning on Gabriel,
who held him, closed his eyes and sighed. A few aspirations followed
that last sigh, and all was over—his noble soul had passed away.

For some moments no one believed that his lofty and noble spirit had
left the earth, but when the truth was at last realized, the scene of
grief, of heart-rending agony, that followed would be impossible for me
to describe.

Closely in the sad train of this mournful event, and as a fitting sequel
and a complement of such dire misfortune, another disaster, more
unexpected, more dreadful and tragic, followed, which must now be
related. It shall be told as briefly as possible.

A few days had passed after the funeral, and the Alamar family were
still in town. Doña Josefa and Mercedes were at the Mechlins.
Victoriano, Carlota and Rosario were at the Holmans; that is, they slept
there, but as Mercedes was again prostrated with fever, they, as well as
the Holmans, divided their time between the two houses.

One morning Mr. Mechlin arose from the breakfast table and said he was
going hunting.

“Don’t go far, James; you are too weak,” said Mrs. Mechlin.

“I think, papa, you ought not to carry that heavy gun. You eat nothing,
and walk too far, carrying it,” Caroline said.

“Will you carry it for me?” he said, smiling.

“I will,” Gabriel said; “I’ll take George’s, too, and go with you, if
you’ll permit me.”

“It isn’t necessary,” he replied, going towards his room.

“I think papa has taken to heart the death of Don Mariano more than any
one sees,” said Caroline.

“I know he has; he has hardly slept or eaten enough to sustain life
since that awful night,” Mrs. Mechlin said, “and constantly talks about
soon joining his best friend.”

“I have observed how very sad he is. I wrote uncle to come; I think to
see his brother will be great consolation to him,” said George.

The report of a gun was heard in Mr. Mechlin’s room, and all jumped to
their feet. Gabriel was the first to run and got to the room in advance
of the others. He found Mr. Mechlin shot through the heart.

“Oh, God! Was it accidental?” Mrs. Mechlin exclaimed, clasping her
husband to heart. The dying man smiled, whispering:

“Do not mourn for me; it is best so; I shall be happier.” He looked
lovingly at the anxious faces surrounding him, and closed his eyes
forever.

CHAPTER XXXV.—_The Fashion of Justice in San Diego._

If those kind eyes of the Goddess of Justice were not bandaged, but she
could see how her pure white robes have been begrimed and soiled in San
Diego, and how her lofty dignity is thus lowered to the dust, she would
no doubt feel affronted and aggrieved. And if she is so irreverently
maltreated, can she afford any protection to those who must rely on her
alone, having no riches to maintain protracted litigation or carry their
plaints to higher tribunals? To the moneyless laity Justice thus defiled
seems as helpless as themselves. She is powerless to accomplish her
mission upon earth whenever a Judge, through weakness or design, may
choose to disregard her dictates. At present the dignity of a Judge’s
personality is more sacred than the abstract impersonality of justice.
Because the accepted theory being that Judges are always just and
incorruptible (and generally the supposition is correct), there is a
broad shelter for a Judge who may be neither just nor impartial. What
mockery of justice it is in our fair land of freedom to say that a bad
Judge can be impeached when impeachment is so hedged with difficulties
as to be impossible—utterly ineffectual to protect the poor, victimized
laity! Who is the poor litigant that would dare arraign an unjust Judge,
well sheltered in his judicial ermine, and the entire profession ready
to champion him? “_Libel_” would be the cry against any one who would
dare hold the mirror for such Judge to see himself! Ah, yes, when the
real libel is to distort the law and degrade the mission of justice on
earth!

Peter Roper, knowing well with what impunity he could violate justice
and decency, conceived the brilliant idea of taking the Mechlin house at
Alamar, now that the family were sojourning in town. Peter did not like
to divide the spoils, but as accomplices were absolutely necessary,
there was no alternative but to take his friend and client Gasbang into
the plot.

On a Sunday evening Peter proceeded to unfold his plan before John, who
had come from his farm to attend church and was attired in a white vest
and black coat, having just come from evening service. For, as I have
said before, John Gasbang was a pillar of the church now, and never
failed in his attendance every Sunday. People knew that in old times,
when John was very poor, he used to play “_monte_” with the Indians and
cheat them out of their money. Many times he had been known to spend
almost the entire night sitting cross-legged on a blanket with a tallow
candle set in a bottle to light his high-toned game, surrounded by the
select company of naked Indians, who were too fascinated to see how
plainly John was robbing them. Pitilessly would John strip his
unsophisticated tattooed comrades of everything they owned on this
earth. Their reed baskets, bows and arrows, strings of beads, tufts of
feather-tips, or any other rustic and barbaric ornaments. All, all, John
would gather up with his skillfully shuffled cards. The spoils he thus
collected he would sell to other Indians from whom he would presently
gather in (like the good Sexton he was), gather in, with high-toned and
highly skillful shuffling. But John now was a rich man. Kindly San Diego
had forgiven John’s petty thieving. The money won from the poor Indians
had helped him to thrive, and consequently convinced him that, after
all, cheating was no worse than other sins, the gravity of which
entirely depended upon the trick of hiding them. He would now try to
hide his humble, predatory gambling, he said to himself, and seem
respectable.

Yes, he would wear a white vest and try to look honest, but on hearing
Roper’s project, his dull, fishy eyes revolved quickly in their little
sockets, and his square jaws expanded like those of a snake before it
shakes its rattle and coils up to spring. His mouth watered in
anticipation of the sweets of ill-gotten gain as he listened attentively
to all that Roper had to say.

“I’ll see Hogsden the first thing in the morning,” said he, joyously.

“But wait. Can you trust him?”

“Trust him? I should say I could, and if he weakens, there is his wife
to brace him up with her good advice. He owes a big sum of money to old
Mechlin; so old Hoggy will be only too glad to get even by jumping the
house. I suppose our friend, the Judge, is with us.”

“Don’t be silly. Do you suppose I would do a thing of this kind if I
wasn’t sure of him? He won’t fail me. He’ll do as I say. Be sure of
that, and don’t talk. Come to my house now and I’ll draw up the
conveyance. Hog. must sign his quit-claim deed, and then I’ll see that
his location of one hundred and sixty acres is properly filed. But,
mind, if Hogsden betrays us, he’ll spoil our game,” observed Roper.

“Leave that to me,” said John, rubbing his hands and giving his vest a
downward pull.

The result of this dialogue was that Hogsden quit-claimed all his,
“right, title and interest in a certain parcel of land, etc., etc., with
a dwelling house and other improvements, etc., etc.,” and the
description of the property might have applied to a hundred others in
the county. This transaction accomplished and recorded, they took the
furniture that had been left in the house by the Mechlins and put it
temporarily in the barn; Mrs. Hogsden taking only such articles as she
wished to keep. She stole them brazenly, saying she had bought them.

It was further agreed that they would work the farm in partnership,
dividing profits equally, and a contract in writing to this effect was
signed by them.

Roper now being a property holder, besides being so influential with
_the_ Judge, thought he could soar to higher altitudes. By the
assistance of Gasbang and a few others, whom he said belonged to his
_gang_, he managed to get himself nominated for Representative to
Congress. Bursting with pride, puny Peter started on his way to glory,
to _stump_ his district. He would begin at San Bernardino and carry the
county by storm, with the force of his eloquence and personal magnetism,
he said, with characteristic modesty.

He made speeches at San Pascual, and Poway, and San Bernardo, and Bear
Valley, and Julian, but his greatest effort, the achievement that would
crown his brow with laurels, that effort he reserved for Los Angeles.
Quite a big crowd was marshaled to hear him. He had paid a good deal of
money in advertisements so as to collect an audience. He succeeded; a
crowd was there ready to make up in quantity what it lacked in quality.

Roper came forward. His face was red as usual, but he seemed sober—he
stood straight. He was as loquacious as ever, of course, and talked
incessantly for quite a while, making the crowd laugh. After he had all
his audience in a laughing mood with his coarse anecdotes and broad
jokes, he thought he would capture their votes beyond a doubt if he then
and there proved himself—by his own admissions—to be _low_, the lowest
of the lowly—so very low, so very disreputable, that no one could be
lower.

“You cannot doubt,” said Peter, “that my sympathies as well as my
interests, are with you, the working people, the poor who must work or
starve. I have nothing in common with bloated bondholders or pampered
monopolists who have enriched themselves with the earnings of the poor.
I don’t know how I came to be a lawyer. I suppose it happened because I
don’t like to work. I would rather talk and let others work. [Laughter.]
I am a child of the people, and _for_ the people—the poor people I mean.
My mother was a cook, a poor cook—poor in pocket I mean. Her cookery may
have been rich [laughter], but upon that point I couldn’t enlighten you,
for I have forgotten the flavor of her dishes. But she was a cook by
profession, just as I am a lawyer by profession, and one is as good as
the other. [Laughter.] As for my father, of him I know nothing to speak
of—literally—[laughter], so the less said on that head, the sooner
mended; for if the fact of my being here goes to prove _to you_ that I
had a father, that is all the proof _I_ ever had myself.”

Here Peter laughed, but he laughed alone. He thought that a burst of
laughter and applause would follow this last shameless, revolting
admission, but not a sound was heard. He had overstepped the bounds of
decency so far, that even such a crowd as made his audience was silent
as if unanimous disgust was beyond utterance. Roper was evidently
disconcerted.

“We don’t want to be represented in Washington by a fellow who exults in
degradation and has no respect for the memory of his mother,” said a
loud voice, and the crowd began to disperse.

Soon Peter’s native impudence came to his aid and he tried to recommence
his discourse. “Look here,” he cried, “where are you going? You ain’t
going to send my mother to Congress! Did you think I came to ask you to
vote for her?” He went on in this coarse, bantering style which had
taken so well at first, but in vain. Nobody wanted to hear him now. It
seemed as if the ghost of the poor reviled cook had come, like that of
Banquo, to frighten off the audience. In a few minutes only about half a
dozen of his supporters had been left, and they remained to scold.

“Well,” said one, looking back at the receding crowd, “that cake is all
dough, Peter. I hope your mother would have made a better job of it.”

“A delightful dough,” said another; “and his goose is well cooked. I
say, Peter, you cooked your goose brown, browner than your mother ever
cooked hers, and I bet on it.”

Peter answered with an oath.

“The worst of it is, that in cooking your goose, you burnt ours to a
cinder. We haven’t the ghost of a chance now, and the Republican
candidate will have a walk-over to Congress,” said a third supporter.

Alas for human delusions! This fiasco was the crowning glory of Roper’s
political campaign. Like the celebrated ambitious toad which cracked its
sides by the force of its own inflation, Peter came to grief,
ignominious grief; that is to say, it would have been ignominious to any
one not thoroughly inoculated with disgrace as he, _according to his own
version_, must have been from the day of his birth.

“Let me ask you a question, Roper,” said a fourth friend. “Why did you
bring out such a thing against your mother? It was your misfortune as
long as you kept quiet about it, but now it is your shame. What was the
good of telling against your own mother? Don’t you know that people,
even the humblest, must censure and despise you for it? Few, very few
decent men, like to have anything to do with a man who reviles his dead
mother, no matter if she was a poor cook. What pleasure can you find in
proclaiming your shame?”

Roper laughed loud and derisively, saying:

“What will you bet that I’ll have just as good and just as many friends
in San Diego as I ever had before?”

“Do you mean to say that the people of San Diego _approve_ of language
such as you used to-night? Approve your conduct?”

“Never mind about that, only will you take my bet?”

The henchman shrugged his shoulders and walked off, but if he had taken
that bet, he would have lost.

