SOS CALIFORNIA AFTER THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD. 



fish, which he offers for sale ? He was one of the best Greek 

 and Latin scholars of his class in Yale College, and, subse- 

 quently, one of the most promising Members of our Bar. But 

 he exchanged his Blackstone for a pick, and, instead of pick- 

 ing fees out of his clients' pockets, he came here to pick gold 

 out of the mines ; but, the deuce was it, for whenever his 

 pick struck close upon a deposit, it was no longer there ; so 

 he exchanged his pick for a hook and line, and now angles for 

 pike, pickerel, and perch, and can describe each fish by some 

 apt line from Catulus. He would do well at his new pisca- 

 tory profession but for the gilded hook of the gambler. He 

 laughs at the trout for darting at a fictitious fly, and then chases 

 a bait himself equally fanciful and false. 



" But look again — do you see that pulperia, with its gathered 

 groups of soldiers and sailors, poets and politicians, merchants 

 and mendicants, doctors and draymen, clerks and cobblers, 

 trappers and tinkers 1 That little man who stands behind the 

 bar, and deals to each his dram of fire, was once a preacher, 

 and deemed almost a prophet, as he depicted the pangs of that : 

 worm which dieth not, but now he has exchanged that worm" 

 for another, but preserved his consistency, for his worm, too, 

 distilleth delirium and death. And that thick-set man who 

 stands in the midst of the crowd, with ruby countenance and 

 reveling eye, whose repartee sets the whole pulperia in a roar, 

 and who is now watching the liquor in his glass to see if it 

 stirreth itself aright, once lectured in the west on the tempta- 

 tions of those who tarry late at the Avine ; but now his teeto- 

 talism covers all liquors as goodly gifts graciously bestowed. 

 But one brief year, and some dame quickly may describe his 

 pale exit, as that of his delirious prototype. ' I saw him 

 fumble with the sheets, and play with flowers, and smile upon 

 his fingers' ends.' 



