That mercy show to me.”
Friday, Dec. 4. The moment a child is born on a farm in California, and the nurse has had time to dress it, it is given to a man on horseback, who, with its future godfather and godmother, ride post-haste with it to some mission, and present it to a priest for baptism. This ceremony concluded, the party, full of glee, start on their return; and the little new-comer may now, perhaps, rest a week or two before he starts on another excursion; but after that, hardly a day will elapse without his being on horseback. He literally rides from his cradle to his grave. Thus, by the time a boy is ten or twelve years of age, he becomes an expert rider, is devoted to the saddle, and looks upon pedestrial motion as a contemptible way of getting through the world. He would sooner travel a hundred miles on horseback than ten on foot, and connect less fatigue and hardship with the result. Most of his labors, too, are on the saddle. He has a farm of twenty or thirty miles to ride over; vast wheat-fields to survey, and, perhaps, ten thousand head of cattle to keep from straying. He would have but little time for repose if he went by steam.
Saturday, Dec. 5. Of all the women I have had to deal with here the washerwomen are the most unmanageable. Two of them entered my office to-day as full of fight as the feline antagonists of Kilkenny. It seems they had been out washing in one of the little pools created by the recent showers, when one had taken that part of the margin previously occupied by the other. War offensive and defensive immediately commenced. One drew a knife, which had a blade two mortal inches in length, and the other a sharp ivory bodkin. But what their weapons wanted in terror and strength their ungentle anger supplied.
At last one cried out, “the alcalde;” the other echoed it, and so they both rushed down to the office to have their difficulties settled. Both of course commenced talking at the same time; and their stories ran together like two conflicting rivulets forced into the same channel. There was plenty of tumult and bubble. When these had a little subsided, I began cautiously to angle for the truth—a difficult trout to catch in such waters. But one darter after another was captured, till I had enough to form some opinion of those that had escaped. These we discussed till bitter feeling, like biting hunger, became appeased. The rest was very easily settled. Both went away declaring either margin of the pool good enough, and each urging on the other the first choice.
How gentle is forgiveness! and how sweet
To feel the severed heart flow back again
To one we loved, estranged by hasty words!
Sunday, Dec. 6. Mr. Sargent, who came out in the Congress in the capacity of clerk to the purser, and who had been left here several weeks since for the restoration of his mind and health, was missed from his quarters on Tuesday last. He has been laboring for some time under mental aberrations which wear a reasoning show, and which alarm only the close observer. His amiable disposition and exemplary life exempted him from all reproach, and have excited a general sympathy and concern for his uncertain fate. He was last seen winding his way through the forest which skirts Monterey, towards a ledge of rocks which overhangs the boiling surf of the bay. I have traversed the beach for miles, and watched each swell as it rolled in, to see if it bore on its crest aught like a human form. But nothing came to the shore or eddied in the surge, to resolve mystery and give a painful certainty to doubt. The sea itself is an awful mystery, and becomes doubly so when the fate of one we loved is locked in the tongueless silence of its unfathomed depths.
The waves tell not the fate of those
On whom their hasty waters close;