When Colonel Hornblower received the news of Roper’s fiasco, it occurred
to him that he would take a trip to Europe. He had now made money enough
out of the troubles and distress he and Roper brought upon others, to
indulge in that luxury, the pleasure of saying he had been to Europe.

“My dear,” said the Colonel to his wife, “I think now is the best time
to take that trip to Europe we have had in our hearts for so long. Get
ready; let us go.”

“What has happened?” Mrs. Colonel Hornblower asked.

“Nothing, except that that partner of mine made a fiasco of his
political campaign,” and the Colonel related to his swarthy lady Roper’s
speech, and how it was received.

“How absurd! so unnecessary!” she exclaimed.

“Perfectly, but you see, for a man of _my_ dignity the thing is awkward.
What will the town say of _me_, *ME*?”

“The town will say nothing. As long as Roper has the friendship of Judge
Lawlack he can have clients; and as long as he has clients the San Diego
people will be indulgent to him, no matter how debased he says he is.
However, drop him, and let’s go to Europe. I wish we could get letters
to distinguished people abroad.”

“What for? Our American ministers can present us to the best society,
and besides, I am sure I am well known abroad. My name—the name of
Colonel Hornblower—must be as familiar to Europeans as the names of
other distinguished Americans. I am the most prominent man in San Diego.
All the world knows San Diego, all the world must know Colonel
Hornblower.”

“Still, I would like to get letters.”

“Not at all necessary, I assure you. I’ll tell our minister in England
that Mrs. Colonel Hornblower wishes to be presented to Queen Victoria,
and he’ll present you. The Queen, no doubt, will wish to make our
acquaintance.”

“I would like to see other royal people. I would like to see the Pope,
also.”

“You shall see as many princes and princesses as you like. We Americans
are princes, all of us. We are the equals of princes. As for the Pope, I
would not take one step to make his acquaintance, unless he met me half
way; but if you like to see him, we’ll get an introduction easily.
Perhaps he might invite us to dinner. If he does, I hope it won’t be on
Friday, as fish don’t agree with me.”

“Does he ever invite people to dinner?”

“Distinguished people, of course.”

The Hornblowers sailed for Europe before Roper returned from his
stumping tour. He was detained at Los Angeles, where he had been beaten
so badly in a bar-room brawl that he was obliged to keep in bed for
several days. The Colonel then wisely slipped off for Europe, to hob-nob
with royal people and take dinner with the Pope, perhaps.

Mrs. Hornblower conjectured rightly. Roper’s disgrace was condoned by
San Diego, because he was under the patronage of Judge Lawlack, and in
San Diego everybody has a law suit.

But has the Judge no moral responsibility in this? _Has he the right to
impose upon the community_ a man so self-debased and noxious? If the
Judge were to withdraw his support Peter would collapse like a pricked
gas-bag, to be swept off into the gutter. But the Judge is the genii,
“_the Slave of the Ring_” and his power keeps the little gas-bag afloat,
soaring as high as it is in the nature of little gas-bags to soar. The
Judge keeping in his hand the check-string, kindly preventing him from
going to destruction.

With characteristic coarseness, amounting to inhumanity, Peter Roper and
Gasbang decided to throw down their masks, and reveal their fraud in
“_jumping_” Mr. Mechlin’s house. They came to this decision about ten
days after Mr. Mechlin’s death.

Gabriel had returned that same day from San Francisco, where he had
accompanied the remains of his father-in-law, and deposited them in a
vault to await until Mrs. Mechlin should be able to travel, when she,
with all the family, would go East.

Mr. Lawrence Mechlin had also arrived. He started from New York on the
day of his brother’s death, two hours after receiving George’s telegram
conveying the terrible news. He reached San Francisco on the night
before the steamer for San Diego sailed. Thus he and George came
together.

The Deputy Sheriff presented himself to announce to Mrs. Mechlin that
her furniture left at her country house had been taken out by order of
Peter Roper, and put on the road about two miles from the house. As Mrs.
Mechlin was too ill to see any one, excepting the members of her family,
the Sheriff made his statement to George, in the presence of his uncle
and Gabriel, just arrived.

The proceedings seemed so atrocious that at first no one could
understand the Sheriff.

“Do you mean to say that Peter Roper claims to own our house, and
because he is the owner, has taken out the furniture and left it lying
on the road?” asked George.

“Yes; that’s what I was told to say,” the Sheriff replied.

“But why? How is he the owner of our house?”

“Because he and Gasbang bought it from Hogsden, who located a claim
there after you abandoned the place.”

The trick was infamous. George and Gabriel saw through it. There was
nothing to do but to bring a suit in ejectment to get rid of them, but
in the meantime they would hold possession (perhaps for years), and that
was what they wanted, to get the property into litigation.

Gabriel went to state the matter to the lawyer who had attended to Mr.
Mechlin’s law business, and he corroborated their opinion, that there
was no other course to pursue but to file a complaint in ejectment to
dispossess the thieves.

“Is there no quicker way to obtain redress?” George asked.

“No, sir,” the lawyer answered; “as the deed is done by Peter Roper and
John Gasbang, the Judge will decide in their favor, and you will have to
appeal.”

“But this is atrocious,” Mr. Lawrence Mechlin said; “Do you mean to say
that people’s houses can be taken like that in this country?”

“Not generally; but Peter Roper might, if there is the ghost of a
pretext, and if there is a dishonest servant, like Hogsden, left in
charge, who will steal and help to steal; then, you see, the thing is
easy enough, as long as the Judge befriends trespassers. But the Supreme
Court will put things to right again. That is to say, if the Judge’s
findings are not a string of falsehoods which will utterly mislead the
Supreme Court.”

This property, Mr. Mechlin had repeatedly said, he intended should be a
homestead for his wife, so the suit in ejectment was brought in her
name. She at the same time filing a petition for a homestead before the
Probate Court, and asking that Gabriel Alamar be appointed administrator
of her husband’s estate.

All this would, of course, involve the property in tedious legal
proceedings, there being the probate matters, beside the suit in
ejectment to litigate in the District Court. The attorney employed in
the case advised George to have a deed executed by Doña Josefa,
conveying the property to Mrs. Mechlin, as it had been agreed before the
death of their husbands that it should be done. Doña Josefa cheerfully
assented, remembering that Don Mariano had said to her:

“If I should die before I get my land patented, the first thing you must
do is to make a conveyance of his place to Mr. Mechlin.”

The shock caused by his father’s death when that of Don Mariano was yet
so recent, acted most injuriously upon George’s health. It made him
feverish, inflaming his wound again very painfully, as the ball had
never been extracted; now it chafed the wound, and gave him as much pain
as before.

Mrs. Mechlin, Doña Josefa and Mercedes were also in their beds,
suffering with nervous prostration and night fevers. It seemed
impossible that people could be more bereaved and disheartened than
these ladies, and yet exist. Mr. Lawrence Mechlin saw that George must
have skillful medical attendance without delay, and wanted his own
doctor to take him under his care. So he and Gabriel arranged all
business and other matters in order that George should go East. It was
heart-rending to Elvira—the mere thought of leaving her mother and
sister sick, and all the family in such distress—but she must go with
her husband. Gabriel would attend to the lawsuits. He had powers of
attorney from George and Mrs. Mechlin, and was the administrator.

The answer to Mrs. Mechlin’s complaint was a masterpiece of unblushing
effrontery that plainly showed it had originated in a brain where brazen
falsehoods and other indecencies thrived like water-reptiles growing
huge and luxuriating in slimy swamps. The characteristic document ran in
the following manner:

    _In the District Court of the —— of the County of San Diego,
    State of California._

    _Beatrice Mechlin_, _Plaintiff_,

    _v._

    _Peter Roper_, _John Gasbang_, and _Charles Hogsden_,
    _Defendants_.

    And now come the defendants, Peter Roper, John Gasbang and
    Charles Hogsden, and for answer to plaintiff’s complaint, on
    file herein, they and each of them say:

That they deny that in the year of 1873, or at any other time before or
after that date, James Mechlin was owner of the premises described in
this complaint; deny that the said James Mechlin ever purchased from
William Mathews the aforesaid property or any part thereof, or paid any
money or any other valuable consideration; deny that the said Mechlin
ever built a house, or planted trees, or resided on the said property
himself, with his family, or by agent or servant occupied said premises;
deny that respondent, Charles Hogsden, was ever put in charge of the
aforesaid premises or any part thereof, as the agent, or servant, or
tenant of the said James Mechlin; deny that the said James Mechlin ever
was in the possession of the said premises, but on the contrary, these
defendants allege that if James Mechlin had any kind of possession, it
was as a naked trespasser, and his title to said property was at all
times disputed and contested by other parties.

These defendants allege that defendant Charles Hogsden was the rightful
owner of the said premises; that defendants Peter Roper and John Gasbang
are the innocent purchasers of the legal and equitable title, and are
now in actual and lawful possession of the said premises, having paid a
just and fair price to the rightful owner, Charles Hogsden.

These defendants further allege, that the plaintiff Beatrice Mechlin
wrongfully, unlawfully, fraudulently and maliciously, and for the
purpose of cheating and defrauding the aforesaid innocent purchasers,
Peter Roper and John Gasbang, out of their rights in said property,
entered into a fraudulent conspiracy with one Josefa Alamar and one
Gabriel Alamar, wherein it was agreed by and between them that said
Josefa Alamar, as executrix of the estate of Mariano Alamar, and
purporting to carry out the wishes and instructions of her deceased
husband, the said Mariano Alamar, would execute a deed of sale or a
confirmatory deed of said property.

And these defendants aver, that in pursuance of the fraudulent
conspiracy aforesaid, the said Josefa did execute a fraudulent deed of
sale to the said Beatrice Mechlin, for the purpose of cheating and
defrauding these innocent purchasers, etc.

This string of prevarications ran on for about twenty pages more,
repeating, _ad nauseam_, the same falsehoods with all legal alliteration
and more than legal license.

Gabriel was left to attend this suit and other matters, and with grief,
which was too profound for description and too heart-rending almost for
human endurance, the two loving families separated.

Elvira must leave her beloved mother in her sad bereavement; Lizzie must
see hers go to perform the painful duty of accompanying the remains of a
beloved husband.

In sorrow and silent tears the Alamar family returned to their country
house the day after the Mechlins left.

Mrs. Mechlin’s suit in ejectment against the “_innocent_ purchasers,”
Peter and John, was, as a matter of course, decided in favor of these
_innocents_ of Judge Gryllus Lawlack. The Judge knew, as well as any one
else, that the allegations of these men were brazen falsehoods strung
together for the purpose of robbery. Nevertheless, his Honor Lawlack
made his rulings, and set down his findings, all to suit the robbers.
Among the findings that his Honor had the hardihood to write down, were
these: That “James Mechlin had never possessed the premises in question;
had never lived there in person or by proxy, and had never made any
improvements, etc.” And these premeditated falsehoods went to the
Supreme Court. The case was, of course, reversed and remanded for new
trial, but with additional misstatements it was _again_ decided by Judge
Lawlack in favor of his friends. Thus, in fact, the Supreme Court was
_reversed by Judge Gryllus Lawlack_. The case was the second time
remanded by the Supreme Court, but in a new trial it was _again_ decided
in favor of Peter and John. This being the same as “reversing the
Supreme Court,” but Lawlack laughs at this, saying that the Supreme
Court decides according to their opinions, and he (Lawlack) does the
same.

As for Peter Roper, he made no concealment of there being a _private
bargain_ between himself and Judge Gryllus Lawlack. Peter to render
political or other services, Gryllus to reward them with judicial ones.

