When Colton Hall, the first state capitol and the pride to this hour of Old Monterey, was completed, Colton writes:
"The town hall on which I have been at work for more than a year is at last finished. It is built of a white stone"—now a beautiful deep cream—"quarried from a neighboring hill, and easily shaped. The lower apartments are for schools, the hall over them—seventy feet by thirty—is for public assemblies. It is not an edifice that would attract any attention among public buildings in the United States; but in California it is without a rival. It has been erected out of the slender proceeds of town lots, the labor of convicts, taxes on liquor shops, and fines on gamblers. The scheme was regarded with incredulity by many; but the building is finished, and the citizens have assembled in it and christened it with my name, which will go down to posterity with the odor of gamblers, convicts and tipplers. I leave it as an humble evidence of what may be accomplished by rigidly adhering to one purpose, and shrinking from no personal efforts necessary to its achievements. A prison has also been built, and mainly through the labor of convicts. Many a joke the rogues have cracked while constructing their own cage; but have worked so diligently I shall feel constrained to pardon out the less incorrigible."
COLTON HALL
The Capitol of California in 1849.
THE RIVER ROAD, KEENE VALLEY, NEW YORK
[NEIGHBORLINESS AND A COUNTRY COMMUNITY]
SARAH LOWRIE