CELEBRATION OF THE FOURTEENTH ANNIVER SARY OF THE ADMISSION OF CALIFORNIA INTO THE UNION by REV. HENRY V. BELLOWS., FRANK BRET HARTE (mobi reader .txt) 📖

a well served table, and are superior in this respect to any

average presented in any other State or Country I have ever

travelled through.

 

But even more marked is the impatience of this people with

mediocrity of talents or qualifications in its public servants,

whether those that amuse, or those that instruct it. In no

community is excellence so prized, so quickly appreciated, so

fully enjoyed ; in none is common place, pretension, shallow-

ness or even mediocrity, sooner detected or spurned. A fool

ish notion has prevailed at the East, that you could be man

aged, or taught, or amused by people of whom we there had got

tired. But no mistake is greater. I find for instance, to my

unaffected surprise, the standard of clerical requirement and

the average of clerical ability, higher here than in any other

portion of the United States. I am less able to speak of the

legal or the medical professions, but I should be very much

surprised if the analogy did not hold in them. The practical

consequence of this peculiarity is, that in California, things do

not begin at the beginning, but at the middle. It will not do here

to begin with carrying the calf, promising by and by to carry

the ox he will grow to. Nobody who cannot shoulder a heifer

at the start, need expect to be waited for. It is of all coun

tries in the world that in which physical, moral and pecuniary

Capital is worth most. " To him who hath shall be given, and

 

 

 

18 ORATION.

 

he shall have in abundance" is verified in you. If any thing is to

prosper here, be it a church, or a bank, or a stable, or a hotel,

a business, or a pleasure, it must show from the start that it is

going to succeed, and has vigor and ability to succeed, before

anybody will touch it. There is no pity on weakness or in

ability in California.

 

III. The next impression I get of a favorable character, is

the unexampled equality and essential American Democracy of

your population. It is impossible to judge a man's social or

personal position here by the place you find him in. An

educated professional man may be waiting behind your chair

at the Hotel, or the Restaurant ! The miner in a red shirt

and tattered trowsers, may have been at home a millionaire, a

minister, or a member of Congress. Your contempt for men

whose sole merit lies in having so successfully descended from

their grandmothers is another proof of your unconditional

dignity. Indeed, all over the country, just now, the grandson

of a President, or the great-grandson of a Duke, is not half

so respectable as what we used to call in a very different

spirit, ''The son of a gun." Labor, enterprise and self-re

liance are respectable every where, but they are truly re

spected here. I have never seen such self-poised manners in

the so called laboring class ; and instead of violence, rudeness

and incivility, always looked for in new countries, I have

every where encountered gentleness, civility and amiability. I

hear it complained of that private, domestic service is uppish

and disagreeable, but I have not seen it.

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If I were called on

to name the only aristocracy of the State, I think I should be

compelled to nominate the stage-drivers, as being on the whole

the most lofty, arrogant, reserved and superior class of beings

on the coast the class that has inspired me with most terror

and reverence. Their blazing red cravats, a white pocket

handkerchief outside, yellow gloves, their tall white hats,

occasionally varied with broad brimmed ones, their gloomy

solemnity of manner as, with more than the gravity of the

ermine, they mount the box, have filled my soul with a deeper

sentiment of the sublime, than any other single exhibition, and

induced me to propose them as the first order of Nobility, if ever

 

 

 

ORATION. 19

 

you adopt an aristocracy. What can be finer than their

splendid reticence, their taciturn answers and their superior

ways in general ? I have long noticed it as a peculiarity in all

parts of America, that such was the general intelligence of our

people, and the thought-marked character of their faces, such

their means and disposition to dress themselves very much

after one standard and pattern, that in a public car or a gene

ral assembly, you could not distinguish men as professional, as

tradesmen, as laborers, except by carefully looking at their

hands. But in California even this sign fails, for the roughest

hands often belong to the man whose brains have had the

finest culture, and his social training the first opportunities.