At a political meeting a friend of Roper (a lawyer in the pay of the
monopoly), urged him to make a speech in favor of the railroad. Peter
declined, saying that as Gryllus Lawlack wanted to run again for the
Judgeship, and knew how anti-monopolist San Diego County was, it would
hurt the Judge politically to have him (Peter Roper) speak for the
monopoly, as everybody knew that he (Peter) was the principal support of
the Judge, and exponent of his principles.

“And,” concluded Peter, “if I speak for the monopoly the Judge will
grant a rehearing in a suit I am opposing, and will not decide my case
as I want. That is understood between us.”

This is the fashion of dispensing justice in San Diego, just as Peter
bargains for.

But this order of things (or rather disorder) could not have been
possible if the Texas Pacific Railroad had not been strangled, as San
Diego would not then be the poor, crippled and dwarfed little city that
she now is. In this unfortunate condition it is that she submits to the
scandalous debaucheries of judicial favorites; debaucheries and
violations of common justice, social decorum, of individual rights;
debaucheries tolerated because the local power sanctions with his
encouragement such proceedings.

If San Diego had been permitted to grow, to have a population, her
administration of the laws would have been in other hands, and outrages
like breaking into the Mechlin house could not have occurred. The voters
of the county would not then have elected a Judge that could reward such
vandalism, by allowing the thieves to keep the stolen premises. Now,
however, without a railroad, San Diego is at the bottom of a bag, the
mouth of which Mr. Huntington has closed and drawn the strings tight.

CHAPTER XXXVI.—_Clarence and George with the Hod-carrier._

The lawsuits forced upon the Mechlins, to resist the fraudulent claims
trumped up by Roper and Gasbang, obliged Gabriel to delay returning to
his place at the San Francisco bank. It was very painful to leave his
mother and Mercedes still so sick and depressed, but they themselves
urged him to go, fearing that his place would be given to another, and
now, when their pecuniary circumstances were so embarrassed, he could
ill afford to lose his position. But he did, for as the bank could not
wait for him longer, they took some one else instead. He wished to spare
his family the regret of knowing this, and tried to get anything to do
to earn a living. Thus he began that agony endured by so many young men
of good families and education, trying to find employment to support
themselves decently. Gabriel found the task most difficult. He was
dignified and diffident, and could not be too pressing. He was
persevering and patient and willing to work, but he dreaded to seem
importunate, and never urged his services upon any one. But he tried
everything, every means he could think of or Lizzie suggest to him. At
times he would find some writing to do, either copying or translating
English or Spanish, but this did not give him permanent employment, and
between one job and another Lizzie’s jewelry had to be sold for their
daily expenses. They gave up the nice little cottage they had had
before, and took two small rooms at the house of a widow lady who kept a
few boarders. Their living was simple, indeed; but their landlady was
kind and courteous and obliging, and her house clean and very
respectable. Thus many months went by.

George and Elvira and Caroline wrote to them, constantly telling them
how and where they were. Now they were in Germany, as Mr. Mechlin’s
physician advised George to try some German baths in which he had great
faith. His faith was justified in George’s case, for he began to improve
rapidly before he had been taking the baths a month, and he was
confident of regaining his health perfectly. This was cheerful news, and
Lizzie felt great reluctance in writing to George how unsuccessful
Gabriel had been, thus perhaps checking his recovery by making him again
despondent; for it was a noted fact, well recognized by the two
families, that misfortunes made them all more or less physically ill.

The winter of 1876 now set in, and Gabriel thought he must make up his
mind to find some manual labor, and by that means perhaps get permanent
occupation; but here other obstacles, no less insuperable, confronted
him. He had had no training to fit him to be a mechanic, and what could
he do? He did not know, and yet his family must be supported. He had not
been able to send to his mother any money, as his scant earnings were
inadequate to support his wife and babies. There was now another little
girl to provide for—a little darling, eight months old. Poor people are
bound to have children.

About this time he got a letter from Victoriano, telling him how his
miserable legs had failed him again, giving out in the midst of his
plowing. Everett had come to help him plow up a fifty-acre piece of land
he had intended to put in wheat, but lo! before he had plowed two acres,
his legs seemed to disappear from under him as if the very Old Nick had
unscrewed his knees and carried them off. Tano added: “And here I am, a
perfect gentleman from my knees up, but a mean chicken, a ridiculous
turkey, a kangaroo, from my knees down; and this, too, when we can so
ill afford to have me lying in a sick-bed, perfectly useless. If land
was not so valueless now, we might perhaps be able to sell some,
although the price would have to be very low, on account of the delay in
getting our patent and its being mortgaged; but as all hopes in the
Texas Pacific are dead, land sales are dead, too, and we might as well
all be dead, for as we have nothing but land to get a living from, and
that is dead, you can draw the inference. However, don’t worry about us;
for the present, we are getting along very well. Several of the cattle
lost in the mountains have come and keep coming, and Everett puts our
‘_venta_’ brand on, and pays mamma, on Clarence’s account, cash down for
them. To-day he paid mamma three hundred dollars, and he says he heard
that more cattle are on the way here.”

Gabriel was very glad that his mother and sisters would have this little
pittance at least, but he was much alarmed and anxious about Victoriano,
and hastened to tell Lizzie he thought they ought to go home.

“I am truly sorry for poor Tano. Really, my sweet husband, you must let
me write to George, telling him our circumstances. He can and will help
us, and we might go back to the rancho.”

“No, don’t write to him about that yet. I’ll try to get money enough to
take us home. If Tano is sick, I certainly should be there. If he was
trying to plow, I think I can do that, too. Yes, I ought to have stayed
at home and worked in our orchard, and we would not have suffered the
distress of mind at my repeated failures. As soon as I make money enough
to pay the board bill I owe and have enough left to pay our fare to San
Diego, we’ll go home. Don’t write to George to help me, I don’t like
that. I can work and help myself.”

“Forgive me, my darling,” said Lizzie, blushing crimson; “I have already
written to George. I told him I was going to persuade you to go home. I
wrote him a month ago. I expect his answer very soon.” Seeing that
Gabriel also blushed, Lizzie added: “I am sorry if I offended you.”

“You have not offended me. I blushed because I, too, have been keeping a
secret from you, thinking you might not approve of it, or feel
humiliated.”

“What is it, pray?”

“I have been trying to learn a trade.”

“A trade! What trade, for gracious sake?”

“A very respectable one. That of a mason.”

“But can you learn that? Where?”

“Anywhere. I have been taking some lessons and earning my two dollars
per day besides.”

“Oh, Gabriel, why did you do that?” said Lizzie, her face suffused with
blushes.

“There! See how you blush because I want to learn an honest trade, and
yet see how your people, the Americans, deride us, the Spanish, for
being indolent, unwilling to work. For my part, I am willing to prove
that I will work at anything that is not absolutely repulsive, to earn a
living.”

“But how did you come to select that trade?”

“Because to go down town I had to pass by the houses of the railroad
millionaires which have been in process of construction. There are two
Californians from Santa Barbara, whom I know, working there, and to see
them earning their two dollars per day, while I have been losing months
in search of more gentlemanly work to do, suggested to me the idea of
also earning my two dollars a day while the gentlemanly occupation is
being found. Then I thought, too, that I might learn to be an architect,
perhaps.”

“That is why you have been reading those books on architecture?”

“Yes, and I think I understand a good deal about it already, but I’ll
combine practice with theory. The thing now is, as Tano is sick, I must
go home.”

“Yes, let us go. I don’t like the idea of your being a mason. Give it
up. I think I’d rather see you plowing.”

“Yes; in my own land, you mean. Don’t be proud. Let me work a little
while longer at _my trade_, and we’ll go home.”

But Lizzie was not willing he should, though she said nothing more about
it to him. She wrote to Doña Josefa, saying that if she could spare
fifty dollars, to, please, send that sum to her to enable them to come
home.

There would be ten days, however, before she could get Doña Josefa’s
reply. This was not so agreeable, but Lizzie thought she would get ready
to start as soon as the money came.

The cause of Victoriano’s second severe attack of lameness, of which he
spoke in his letter, was again exposure—exposure to cold and dampness.
About the same time that Gabriel was trying to be a mason, and working
as a common day laborer at two dollars per day, Victoriano had been
pruning trees, fixing fences, repairing irrigating ditches and plowing.
He had only two men to help him, so he worked very hard, in fact,
entirely too hard for one so unused to labor. Work broke him down.

“Plowing is too hard work for poor Tano,” Doña Josefa said, looking at
Victoriano working in a field near the house, while the sad tears ran
down her pale cheeks.

“Yes, mamma, it is; and I begged him not to try to plow again, but he
insisted on doing so,” Mercedes replied.

“What is the matter? Did he fall down?” Doña Josefa exclaimed, alarmed,
drawing her chair close to the window.

Mercedes arose from hers, and came to look down the orchard. Yes, there
was Victoriano sitting on the ground, and Everett standing by him.
Presently Everett sat down beside him, and an Indian boy, who had also
been plowing with another team, came up, leading his horses towards the
house.

Doña Josefa thought that they wanted to put the boy at some other work,
and that Tano was resting, so she sat quietly waiting to see whether he
would walk.

Mercedes now sat by her mother, also to watch Victoriano. She said:

“Mamma, tell Tano not to try plowing, the ground is very damp. He will
have that lameness again.”

“I have told him, but he says he must work now, since we are so poor,
and have only land with a title that no one believes in, and no one will
buy. So what is he to do but work? And he has been working very hard all
the fall and winter, but I fear he is getting that lameness again. He
walks lame already.”

They now saw that the Indian boy had run to the house to hitch his
horses to Clarence’s phæton and drive to where Tano was sitting.
Assisted by the Indian, Everett put Victoriano in the phæton, and
brought him to the house.

It was as his mother and sister had feared—Victoriano was again unable
to walk. With great difficulty, assisted by Everett and the servant boy,
he reached his bed.

“Don’t write to George or Gabriel that I am sick. Wait until I get
better, or worse,” said he.

Seeing, however, that there was no change in his condition, he wrote to
Gabriel himself, telling him of his second attack. Willingly would
Gabriel have taken his little family and started for home, but he did
not have money enough to pay their fare, and he owed for their last
month’s board. So there was nothing to do but to wait and work as a day
laborer yet for a while. He knew what he earned in a whole month would
scarcely be enough to pay their board, and that to go home he must write
his mother to send him money for their fare. But his pride revolted. He
hated to do this. He could not bring his mind to it. He hesitated.

About the time that Victoriano was taken sick and Gabriel was trying to
be a mason, George and family arrived in Paris on their return from
Germany. They would only spend a week or ten days in that city, and then
sail for New York.

The day before they were to start, a card was sent to Elvira from the
office of the hotel. Elvira took it very indifferently and read the
name, but the words she read seemed to be cabalistic, for she started,
turned red and then pale.

She handed the card to George, who read aloud, “Clarence Darrell.”

“Ask the gentleman to please come up,” said George to the servant, and
followed him, going to meet Clarence.

The two friends met and clasped each other in a tight embrace; to shake
hands seemed to both too cold a way of greeting, when they felt so much
pain and joy that to express their sentiments, words were inadequate.

When Clarence came in, he stretched both hands to Elvira, and she, on
the impulse of the moment, threw her arms around his neck and sobbed.
Mrs. Mechlin and Caroline were also affected to tears. Clarence brought
back to them vividly the happy days at Alamar, when Mr. Mechlin and Don
Mariano lived so contentedly in each other’s society.

All were so anxious to learn how Clarence came to be in Paris, and where
he had been in all these years, and Elvira showered so many questions
upon him, that George told him he must remain with them and tell them
everything.

The family of Mr. Lawrence Mechlin were also in the same hotel, on their
way to New York.

George said to Clarence: “Prepare yourself to be cross-questioned by
aunt, for she has been very anxious about you.”

