242 Life and Sport on the Pacific Slope 



that the free-and-easy, go-as-you-please, what-'s-the- 

 odds-as-long-as-you-'re-jolly atmosphere of so many 

 Western homes is free from baneful germs, the 

 more deadly because invisible ? The optimist con- 

 tending that all 's well with the world is a better 

 fellow than the pessimist who maintains the con- 

 trary. Give me the joyous colours of hx)pe, not the 

 sable of despair, the shield of Ivanhoe, not the Dis- 

 inherited Knight's. And yet the creed of that 

 sneering host (enrolled beneath the banner of some 

 fifth-rate De la Rochefoucauld) who holds that evil 

 underlies all human conduct, that the good action 

 is inspired by the bad motive, touches, as extremes 

 always do touch, the vainglorious " I believe in — 

 myself" of the rising generation. 



Of political immorality, the wholesale bribing of 

 legislatures, municipal corporations, debauching of 

 the Press, — I use the words current in California, 

 — something has been already said. When the 

 secret history of California is given to the world, 

 it will be admitted that such men as the late 

 Senator Stanford, for instance, was absolutely forced 

 either to fight the devil with his own weapons, or 

 sacrifice the efforts and earnings of a lifetime. It 

 is certainly not for Englishmen who know anything 

 of their own political history to throw even the 

 smallest pebble at such men. I hold no brief for 

 expediency, but in the development of new coun- 

 tries it would seem that good does follow bad, and 

 that a state may be compelled to take one step 

 backward before taking half a dozen forward. 



There is an almost universal desire to live in- 

 tensely, rather than peacefully and comfortably. 