The general scorn of wealth, as such, or as any claim to prece

dence is a noble offset to your universal pursuit of money; your

contempt for men whose only excellence is in having so suc

cessfully descended from their grand-mothers, is another mark

of your unconventional dignity. What can be finer than the

irony which has invented the phrase that describes and holds

up to public ridicule in one word, the whole mean and degrad

ed class of persons, voluntarily living on the toleration, the

charity, and the mercy of their neighbors. We have no name

for that order in our country. It is too numerous ! one half

the people in all settled countries live on the toil and prudence

and protection of the other half. But here you freely express

your surprise, contempt and charity for that small and excep

tional class, who can't, won't, or don't work by that inimitably

funny, unmeaning, but most significant phrase, Bummers!

The etymology of this rich word is to me both unknown and

inscrutable. Whether it has any thing to do with hanging

round the skirts of restaurants, taverns, billiard-rooms and

banks, I cannot say, but the creature thus described is unmis-

takeable in this or any other country although California

alone has given him a name.

 

Finally, interior superiority to their external circum

stances, is a controlling characteristic of Californians.

They are better than their houses, their clothes, their surround

ings. 

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I have found here in a tumble down tavern, a casual

company of gentlemen at dinner, capable of the most intelli-

 

 

 

20 ORATION.

 

gent, agreeable and varied discourse. I have visited in a log

cabin, accessible only through a yard where pigs and cat

tle disputed the way with you, families whose manners ?

talk and spirit would have adorned the choicest saloons of the

oldest cities. It is this interior life that makes your people

take so lightly and bravely the ups and downs of their lot.

Rich to-day and poor to-morrow, to be rich again the day after ,

I hear little whining, despair or appeals to sympathy and corn-

passion. It is a moral treat to find a people so superior to for

tune.

 

Doubtless, California has her faults and weaknesses. She is

generous, but she is also recklessly extravagant. She lives

on her capital, not on her income. She despises every coin

smaller than four bits, and never stops to consider whether or

no she can really afford anything she wants, if only possessed

of the means of paying for it down. Contempt for economy,

impatience of savings, has a bad influence upon exactness, self-

denial, prudence and that fore looking, which is man's chief

prerogative. I think, too, that home-life is developing under

somewhat unfavorable circumstances ; that men and women

have lived too much apart and became too used to separate

pleasures and interests to domesticate easily, and with the

happiest results. As a consequence, very unequal marriages are

common and very unruly children as much so. Moreover, I do

not see that women have here the usual marked moral and

social superiority to men. Indeed, men have greatly the ad

vantage of women in this country out of the cities where

drudgery and solitude oppress the female lot. The greatest

of all California's misfortunes, however, is the delusion so

hugged by her citizens that this is not their home. They are

all working and acting with reference to a permanent estab

lishment elsewhere. Not one in twenty will ever find it. The

best and most useful son of California, is the one who most

firmly and unreservedly says to himself, this is my state to

live and die in. Such citizens act by a different standard and

serve their community on a different footing from those who

are always envying every steamer's load that leaves the coast,

and living with reference to their turn to go.

 

 

 

ORATION. 21

 

I notice, too, a habit of general profanity, and an irrever

ence of manner in sacred-places, which points to an undevout

spirit.

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Indeed who can doubt that spiritual and religious life

has fearful obstacles in this community, and that every serious

and thoughtful Christian owes his influence night and day, to

the support of those conservative and elevating institutions,

the Sabbath, still so shamefully broken among you, by military

parades, theatrical entertainments and public races ; the

Church, deserted by half your population, and the acting min

istry of the gospel, fewer I hear in proportion to your num

bers than in any other city in America. But against these dis

couragements, I place the one great crowning fact that no people

in the world ib so open to wholesome influence, so ready to

follow wise and disinterested leadership, so plastic to improve

ment, so rapid in all kinds of progress, material, moral, social,

political, as you are. The dregs settle sooner to the bottom,

the goodness comes quicker to the top here than any where

else.

 

I know no country in the world so rewarding to faithful

diligence in any field of reform ; no place where ability, worth,

patriotism, eloquence, are more highly appraised, or ^rnore in

fluential. Notwithstanding my criticism on those very points,

I consider that general triumph of order, decorum of growing

respect for the Sabbath, and of interest in religious instiutions,

imperfect as these still are, which has been obtained, within

ten years, over the reign of violence, gambling, drunkenness,

harlotry, open vice and public crime which then prevailed, un

paralleled in rate and sum in the history of society and what

happened here, happened every -vrhere on this coast. The

tether of sin and recklessness is very short. Their votaries fly

hence