Clarence replied he was willing to be questioned, and began his
narrative by saying how he came to miss all the letters written to him.
He said:

“When I was delirious and at the point of death in a cabin at the mines,
all the letters that came addressed to me the doctor put in a paper bag,
and when he left he considered me still too weak to read letters that
might cause me excitement, so he took the paper bag and placed it behind
a camp looking-glass which hung over a little table beside my bed. I was
so impressed with the conviction that I might not be considered fit to
marry Miss Mercedes, that when, upon asking if any letters had come for
me, and Fred Haverly, thinking that I meant other letters besides those
handed to the doctor, answered in the negative. I did not explain that I
had not received any at all. I accepted patiently what I considered a
natural result of my father’s conduct, and said nothing. I went to
Mexico, and there a fatality followed my letters again. I missed them
twice—once through the mistake of a clerk at my bankers, the second time
by a mistake of the Secretary of the Legation, who misunderstood
Hubert’s request about returning the letters to him. From Mexico I went
to South America, crossed to Brazil, and went to England. From England I
went to the Mediterranean, and since then I have been on the go, like
the restless spirit that I was, believing myself a miserable outcast. It
was almost accidentally that I came to Paris. I got a letter from
Hubert, and in a postscript he said that he hoped I got my letters at
last, for he had sent them with a remittance to my bankers, requesting
that my letters should be kept until I called for them. I was far up the
Nile when I received his letter, but next morning I started for Paris
with a beating heart, I can assure you. Twenty-six letters I found, and
I am more grieved than I can express to you to think that I did not get
them before.”

Clarence arose and paced the floor in great agitation, and his friends
were much moved also, for they knew he was thinking that never again, in
this world, would he see his noble friend, Don Mariano.

On the following morning the Mechlins, accompanied by Clarence left
Paris. Before leaving, Clarence telegraphed to Mercedes:

    “I have just received your letters written in ’73. I leave for
    New York to-morrow with the Mechlins, thence for California.

                                           ———— _Clarence Darrell._”

Everett, who had been to town, religiously, to see whether there might
be a letter from Clarence, or news about him, brought Mercedes the
cablegram.

Poor Mercedes, she read the few words many times over before she could
realize that they were from Clarence. When she did so, she was seized
with a violent trembling, and then completely overcome by emotion. Ah!
yes she would see him again, but where was now her darling papa, who was
so fond of Clarence?

Mercedes sent the dispatch for Mrs. Darrell to see, and when Everett
brought it back, Carlota made a copy of it to send to Lizzie in a letter
next day. The Darrells were truly overjoyed, thrown into a perfect storm
of pleasure. The old man said not a word. He went to his lonely room,
locked the door, and there, as usual since he lived the life of a
half-divorced man, battled with his spirit. This time, however, he
allowed tears to flow as he blessed his absent boy, and thanked God that
he was coming.

“If I had a decent pair of legs to speak of,” said Tano to Everett, “I
would dance for sheer joy, but having no legs, I can only use my tongue
and repeat how glad I am.”

When Gabriel came home in the evening of the day in which Lizzie
received the copy of Clarence’s telegram, she said to him:

“Darling, don’t go to that horrid work again. Clarence is coming, and
now he and George will establish the bank.”

“Yes, but in the meantime I must earn enough to pay our board; remember,
we owe one month’s board already. Be patient for a few days longer.” And
she was patient, but anxious. A few days more passed, and she received
Doña Josefa’s letter, inclosing seventy dollars, and saying she hoped
they would come immediately, for she wanted Gabriel at home.

“Now we have money enough to pay our board bill, and as George will
surely come to our assistance, why should you go to work as a mason?
Darling, leave that work,” Lizzie begged.

“Let us see; Clarence’s cablegram was dated twenty days ago. They must
have arrived in New York a week ago, and if he don’t delay at all, he’ll
be here in two or three days,” Gabriel said.

“Then why should you work like that?”

“I’ll stop to-morrow, but I must give notice of a day or two, at least,
for the foreman to get somebody else in my place.”

When Gabriel arrived at his place of employment near Nob Hill, he found
that his occupation that day would be different from what it had been
before, and in the afternoon he was put to work at another place in the
building. He would have to carry bricks and mortar up a ladder to quite
a high wall. He told the foreman that he would rather not do that, as he
had never done such work and was very awkward about it. The foreman said
he had no one else to spare for that job, and Gabriel at last said he
would try. He had carried many loads, and was beginning to tremble with
fatigue, when upon going up, carrying a hod full of bricks, the ladder
slipped to one side a little. In his effort to steady it, Gabriel moved
it too much, and it fell to one side, taking him to the ground. As he
fell, the bricks fell upon him. He was insensible for some time. When he
regained consciousness he was being carried to a wagon which would take
him to the city hospital. Lizzie, to whom the foreman had sent a message
notifying her of the accident, now met the wagon.

“Where are you taking my husband?” she asked the driver.

“To the city hospital, ma’am.”

“But why not take him home?”

“Because he will get attendance there quickly, Madam,” said the foreman,
who evidently felt he was to blame for a very painful accident.

“If that is the case, let us go to the hospital,” Lizzie said, getting
into the wagon. She sat beside Gabriel, and placed his head in her lap.
Gabriel smiled, and his beautiful eyes were full of love, but he could
scarcely speak a word.

The jolting of the wagon gave him much pain, and Lizzie asked the driver
to go very slow. “He ought to be carried on a stretcher, ma’am; he is
too much hurt to go in a wagon,” said the driver.

They now came to a street-crossing, and several wagons were standing
still, waiting for a line of carriages to pass first.

“Oh, why do we wait? He is suffering so much!” Lizzie exclaimed. “He is
bleeding; he might bleed to death!”

“We are waiting for them carriages to pass, ma’am. They are carrying
people to a reception on Nob Hill, ma’am,” said the driver.

On the other side of the street, in a carriage which also had been
stopped that the guests for the Nob Hill festivities might pass, sat
George and Clarence, just arrived, and on their way to see Lizzie and
Gabriel. They saw that a man lay in a wagon which stood in front of
them, and noticing that a woman sat by his side holding his head in her
lap, bending over him anxiously, Clarence said to the driver that there
seemed to be some one sick in that wagon, and that it should be allowed
to pass.

“Yes, sir; but he is a hod-carrier who fell down and hurt himself. I
suppose he’ll die before he gets to the hospital,” said the driver,
indifferently, as if a hod-carrier more or less was of no consequence.
“The carriages must pass first, the police says.”

As Lizzie raised her head to ask the driver to take some other street,
they saw her. Both uttered an exclamation of surprise, and left their
carriages immediately, walking hurriedly to the wagon where she was.

“Lizzie, my sister, why are you here?” George asked.

“Oh, George! Gabriel fell down!” she replied, sobbing, her courage
failing now that she had some dear ones to protect her. “Oh, Clarence,
see how you find my darling! We are taking him to the city hospital, but
because those carriages must pass first my darling may die here—bleeding
to death!”

“Let me go for a physician immediately,” said Clarence.

“Wait,” George said, “Which is the nearest from here, Lizzie, your house
or the hospital? We must take him to the nearest place.”

“The hospital is nearer, sir,” the driver answered.

“Then let us go the hospital,” George said, getting into the wagon
beside his sister, shocked to find Gabriel in a situation which plainly
revealed a poverty he had never imagined.

“I shall go for a surgeon, there might not be one at the hospital,” said
Clarence. “I shall be there when you arrive.”

The wagon went so slowly that Clarence, with a doctor, overtook them
before they reached the hospital. Meantime, Gabriel had whispered to
Lizzie and George, in a few words, how he had fallen down.

On arriving at the hospital he was carried to the best room, with best
attendance, two rooms adjoining were for his nurses, one to be occupied
by Lizzie and the other by George and Clarence, for neither of them
would leave Gabriel now.

The doctor would give no opinion as to his recovery. If he had internal
injuries of a serious character, they might prove fatal, but of this it
was impossible to judge at present. About eight o’clock Gabriel seemed
to be resting a little more comfortably, and Lizzie took that
opportunity to go to see her babies. She found them already asleep. The
kind landlady had given them their supper and put them to bed. She told
Lizzie of a good nurse who could be hired to take care of the baby, and
that she would engage her to come the next morning. Lizzie thanked her,
and then returned to her husband’s bedside, and there, accompanied by
George and Clarence, she passed the night.

About daylight, with great reluctance, she was prevailed upon to lie
down on a lounge at the foot of Gabriel’s bed, and as the patient seemed
to be resting quietly, George and Clarence went into the next room to
partake of a light collation.

George poured a glass of wine for Clarence and another for himself, and
both drank in silence. Evidently they could not eat.

“Was it possible to imagine that Gabriel could have become so poor that
he had to be a hod-carrier?” George said at last, scarcely above a
whisper.

Clarence being as much moved, took some time to reply.

“The thing is to me so shockingly preposterous and so very heart-rending
that it does not seem possible. And to think that if I had not gone
away, I might, yes, could, have prevented so much suffering! Oh! the
fool, the idiot that I was to go,” said Clarence, rising and pacing the
room in great agitation. “I will never forgive myself nor my bankers
either, and shall take my money to some other bank. They should never
have given Don Gabriel’s place to anybody else, for it was at my
request, and to oblige me that they employed him, and they have had the
use of my money all this time. Oh! how I wish you could have established
a bank here with the three hundred thousand dollars I placed to Don
Mariano’s credit, since he would not accept any payment for the
cattle—_my_ cattle, mind you—lost in the snow. But perhaps three hundred
thousand dollars would have been rather small capital.”

“It would have been plenty to begin with, but as the understanding was
that the bank was to be in San Diego, none of us felt authorized to
change the plan. I doubt if Don Mariano would have drawn any of the
three hundred thousand dollars. You know he mortgaged his rancho rather
than take any of your money.”

“His money, you ought to say, for I had already bought his cattle. I
wish he had not taken so different a view of the matter. Really, the
money was his from the moment I agreed to make the purchase. But tell
me, why is it that Mrs. Mechlin lost her homestead. It might have been
sold to help the family.”

George related how Peter Roper “_jumped_” the Mechlin house in true
vandalic style, breaking open the doors with axes and dragging out the
furniture when the family were in great grief, and how this outrage as
well as others were indulgently passed over by San Diego’s august
tribunal of justice. George, however, did not know all. He did not know
that Judge Lawlack upon one occasion, when he had made a decision in
favor of Peter Roper and against the Mechlins, discovering upon
reflection that he had made a gross mistake, because the authority upon
which he based his decision, obviously favored the Mechlins, had changed
his decision. He actually called the attorneys of both sides into court
and then amended his own decree and had an entirely different judgment
entered—a judgment based upon another authority, which, with his
construction of the law, favored Peter. Then again when the Mechlins
tried to file another complaint, Peter got up, and in his coarse
loquacity, vociferously exhorted his Honor to send all the plaintiffs
and their attorney to jail for _contempt of court_ in daring to renew
their complaint when his Honor had decided that they had no case; that
the _innocent purchasers_, Roper and Gasbang, were the legitimate owners
of the Mechlin place. Whereupon, his Honor Lawlack hurriedly slid off
the judicial bench, under the judicial canopy, in high tantrums, and
shuffled off the judicial platform, gruffly mumbling: “I have passed
upon that before,” and slouchingly made his exit.

The plaintiffs, their attorneys and their witnesses, were left to make
the best of _such legal proceedings_! They could not even take an appeal
to the Supreme Court, for they had no record; they could make no
pleadings; Judge Lawlack had carefully and effectively done all he could
to ruin their case. Peter winked and showed his yellow teeth and purple
gums in high glee, proud to have exhibited his influence with the Court,
and, as usual, went to celebrate his triumph by getting intoxicated and
being whipped, so that he had a black eye and skinned nose for several
days.

