74 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



immediately after, the first Overland coach, drawn by a spanking team, 

 rattled past, with a mail from St. Louis less than twenty days old. 



But the Overland Mail coach and the " Ponj' Express " have become 

 obsolete institutions. They were too slow for so "fast" a people, and 

 have dwindled into utter insignificance in comparison with our marvel- 

 lous achievements in building railroads. We have not only invented a 

 machine which will lay five or six miles of track per day, but have 

 scaled the lofty summit of the Sierra with an engineering skill which has 

 no parallel, and the beautiful echoes of Donner Lake and Tahoe, those 

 gems of our mountain scenery, are now awakened by the bell of the 

 locomotive and the whistle of the steam engine, whilst the great railway 

 is being pushed across the sand}^ plains beyond with a celerity which 

 almost outstrips the fan oy. Thus it is in all things, we are a "fast" 

 people. If we set about the building of a fine hotel, we decorate it more 

 elaborately and furnish it more splendidty than any other hotel, as the 

 magnificent structures of that class in San Francisco bear witness. The 

 dining-room of the Lick House is said to be finest dining saloon in any 

 public house in the world. Soo, too, in many of our private dwellings, 

 all that art can contribute to luxury or comfort is invoked by this 

 '• fast " people. 



In like manner, when our proclivities run in more vicious channels, 

 they are equally indicative of our contempt for old precedents and of 

 our rapid advance in the alluring paths of vice. If a man makes up his 

 mind to become a gambler, he gambles on a grand scale; if a thief, he 

 will steal every thing, from a pocket handkerchief to a grand piano; if 

 a robber, he will garrote you for a quarter of a dollar, or rob an express 

 messenger of fifty thousand dollars in bullion ; if a swindler, he will 

 cheat you out of anything, from a penny whistle to a gold mine; if a 

 fraudulent bankrupt, he will fail for a million and pay his creditors five 

 cents on the dollar. 



Are we not, then, emphatically a "fast" people? Do we not, in some 

 respects, bear a striking resemblance to the "fast" young lady who 

 wears xevy low-neck dresses and very high heeled boots; who is Y>arti- 

 cularly fond of champagne and terrapin stews, dresses in a " stunning" 

 st3'le, and is only deterred from smoking cigars because it might affect 

 her breath; or to the fancy young man, with the irreproachable kids, 

 whose chief occupation is to cultivate his moustache, drive a spanking 

 team, and give expensive oyster suppers, .to be paid for with money box-- 

 rowed from his friends ? 



But if we are a " fast" people in the slang sense, it is not to be denied 

 that we are also a fast people in the more literal and comprehensive 

 meaning of the term. It was but eighteen years, on the ninth day of 

 this present month, since California was admitted into the Union ; and 

 it is only about twenty years since Marshall found the first gold, in the 

 American River, near the old saw mill. Has history, either ancient or 

 modern, recorded any such progress as ours, in so brief a period? A 

 becoming modesty, perhaps, should prompt us to leave to others the task 

 of recording our achievements ; but inasmuch as excessive modesty is 

 not an American, and particularly a California virtue, I propose to trace 

 briefly this wonderful progress back to its source, that we may thereby 

 be enabled the more clearly to foresee the future. 



It is. perhaps, but a natural feeling of gratified vanity which generally 

 prompts us to take to ourselves more credit than we deserve for results 

 which we have aided to achieve. In reviewing the brief but wonderful 

 career of our favored State, we are but too prone to imagine that the 