It was obvious to George and Clarence that the position of Gabriel and
Lizzie in San Francisco must have been painful in the extreme, and yet
they did not know all. Lizzie had never told anybody all the
disagreeable, humiliating, repugnant experiences she had had to pass
through. She had tried to help her husband to find some occupation more
befitting a gentleman than that of a day laborer. But she gave up her
sad endeavors, seeing that she was only humiliating herself to no
purpose. She met at times gentlemen and kind-hearted men, who were
courteous to her, but oftener she found occasion to despise mankind for
their unnecessary rudeness and most unprovoked boorishness. More painful
yet was the evident change she noticed in the manners of her lady
acquaintances.

Years before, when she was Lizzie Mechlin, she had moved in what was
called San Francisco’s _best_ society. Her family, being of the very
highest in New York, were courted and caressed in exaggerated degree on
their arrival in California. Afterwards, for the benefit of Mr.
Mechlin’s health, they went to reside in San Diego. When Gabriel came to
his position in the bank, she was again warmly received by all her
society friends. But this cordiality soon vanished. Her family went back
to New York, and she and Gabriel returned from San Diego to San
Francisco to find that he had lost his place at the bank. Then he
endeavored to get something else to do. This was bad enough, but when
_she_ tried to help him, then her fashionable friends disappeared. Nay,
they avoided her as if she had been guilty of some disgraceful act. The
fact that Gabriel was a _native Spaniard_, she saw plainly, militated
against them. If he had been rich, his nationality could have been
forgiven, but no one will willingly tolerate a _poor native
Californian_. To see all this was at first painful to Lizzie, but
afterwards it began to be amusing and laughable to see people show their
mean little souls and their want of brains in their eager chase after
the rich, and their discourtesy to an old acquaintance who certainly had
done nothing to forfeit respect. About that time the fever for stock
gambling was at its height. The _Big Bonanza_ was, in the twinkling of
an eye, making and unmaking money princes, and a new set of rich people
had rushed into “San Francisco’s best society.” The leaders of the _ton_
then, who held title by priority of possession, not forgetting that many
of them had had to serve a rigorous novitiate of years of probation
before they had been admitted to the high circles, were disposed to be
exclusive and keep off social “_jumpers_.” But the weight of gold
carried the day. Down came the jealously guarded gates; the very portals
succumbed and crumbled under that heavy pressure. Farewell,
exclusiveness! Henceforth, money shall be the sole requisite upon which
to base social claims. High culture, talents, good antecedents,
accomplishments, all were now the veriest trash. Money, and nothing but
money, became the order of the day. Many of the newly created
money-nobility lived but a day in their new, their sporadic, evanescent
glory, and then, with a tumble of the stocks, went down head-foremost,
to rise no more. But some of the luckiest survived, and are yet shining
stars. Lizzie saw all this from her humble seclusion. Occasionally, at
the houses of those few friends who had remained unchanged in her day of
adversity, she met some of the newly arrived in society as well as a few
of the fading lights, taking a secondary place. All the new and the old
lights she saw, with equal impartiality, shifting their places
continually, and she began to think that, after all, this transposing of
positions perhaps was right, being the unavoidable outcome in a new
country, where naturally the raw material is so abundant, and the chase
after social position must be a sort of “_go-as-you-please_” race among
the golden-legged.

Therefore, like the true lady that she was, Lizzie had quietly accepted
her fate, and forgiven fickle society, without a murmur of complaint or
a pang of regret. But what certainly was a perennial anguish, a
crucifixion of spirit to her, was to see in Gabriel’s pale face,—in
those superb eyes of his,—all his mental suffering; then courage failed
her, and on her bended knees she would implore a merciful heaven to pity
and help her beloved, her beautiful archangel.

What Gabriel suffered in spirit probably no one will ever know, for
though he inherited the natural nobility of his father, he was not like
him communicative, ready to offer or receive sympathy. He was sensitive,
kind, courteous and unselfish, but very reticent.

But if Gabriel had never complained, the eloquence of facts had said all
that was to be said. In that hod full of bricks not only his own sad
experience was represented, but _the entire history_ of the native
Californians of _Spanish descent_ was epitomized. Yes, Gabriel carrying
his hod full of bricks up a steep ladder, was a symbolical
representation of his race. The natives, of Spanish origin, having lost
all their property, must henceforth be hod-carriers.

Unjust laws despoiled them, but what of this? Poor they are, but who is
to care, or investigate the cause of their poverty? The thriving
American says that the native Spaniards are lazy and stupid and
thriftless, and as the prosperous know it all, and are almost
infallible, the fiat has gone forth, and the Spaniards of California are
not only despoiled of all their earthly possessions, but must also be
bereft of sympathy, because the world says they do not deserve it.

George and Clarence entertained a different opinion, however, and in
suppressed, earnest tones they now reviewed the history of the Alamares,
and feelingly deplored the cruel legislation that had ruined them.

Lizzie, unable to sleep, had again taken her place by the bedside, and
sadly watched the beautiful face which seemed like that of slumbering
Apollo. Would he recover, or was it possible that her darling would die,
now when relief had come? Oh, the cruel fate that made him descend to
that humble occupation.

Lizzie shuddered to think of all the suffering he would yet have to
undergo. Oh, it was so inexpressibly sad to think that his precious life
was risked for the pitiful wages of a poor hod-carrier!

CHAPTER XXXVII.—_Reunited at Last._

The life of Gabriel hung by a very frail thread for several days, and
Clarence did not have the heart to leave him. He did not telegraph to
Mercedes their arrival, for he would then have been obliged to give a
reason for delaying. He wrote her saying that Gabriel had accidentally
fallen from a ladder, and not knowing how seriously he might have been
hurt, George and himself had decided to remain with Lizzie, who was very
much frightened and distressed.

Mercedes answered, thanking him in the warmest terms of gratitude for
remaining with her darling brother, adding that much as she wished to
see the long-lost Clarence, she preferred to endure the pains of waiting
rather than to have him leave Gabriel now.

The proudest man in America was Clarence. He knew that in the gratitude
of her heart she would allow him to press her to his, and he longed to
have that bliss. But faithfully he kept his watch at the hospital, and
Gabriel lived yet. No doctor dared say whether he would die or survive
his terrible fall, or his health remain impaired. No one dare venture a
prophecy for so dark a future.

In the meantime Clarence got his house ready for occupation, and as soon
as Gabriel could be removed without danger, they took up their residence
there. In the silent recesses of her heart Lizzie thanked God that her
surroundings were again those of a lady. She shuddered to remember the
poverty she endured for so long a time, and she would have felt really
happy could she have been sure that her beloved Gabriel would live.

“George,” said she to her brother, as they walked towards the library,
when Clarence had relieved their watch, and was sitting by Gabriel’s
bedside, “I have an idea in my head which I think we might put into
practice, if you will help me.”

“What is it, dear sister?” asked George, tenderly, observing how thin
and haggard she looked.

“It is this, that if you and I write to Mercedes that she ought to marry
right away, so that Clarence can bring her to be with me, to help me
take care of Gabriel, that she will do so.”

“By, Jove! It is a splendid idea, little sister, and I’ll write to
Mercita and to Doña Josefa at once.”

“It is little enough, George, for you and I to do, when Clarence has
been so devoted to my darling,” said she, her eyes filling with tears of
heart-felt gratitude.

“Of course it is, but it comes so natural to Clarence to act always like
the noble fellow he is, that it would surprise me if he had acted
otherwise than nobly.”

“But we ought to consult him about our project.”

“Certainly. I’ll go and stay with Gabriel and send him to you that you
may disclose your plan.”

“No, let me go to Gabriel, while you tell him the plan,” said she,
hurrying off to the invalid, whom she found sleeping.

She whispered to Clarence that George wished to speak to him, and took
his place by the bedside.

Clarence could find no words to express to George his joy and gratitude.
He flushed and paled by turns, and finally, stroking his mustache with
trembling fingers, and trying to bite it, in his agitation, sat down in
silence, while George went into the details of the matter.

“But will she consent?” Clarence exclaimed at last.

“I think she will, for you know how all of them love Gabriel, Mercedes
more than all,—and the thought that he is suffering, and Lizzie’s
distress, and your kindness to him,—all that will furnish a most
excellent excuse to do what her heart has been begging for,” said
George. “I am going to write now about it.”

“Oh, I shall be so grateful!” Clarence exclaimed.

“Send Lizzie to me, we both must write,” George said.

Clarence went back to the sick room, and said to Lizzie that George
wanted her.

Kissing her hand most fervently, he exclaimed in a tremulous whisper:
“You are my angel!”

George and Lizzie’s letters were very pleading. Clarence wrote also,
imploring Mercedes to forgive the stupidity that took him away, and
beseeched her to yield to his prayer, and be his wife, after so many
years of suffering.

Mercedes kissed the letter, and cried over it, of course, as women must,
but referred the subject to her mother. Doña Josefa must also cry a good
deal before she said anything, for the memory of her husband made such
subjects most painful to her.

But Victoriano stormed from his bed. He would have no delay. He sent for
Everett, so that he would in person carry a dispatch to town, saying to
Clarence, by telegraph, to come in the very first steamer. Victoriano
would have no contradiction.

“If Mercedes don’t marry Clarence, as George advises, I want to be taken
by the legs—my mean, cripple legs, my ridiculous kangaroo legs—and
dragged out of this bed, and out of this house. I don’t want to live
under the same roof with people that will refuse so just and reasonable
a request.”

“But who has refused it, Tano? Wait, won’t you?” said Rosario, seeing
that Tano had hidden his head under the covers.

Victoriano’s head came out again, and said: “Nobody says yes.”

But the _yes_ was said.

Everett took a dispatch from Doña Josefa to George, saying that whenever
Clarence came, Mercedes would go with him, as George suggested.

There would be five days only before another steamer would arrive, but
by telegraphing to Clarence on that day, he would have time to take the
steamer next morning, or go on the cars to Los Angeles, and take the
steamer at Wilmington. And this was what Clarence telegraphed he would
do, suggesting that if Mercita would be ready, they could take the same
boat, and by again taking the cars at Los Angeles, be with Gabriel in
two days.

Was it a dream? To see Clarence within five days, and be his wife, when
she thought she might never see him on this earth again! Thus ran
Mercedes’ reflections, when she had gone to her room to open a wardrobe
which had been locked for three years. That wardrobe held the
_trousseau_ sent by Mrs. Lawrence Mechlin in ’74, and the jewelry which
Clarence had given her in New York.

Mercedes thought of those days, and the image of her father arose before
her vividly. She sat by the window to think of him with loving
tenderness and ever living regret.

“But, _mon Dieu_, mademoiselle,” said Madame Halier, coming in, “why
don’t you come? Miss Carlota is waiting to begin getting your things
ready.”

“I beg pardon; I had forgotten,” said Mercedes, rousing herself from her
reverie. Carlota, Rosario and Alice now came in, and soon the contents
of the wardrobe were distributed all over the room. Madame Halier was to
pack in trunks all Mercedes’ things, leaving out only her bridal attire
and traveling dress. The madame did her work with pleasure, as she was
going with Mercedes, and had been wishing to visit the city of San
Francisco for a long time.

Everything was ready. A dispatch came from George saying that Clarence
had started; that Gabriel was a little better, and anxious to see
Mercedes. This made Doña Josefa feel that it was her imperative duty to
send Mercedes to her brother at once.

Mrs. Darrell went to see the priest about going to the rancho to perform
the marriage ceremony there. The good man would have preferred that it
were solemnized in the church, but, considering that Victoriano could
not leave his bed and Doña Josefa was still in very deep mourning, he
consented.

There would be no invited guests except the Holmans and Darrells. There
would be no bridesmaids either, though there were plenty of young girls
that could act as such.

Everett went to town the night before the arrival of the steamer to
bring Clarence as soon as he landed, and they came from town so quickly
and noiselessly that no one knew when they arrived at the rancho.

The ladies were all in Mercedes’ room discussing the wedding outfit and
other matters, when it occurred to her to go out and from the veranda
look towards the road, as she might perhaps see the carriage in the
distance. What was her surprise when, on passing by the parlor door, she
saw Everett coming through the gate, and there, right there, where
Clarence had stood on that terrible night when he left her, there he
stood again, looking at her with those same speaking, glowing, loving
eyes. He seemed to her like an apparition, and she uttered an
exclamation of surprise, turning very pale and tottering as if about to
fall. In an instant he was by her side pressing her to his heart and
covering her face with kisses.

Surely this was no ghost. His warm kisses and beating heart spoke of the
lover full of life and hope, trembling with the realization of years of
longing to hold her thus close, very close in his loving, chaste
embrace.

“Mercedes, my own, my sweet wife,” he said, and his voice had so much
the same tone and vibration as in that last memorable night, that the
rush of sad memories and painful emotions made her for a moment feel
confused, bewildered, almost losing consciousness. As her yielding form
relaxed in his arms he carried her to the sofa and sat there holding
her, scarcely realizing it was not all a dream.

Everett had gone to Victoriano’s room, and now that impatient invalid
was screaming for Clarence to come. His loud calling brought Doña Josefa
to him, and then all the family learned that Clarence had arrived.

“Come here, you truant,” said Victoriano to Clarence, “come here, you
ugly man.” And as Clarence stooped to embrace him, he clasped him to his
heart, making him lie down by his side. “There,” said he, “I have given
you a good hugging; now go and kiss the girls.”

Which Clarence did gladly, but his mother and Doña Josefa he kissed
first. He then went to the parlor, where he was kindly greeted by no
less than fourteen girls, counting thus: three Alamares, three Holmans,
four Darrells, and four other Alamares, cousins of Mercedes.

Clarence was a brave fellow, so he never flinched and kissed them all,
very deliberately. “Not to give offence,” he said.

There was one duty which Clarence shrank from performing, but which he
submitted to quietly, and that was meeting his father.

Darrell came to the Alamar house for the first time in his life, and as
he said he would like to be alone when he met Clarence, Rosario
conducted him to _the office_, a room used by her father when he saw
people on business and where he wrote his letters, but where others of
the family scarcely ever entered.

Clarence was shocked to see how aged his father was. When he left, the
auburn hair of the old man showed no white lines at all. Now he was so
gray that his hair was almost white. The sight of that white hair swept
from Clarence’s heart all trace of resentment, and his love for his
father seemed to rush back to him with pain, but with great force.

“Oh, father!” exclaimed Clarence, seeing the open arms before him.

“My boy, my best beloved,” said the old man, with a sob and a checking
of breath, holding his son close to his breast.

“Father, why are you so gray?” Clarence asked.

“Because I did you a great wrong. Because I murdered the Don, and he was
the best man I ever saw.” When Darrell said this he completely lost his
self-control and wept like a child. Clarence wept with him, for he felt
deeply Don Mariano’s death, but thought he must speak kindly to his
father.

“You did not murder him; don’t think that,” he said.

“Yes, I did. My wickedness helped the wickedness of others to kill him.
And our wickedness combined brought infinite misery upon this innocent
family. But a merciful God brought you back, and I know you will devote
your life to repair as much as it is possible the wrong your father did.
I know you will be a good husband, but for _my sake_, also, I beg you to
be a devoted son to the widowed lady whom I have injured so frightfully.
A wrong legislation authorized _us squatters_, sent us, to the land of
these innocent, helpless people to rob them. A wrong legislation killed
the Texas Pacific, and such legislation is the main cause of the Don’s
death. But I, too, helped the wrong-doers.”

“Don’t blame yourself so much,” Clarence remonstrated gently, trying to
soothe his father. “George and Lizzie told me that all the family
believe that the disappointment at the failure of the Texas Pacific was
what killed Don Mariano. It preyed upon his mind; it saddened, worried
and sickened him until it utterly undermined his health and broke down
his nervous system. It did the same with Mr. Mechlin. So, you see, those
who defeated the Texas Pacific are to blame for the death of these two
most excellent men, but not yourself.”

“Yes, I am. No man can injure his fellow-man, and then shift the blame
on some one else’s shoulders, because others had a share in the wrong
done. Each man must stand and bear his proportion of blame. I could and
should have prevented the settlers from destroying the Don’s cattle. If
I had done so, he would not have been obliged to take them all at once.
He could have sent them in small bands, but he was afraid of the
murderous rifles of _my friends_. So the poor, dumb animals perished in
the snow. But this was not the worst; the saddest was yet to come.
Victoriano lost his health, and the Don lost his life. The good, the
best of men, was right when, in his dying moments, he said: ‘_The sins
of our legislators brought me to this_.’ That was a truth uttered by a
just and noble soul as it passed away. Still, I must feel I am
individually to blame for the sorrow brought upon this family. I know
that if the railroad had been built the Don could have recuperated his
fortune, but yet my share of wrong-doing stands there all the same; I
must bear it myself. If I had not driven you away, you could have
prevented their misfortunes. I was a monster. So now I beg and entreat,
for my own sake, and as a slight reparation for my cruelty, that you be
kind to that lady, as kind as if you were her own child.”

“I will, father; I vow I will.”

“That is enough. I know you’ll keep your word. Now, my boy, heaven bless
you, and your father’s blessing will go with you always. Now, go, and
when the ceremony is to be performed, send Willie to call me.”

As everything was ready, the marriage ceremony took place as soon as the
priest arrived. Victoriano was brought to the parlor in an arm-chair,
and managed to stand up, held by Everett and Webster. Doña Josefa wept
all the time and so did her daughters, but everybody understood that
memories of the sad past, but no fears for the future, caused those
tears to flow.

The parting with her mother and sisters was most painful to Mercedes.
Clarence feared she would make herself ill with weeping. He put his arms
around her waist and said:

“Don’t be disheartened. I have been thinking that Doña Josefa and all
the family had better come to San Francisco to live. If she does, I
think we can persuade George to bring his family also to reside there.”

Doña Josefa shook her head doubtingly, but Mercedes asked:

“Do you think George might come?”

“I do, and he can then carry out there our plan of establishing a bank.
San Diego is dead now, and will remain so for many years, but San
Francisco is a good business field. So we can all locate ourselves
there, and Gabriel and Tano go into business easily.”

“Business without capital? See where my poor Gabriel is now,” Doña
Josefa answered, sadly.

“That is true, but if you will sell your rancho, they will have plenty
of capital. Even at two dollars per acre, your rancho, being forty-seven
thousand acres—if sold at that low figure—would bring you ninety-four
thousand dollars.”

“But who, who will buy mortgaged land, full of squatters, and without a
patent, in this dead place?”

“I will. I will pay you more than ninety-four thousand dollars—more than
double that amount—besides paying you for the lost cattle, which will be
no more than what is right.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t agree to that, but as for selling the land, if my
children are willing, I shall be, for this place is too full of sad
memories, and will be sadder yet if I cannot have my children with me.
When Gabriel and Victoriano get well, talk to them about buying the
rancho, though I don’t think you ought to pay any such high price. You
are too generous to us.”

“Indeed, I am not. Don’t forget I am a money-making Yankee. I think
four—or even three—dollars per acre is a high price for land in this
county _now_, but I can wait years, and then I shall double the price
paid now. So, you see, I am not a bit generous. I am trying to make
money out of you.”

“Talk to the boys. See what George and Gabriel say,” Doña Josefa said,
smiling sadly at Clarence’s wily argument and earnest manner.

The last adieux were said, but the parting was less painful to Mercedes,
with the new hope held out by Clarence of a probability of being
reunited soon in San Francisco.

When Clarence and Mercedes arrived at their home they found that George
and Lizzie had propped up Gabriel with pillows, and he was sitting up to
receive his sister. From that day he began to improve slowly but
perceptibly.

The letters from home spoke of Victoriano’s marked improvement, but
still his malady was not cured; so Clarence proposed that Doña Josefa,
the two girls and Tano should come up immediately. She could then make
up her mind whether she would like to make San Francisco her home, and
the change of climate would perhaps do Victoriano good. The idea was
highly approved by all, and that same evening Mercedes wrote to her
mother, begging her to come and see whether she liked San Francisco for
a home; that she and Clarence were going to Europe on a visit in the
fall, and she wanted to leave her mamma and sisters and brothers all
together; that George and Gabriel liked the plan of selling the rancho
to Clarence very much, and wanted to talk to her and Tano about it. Thus
Doña Josefa was enticed and persuaded to leave the home of her joys and
sorrows, where she had lived for thirty years. Carlota and Rosario were
willing to go, and Tano was most anxious to find a way of making a
living, for he was every day more in love with Alice, but could not
think of marrying her until he knew how he was going to support a
family.

Doña Josefa, Carlota and Rosario, therefore, escorted by Victoriano,
found themselves, on a bright morning, in the Southern Pacific Railroad
cars, on their way from Los Angeles to San Francisco. There were only
about a dozen persons besides themselves on the entire train.

“I wonder why they put on so many cars. One would carry all the
passengers,” said Rosario.

“Half a car would be more than enough,” Carlota added.

“They must lose money running empty cars,” Tano observed. “I am glad of
it. They were so anxious to leave San Diego out in the cold, I hope they
will lose money with this road.”

“Don’t wish that, it is unkind, unchristian, ungenerous,” said Doña
Josefa, with a sigh.

“And why not? Didn’t they kill our road, the Texas Pacific, to build
this road? What consideration had they for us? I am glad that many years
will pass before they will run crowded cars over this desert. They are
old men, they won’t live to see this, their pet road, with well-filled
cars, running over it, and I bet on that,” said Tano, exultingly.

“Perhaps they will,” said Carlota.

“I know they’ll not,” Tano retorted, emphatically.

In the afternoon, Clarence and Mercedes met them in Oakland, and
together they crossed the bay.

And now on that same night as Doña Josefa looked from her bedroom window
upon the lighted city, she noticed that a large mansion near by, was
very brightly illuminated, and Mercedes told her that one of the
railroad kings, who had killed the Texas Pacific, lived there, and was
giving a “_silver wedding_” party to the _elite_ of San Francisco. Doña
Josefa sighed, and sat at the window to think.

Truly, San Francisco had been in a flutter for ten days past, and the
“best society” had stretched its neck until it ached to see who got
invitations for “_The Great Nob Hill Silver Wedding Ball_” of one of San
Francisco’s millionaires. Mrs. Grundy ascertained who were to be the
best-dressed ladies, what their pedigree was, and how their money had
been made, and then Mrs. Grundy went to the ball, too.

When all the elegance of San Francisco had arrived, nobly sprinkled with
a Baron or two, and ornamented with a Lord and Lady and a Marquise or
Count, the great millionaire proceeded to astonish his guests in the
manner he had conceived to be most novel and startling.

The band struck up a wedding march, and Mr. Millionaire, with his wife
leaning on his arm, proceeded to the last of an elegant _suite_ of
rooms, where, under a canopy of fragrant flowers, a mock marriage
ceremony was to be performed. After conducting the blushing bride to the
mock altar, and the ceremony being over, the millionaire thought he
would treat his guests to what he imagined to be a real hymenean
oration. He prefaced his homily with what he believed to be witticisms
and quotations of his own. He then thought it was time to wax eloquent
and didactic, above prejudices, truly large-minded.

“But let me read to you a short, telling lesson now,” he said, swelling
with just pride; “I speak most particularly to the young men, to those
who have yet their fortunes to make. Be not discouraged if you meet with
hardships and trials. Go ahead and persevere. Look at all these
luxurious appurtenances surrounding us! I might well say, look at this
wealth! Look at this splendor! Well, ladies and gentlemen, sixteen years
ago we were in Sacramento, so poor, that we had to put tin pans over our
bed to catch the water that leaked through our roof, and keep our
bed-clothes dry. I had not money enough to get a better roof over our
heads,” and the millionaire looked around for applause, but none came,
because the guests possessed the good taste, or, perhaps, bad, which
their host lacked, and were pained and mortified; they did not see the
good of waking up memories of unsavory poverty. The foreign nobility was
not so proud, perhaps, as they had been at the hour of receiving an
invitation to all this so very newly created splendor. But the rich man,
still inflated with pride, hurriedly wound up his peroration as best he
could, feeling vague misgivings that he had marred the _eclat_ of his
magnificent illumination shining over his costly furniture, by trying to
rise above himself to make a high-minded, witty speech. “Be plucky, and
persevering, and go ahead, as I did,” said he to close his oration,
bowing to his foreign guests.

The company scattered in couples or in groups over the luxuriously
furnished and richly decorated rooms, and Mrs. Grundy hurried about
everywhere to catch the comments made by the grateful guests upon “the
brilliant speech of their amiable host.” At the very first group she
heard a young man say:

“Yes, I would be _plucky and persevering_ if I had an associate in
Washington with plenty of money to bribe people so that no other
railroad could be built to start competition in California.”

“I could be plucky, too, if the Government had given me millions of
money and more millions of acres to build two railroads, and which
millions I never intended to pay back,” said another.

“And for which millions you never paid taxes,” added another.

“Taxes? Bah! Let the poor people pay taxes. Why should railroad magnates
pay taxes when they have money to fight the law? Absurd!” said a fourth.
“Let us go and take ices; the brilliancy of our host’s oration makes me
thirsty.”

And while all this went on in the brilliantly lighted mansion, Doña
Josefa sat at her window in the dark, thinking of what “_might have
been_” if those railroad men had not blighted San Diego’s prosperity.
Her husband would have been alive, and Mr. Mechlin, also, and her sons
would not have been driven to poverty and distress, and perhaps lost
their health forever.

“God of Justice, is this right, that so many should be sacrificed
because a few men want more millions? Our family is one of the many who
have suffered so much. Oh! so much! And all to what end? For what? Ah!
the same answer again, because a few heartless men want more millions,”
said she, with her face bathed in tears.

Doña Josefa evidently did not believe that because “_misery there must
always be in the world, no matter who causes it_,” that she was called
upon to stoically submit to unmerited infliction. In a mild and
dignified way, her mind rebelled. She regarded the acts of the men who
caused her husband’s ruin and death with genuine abhorrence. To her,
rectitude and equity had a clear meaning impossible to pervert. No
subtle sophistry could blur in her mind the clear line dividing right
from wrong. She knew that among men the word business means inhumanity
to one another; it means justification of rapacity; it means the freedom
of man to crowd and crush his fellow-man; it means the sanction of the
Shylockian principle of exacting the pound of flesh. She knew all this,
but the illustration, the ocular demonstration, had never been before
her until now in that gay house, in that brightly illuminated mansion,
and she sadly contrasted her sorrow with their gayety, and continued her
soliloquy: “No doubt those people think they have a right to rejoice and
feast with the money extorted in crushing so many people—the killing of
my darling. Doubtless they say that they earned the money in *BUSINESS*,
and that allegation is all-sufficient; that one word justifies in the
pursuit of riches everything mean, dishonest, rapacious, unfair,
treacherous, unjust, and fraudulent. After a man makes his money no one
cares how he made it, and so those people dance while I mourn for my
beloved.”

For hours Doña Josefa sat at that window, weeping sadly, while the
others danced gayly.

Afterwards, when she had been for some time in San Francisco, she had
yet stronger demonstrations, and her sense of justice and her ideas of
moral adjustment of men’s actions with principle, received additional
shocks, quite as painful as seeing the millionaire’s palace illuminated,
while the humble houses he had desolated must remain dark.

Doña Josefa frankly spoke to the ladies who had called on her, of the
cause of her husband’s death. She did so in answer to their inquiries.
She, on two or three occasions, mentioned how painful it had been to sit
by the window looking at that house of rejoicing, while thinking that if
those rich men had had more sense of justice and less greed of money,
that her husband could have been spared to her.

“Don’t say that, my dear lady, for you will give great offense,” said an
old friend, who having heard that Clarence was worth twelve million
dollars, had called on her, suddenly remembering that she used to know
the Alamares years ago.

“Why should I give offense? It is the truth,” Doña Josefa replied.

“That may be, but you cannot speak against such rich people; San
Francisco society will turn against you,” was the rejoinder.

“Then it is a crime _to speak_ of the wrongs we have suffered, but it is
not a crime _to commit_ those wrongs.”

“I don’t know. I am not a moralist. But this I do know, that if you
accuse those rich men of having done wrong, the society people will give
you the cold shoulder.”

“Oh, very well, let it be so. Let the guilty rejoice and go unpunished,
and the innocent suffer ruin and desolation. I slander no one, but shall
speak the truth.”

CONCLUSION.—_Out with the Invader._

“Let infamy be that man’s portion who uses his power to corrupt, to
ruin, to debase,” says Channing, in righteous indignation, speaking of
the atrocities perpetrated by Napoleon the First to gratify his vanity
and ambition. Further on, with increasing earnestness, Channing adds:
“In anguish of spirit we exclaim: ‘How long will an abject world kiss
the foot that tramples it? How long shall crime find shelter in its very
aggravations and excess?’”

If Channing lived now, his ‘anguish of spirit’ would be far greater to
find in his own country, firmly enthroned, _a power that corrupts, ruins
and debases_ as utterly as that which he so eloquently deplored, and his
own fellow-citizens—the free-born Americans—ready and willing to _kiss
the foot that tramples them_!

Not infamy, but honor and wealth, is the portion of the men who corrupt
and ruin and debase in this country. Honor and wealth for the Napoleons
of this land, whose power the sons of California can neither check, nor
thwart, nor escape, nor withstand. And in California, as in France,
“crime finds shelter in its very aggravations and excess,” for after ten
years of fighting in Congress against legislation that would have given
to the people of the Southern States and the Pacific Coast a competing
railway; and after fighting against creating a sinking fund to
re-imburse moneys due to the Government, and fighting against laws to
regulate freights and fares on a fair basis, they (the Napoleons) refuse
to pay taxes on their gigantic property, thus making it necessary for
the Governor of California to call an extra session of the Legislature
to devise some new laws which will compel those defiant millionaires to
pay taxes, and not leave upon the shoulders of poor people the onerous
duty of defraying public expenses.

Is not this “aggravation of excess?” Excess of defiance? Excess of
lawlessness? How insidiously these monopolists began their work of
accumulation, which has culminated in a power that not only eludes the
law of the land, but defies, derides it! They were poor men. They came
before the Government at Washington, and before the people of
California, as suppliant petitioners, humbly begging for aid to
construct a railroad. The aid was granted most liberally, and as soon as
they accumulated sufficient capital to feel rich they began their work
of eluding and defying the law. They became insolent, flinging defiance,
as if daring the law to touch them, and truly, the law thus far has been
powerless with them. At Washington they won their first victories
against the American people; and now California has the shame of seeing
that she has not the power to enforce her laws upon the men she made
rich. The Legislature convened and adjourned, and there is no way yet of
compelling the insolent millionaires to pay their taxes or regulate
their rates on freights and fares!

It seems now that unless _the people of California take the law in their
own hands_, and seize the property of those men, and confiscate it, to
re-imburse the money due _the people_, the arrogant corporation will
never pay. They are so accustomed to appropriate to themselves what
rightfully belongs to others, and have so long stood before the world in
defiant attitude, that they have become utterly insensible to those
sentiments of fairness animating law-abiding men of probity and sense of
justice.

These monopolists are essentially dangerous citizens in the fullest
acceptance of the word. They are dangerous citizens, not only in being
guilty of violation of the law, in subverting the fundamental principles
of public morality, but they are dangerous citizens, because they _lead
others_ into the commission of the same crimes. Their example is deadly
to honorable sentiments; it is poison to Californians, because it
allures men with the glamour of success; it incites the unwary to
imitate the conduct of men who have become immensely rich by such
culpable means.

Mr. Huntington in his letters (made public in the Colton suit), shows
the truth of all this; shows how bribing and corrupting seemed to him
perfectly correct. He speaks of “the men that can be _convinced_”
(meaning the men that will take bribes), as naturally as if no one need
blush for it. And with the same frankness he discloses his maneuvering
to defeat the Texas Pacific Railroad, and elude the payment of moneys
due the Government. It is surprising, as well as unpleasant, to read in
Mr. Huntington’s letters the names of men in high positions whom he
reckons in his list as “men who can _be convinced_” and he speaks of
them in a cool way and off-hand manner, which shows how little respect
he has for those whom he can _convince_. Perhaps there are some in his
list who never did take a bribe from him, but then those gentlemen are
in the position of “Old Dog Tray,” who suffered for being in bad
company.

“I have set matters to work in the South that I think will switch most
of the South from Tom Scott’s Texas and Pacific bill,” etc., etc., Mr.
Huntington wrote in April, ’75, and in November of the same year he
concluded to send Dr. Gwin to work on the credulity of the Southerners,
to switch them off.

“I think the doctor can do us some good if he can work under cover. * *
* He must not come to the surface as _our man_. * * * Not as our agent,
but as an anti-subsidy Democrat and a Southern man,” etc. When the
deceiver returned, Mr. Huntington wrote: “I notice what you say about
the interest that Dr. Gwin should have. I have no doubt that we shall
agree about what his interest should be,” says Mr. Huntington, speaking
of the price to be paid the ex-Senator for his work of helping to
“_switch off the South_!”

In another letter Mr. Huntington says: “I had a talk with Bristow,
Secretary of the Treasury. He will be likely to help us fix up our
matters with the Government on a fair basis.”

Another letter says: “I am doing all I can to have the Government take
six million acres of land, and give the railroad company credit for
fifteen million dollars, etc. I wish you would have the newspapers take
the ground that this land ought to be taken by the Government and held
for the people, etc. Something that the demagogues can vote and work
for,” etc.

Mr. Huntington also says: “I think there should be a bridge company
organized (that we are not in) to build over the Colorado River, etc. In
this way we could tax the through business on this line should we so
desire,” etc.

In another letter, dated March 7th, 1877, he says: “I stayed in
Washington two days to fix up a Railroad Committee in the Senate. * * *
The Committee is just as we want it, which is a very important thing for
us.” * * *

He again says: “The Committees are made up for the Forty-fifth Congress.
I think the Railroad Committee is right, but the Committees on
Territories I do not like. A different one was promised me. Sherrel has
just telegraphed me to come to Washington,” etc.

Mr. Huntington mentions in other letters the fact of bills being
submitted to him before being put to vote; and also about being
consulted concerning the formation of Committees and other Congressional
matters, much as if Congress really wished to keep on the good side of
Mr. Huntington. But it looked also as if he did not have everything his
own way always, for at times he loses patience and calls Congress a “set
of the worst strikers,” and “the hungriest set” he ever saw.

In his letter to his friend Colton, of June 20th, ’78, he exclaims: “I
think in the world’s history never before was such a wild set of
demagogues honored by the name of Congress. We have been hurt some, but
some of the worst bills have been defeated, but we cannot stand many
such Congresses,” etc.

The thing that annoyed Mr. Huntington the most was that he could not
persuade Governor Stanford to tell the bare-faced falsehood, that the
Southern Pacific did not belong to the owners of the Central Pacific.

Again and again Mr. Huntington urged the necessity of this falsehood
being told, childishly forgetting the fact that such prevarications
would have been useless, as all Californians knew the truth.

In the Congressional Committees, however, he himself attempted to pass
off that misstatement. It is not likely that he was believed, but he
succeeded in killing the Texas Pacific, and in “seeing the grass grow
over Tom Scott.” The subterfuge no doubt was useful.

Mr. Huntington having buried the Texas Pacific, and also Colonel Scott,
as well as other worthy people (of whom no mention has been made in this
book), now proceeded to demand that the Government surrender to him and
associates, the land subsidy granted by Congress to the Texas Pacific.

This, surely, is an “_aggravation of excess_!”

The House Committee on Public Lands in their report on the “_forfeiture
of the Texas Pacific land grant_” reviewed Mr. Huntington’s acts with
merited severity. Amongst many other truths the report says: “The
Southern Pacific claims to ‘stand in _the shoes_’ of the Texas Pacific.
Your committee agree that ‘standing in the shoes’ would do if the
Southern Pacific _filled the shoes_.” But it does not. It never had
authority or recognition by Congress east of Yuma. For its own purpose,
by _methods which honest men have denounced_, greedy to embrace all land
within its net-work of rails, to secure monopoly of transportation,
surmounting opposition and beating down all obstacles in its way, and in
doing so, crushing the agent Congress had selected as instrument to
build a road there, _doing nothing, absolutely nothing, by governmental
authority or assent even, and having succeeded in defeating a necessary
work and rendering absolutely abortive the attempt to have one competing
transportation route to the Pacific built, it coolly asks to bestow upon
it fifteen millions of acres of lands; to give it the ownership of an
area sufficient for perhaps one hundred thousand homes, as a reward for
that result_.

And the committee (with one dissenting voice only) reported their
opinion that the Southern Pacific Railroad Company had _neither legal
nor equitable_ claim to the lands of the Texas Pacific which Mr.
Huntington wished to appropriate.

But is it not a painful admission that these few men should have
thwarted and defeated the purpose and intent of the Government of the
United States of having a competing railway in the Texas Pacific? Not
only Colonel Scott, and Hon. John C. Brown, and Mr. Frank T. Bond, the
President and Vice President of this road, but also Senator Lamar, Mr.
J. W. Throckmorton, Mr. House, Mr. Chandler, of Mississippi, and many,
many other able speakers, honorable, upright men, all endeavored
faithfully to aid the construction of the Texas Pacific. All failed. The
falsehoods disseminated by ex-Senator Gwin, which Senator Gordon and
others believed, and thus in good faith reproduced, had more effect when
backed by the monopoly’s money.

But Tom Scott is laid low, and so is the Texas Pacific; now the fight
for greedy accumulation is transferred to California. The monopoly is
confident of getting the land subsidy of the Texas Pacific—after killing
it; of getting every scrap that might be clutched under pretext of
having belonged to the decapitated road. Thus the lands that the City of
San Diego donated to Tom Scott _on condition_ that the Texas Pacific
should be built, even these, the monopoly has by some means seized upon.
No Texas Pacific was built, but nevertheless, though clearly specified
stipulations be violated, San Diego’s lands must go into the voracious
jaws of the monster. Poor San Diego! After being ruined by the greed of
the heartless monopolists, she is made to contribute her widow’s mite to
swell the volume of their riches! This is cruel irony indeed.

And now those pampered millionaires have carried their defiance of the
law to the point of forcing the Governor of California to call an extra
session of the Legislature to compel them to obey the law. Speaking of
these matters a very able orator said in one of his speeches in the
extra session:

“It is stated in the proclamation of the Governor to convene this
Legislature, that for three or four years past the principal railroads
in this State have set at defiance the laws of the people; that they
have refused to pay their taxes; that they had set up within our borders
an _imperium in imperio_; that they had avowed and declared themselves
free from the laws of the State under which they hold their
organization; that there were no laws in this State to which they were
bound to submit and pay such taxes as would have fallen to them had they
been subject to the laws of the State, etc., etc. It has not occurred
before in the United States that a great Commonwealth has been defied
successfully by its own creatures.”

Other speakers followed, and we of California have now, at least, the
satisfaction of knowing that faithful hearts and bright intellects have
been aroused and are watching the strides of the monster power.

The Spanish population of the State are proud of their countryman,
Reginaldo del Valle, who was one of the first to take a bold stand
against the monopoly. This young orator with great ability and
indomitable energy, has never flagged in his eloquent denunciations of
the power which has so trampled the laws of California and the rights of
her children.

Mr. Breckinridge, another brilliant orator, speaking of the pertinacious
defiance of the law exhibited by the monopolists, said: “Nothing but a
shock, a violent shock, a rude lesson—such as the old French noblesse
got when they saw their chateaux fired and their sons guillotined—will
awaken them from their dream of security.”

The champions of right fought well, fought nobly, in the legislature,
but alas! the gold of the monopoly was too powerful, and the _extra
session_, called to devise means of compelling the railroad corporation
to obey the law, adjourned—adjourned, having _failed_ in accomplishing
the object for which it was called.

The legislators themselves acknowledged that corruption was too strong
to be withstood. Mr. Nicol said:

“There was once a belief that the legislature of California was a high,
honorable body, into which it should be the pride and glory of fathers
to see their sons gain admission. I have been here two sessions, and
instead of being a place to which an honorable ambition should prompt a
young man to aspire, I believe it to be the worst place on the
continent. _We are surrounded by a lobby which degrades every man here
by constant temptation and offers of corruption; the monopoly has made
it no place where a careful father will send his son._”

If these powerful monopolists were to speak candidly, would they say
that the result of their struggle for money in the last fourteen years
of their lives has compensated them for that shoulder-to shoulder fight
with opponents who were in the right, and must be vanquished by foul
means? “I shall see the grass grow over Tom Scott,” prophetically wrote
Mr. Huntington several times. He had his wish. The grass grows over Tom
Scott. Mr. Huntington can claim the glory of having laid low his
powerful opponent, for it is well known that the ten years’ struggle for
the Texas Pacific undermined Colonel Scott’s health beyond recovery.
Broken down in health, he left Mr. Huntington master of the field. But
is the victory worth the cost? The fight was certainly not glorious for
the victor. Is it to be profitable? Many lives have been wrecked, many
people impoverished, much injustice done, and all for the sake of having
the Southern Pacific Railroad without a rival, without competition. This
road runs mostly through a desert; how is it to be made profitable? In
their eager pursuit of riches, the projectors of it miscalculated the
inevitable, and did not foresee that other capital could, in a few
years, build competing lines through more favorable routes; did not
foresee that it would have been a better policy to adhere honestly to
the terms of their first charter; did not foresee that it would have
been better not to sacrifice San Diego. No, they deemed it a wiser plan
to kill Tom Scott, to kill San Diego, and then take the money earned in
this manner to go and build railroads in Guatemala and in British
America. To men who do not think that in _business_ the rights of others
should be considered, this policy of crushing or desolating everything
in the path of triumphant accumulators no doubt is justifiable. But why
should the rich enjoy rights that are “deadly to other men?” It is
alleged in defense of the California railroad monopolists that as they
do not think it would be lucrative to run a railroad to San Diego, they
do not build any. If this were a true allegation, why did they fear the
Texas Pacific as a competing road? Why did they spend so much money and
ten years of their lives to kill that railroad? Surely, if they knew so
well that a road to San Diego would not pay, why were they so anxious to
prevent its construction? Was it out of a purely disinterested and
philanthropic solicitude for their rivals? Did Mr. Huntington wish “to
see grass grow over Tom Scott” because he kindly desired to prevent his
financial ruin?

Obviously, to maintain that the monopoly did not build a road to San
Diego because it would not pay, and that they would not allow Tom Scott
to build it either, for the same reason, is not logical. If to construct
and run such road would have been ruinous, that was the very best of
reasons for allowing it to be built. This would have been as effective a
way of getting rid of Colonel Scott as by seeing grass grow over his
grave.

But no, it is not true that the San Diego road would not have been
profitable; the truth is, that because it would have been profitable, it
was dreaded as a rival of the Southern Pacific. But the monopoly had no
money to build two roads at once, so they (characteristically) thought
best to kill it. As they could not have it, no one else should. And for
this reason, and because one of the railroad kings conceived a great
animosity against the people of San Diego and became their bitter,
revengeful enemy, they were not allowed to have a railroad. This last
fact seems incredibly absurd, but if we remember how a Persian tyrant
razed a city to the ground because he ate there something that gave him
an indigestion, we ought not be surprised if a modern king—one of
California’s tyrants—should punish a little city because it did not turn
out _en masse_ to do him humble obeisance. Doubtless, to indulge in such
petty malice was not lofty; it was a sort of mental indigestion not to
be proud of; it was a weakness, but it was also a wickedness, and worse
yet, it was a _blunder_.

Time alone, however, will prove this. In the meanwhile, the money earned
in California (as Californians only know how) is taken to build roads in
Guatemala. Towns are crushed and sacrificed in California to carry
prosperity to other countries. And California groans under her heavy
load, but submits, seeing her merchants and farmers ground down with
“special contracts” and discriminating charges, and the refractory
punished with pitiless severity. Thus, merchants and farmers are hushed
and made docile under the lash, for what is the use of complaining? When
the Governor of this State sought in vain to curb the power of the
monster and compel it to pay taxes by calling an extra session of the
Legislature, and nothing was done, what more can be said?

Ask the settlers of the Mussel Slough what is their experience of the
pitiless rigor of the monopoly towards those who confidently trusted in
the good faith of the great power. These poor farmers were told by the
railroad monopoly to locate homesteads and plant orchards and vineyards
and construct irrigating canals; that they would not have to pay for
their land any higher price than before it was improved. With this
understanding the farmers went to work, and with great sacrifices and
arduous labor made their irrigating canals and other improvements. Then
when this sandy swamp had been converted into a garden, and valueless
lands made very valuable, the monopoly came down on the confiding people
and demanded the price of the land after it had been improved. The
farmers remonstrated and asked that the original agreement should be
respected; but all in vain. The arm of the law was called to eject them.
They resisted, and bloodshed was the consequence. Some of them were
killed, but all had to submit, there was no redress.

And what price did the monopoly pay for these lands? Not one penny, dear
reader. These lands are a little bit of a small portion out of many
millions of acres given as a subsidy, a _gift_, to build the Southern
Pacific Railroad, which road, the charter said, was to pass through San
Diego and terminate at Fort Yuma.

The line of this road was changed without authority. [Mr. Huntington
talks in his letters about _convincing_ people to make this change.]
Thus the Mussel Slough farmers got _taken in_, into Mr. Huntington’s
lines—as was stated by the public press.

But these, as well as the blight, spread over Southern California, and
over the entire Southern States, are historical facts. All of which,
strung together, would make a brilliant and most appropriate chaplet to
encircle the lofty brow of the great and powerful monopoly. Our
representatives in Congress, and in the State Legislature, knowing full
well the will of the people, ought to legislate accordingly. If they do
not, then we shall—as Channing said “kiss the foot that tramples us!”
and “in anguish of spirit” must wait and pray for a Redeemer who will
emancipate the white slaves of California.