Wednesday, March 4. The convict that escaped a short time since was overtaken by my constable ninety miles distant, and brought back to-day. He looked like one whose last desperate hope had been baffled. I asked what he attempted to run away for. He said the devil put it into his head. I told him the poor old devil had enough to answer for without being charged with his offences, and doubled the time of his sentence, which was only for six months, and sent him back to the public works. He is rather a hardened character, but if he has got a good vein in him, I will try to find it. And in the mean time I shall set the prisoners quarrying stone for a school-house, and have already laid the foundations. The building is to be sixty feet by thirty-two stories, suitably proportioned, with a handsome portico. The labor of the convicts, the taxes on rum, and the banks of the gamblers, must put it up. Some think my project impracticable; we shall see.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE PEOPLE OF MONTEREY.—THE GUITAR AND RUNAWAY WIFE.—MOTHER ORDERED TO FLOG HER SON.—WORK OF THE PRISONERS.—CATCHING SAILORS.—COURT OF ADMIRALTY.—GAMBLERS CAUGHT AND FINED.—LIFTING LAND BOUNDARIES.
Saturday, March 6. I have never been in a community that rivals Monterey in its spirit of hospitality and generous regard. Such is the welcome to the privileges of the private hearth, that a public hotel has never been able to maintain itself. You are not expected to wait for a particular invitation, but to come without the slightest ceremony, make yourself entirely at home, and tarry as long as it suits your inclination, be it for a day or for a month. You create no flutter in the family, awaken no apologies, and are greeted every morning with the same bright smile. It is not a smile which flits over the countenance, and passes away like a flake of moonlight over a marble tablet. It is the steady sunshine of the soul within.
If a stranger, you are not expected to bring a formal letter of introduction. No one here thinks any the better of a man who carries the credentials of his character and standing in his pocket. A word or an allusion to recognized persons or places is sufficient. If you turn out to be different from what your first impressions and fair speech promised, still you meet with no frowning looks, no impatience for your departure. You still enjoy in full that charity which suffereth long, and is kind. The children are never told that you are a burden; you enjoy their glad greetings and unsuspecting confidence to the last. And when you finally depart, it will not be without a benison; not perhaps that you are worthy of it; but you belong to the great human family, where faults often spring from misfortune, and the force of untoward circumstances. Generous, forbearing people of Monterey! there is more true hospitality in one throb of your heart, than circulates for years through the courts and capitals of kings.
Tuesday, March 16. Met Com. Biddle and Gen. Kearny to-day by appointment, and gave them a history of California affairs from the time the flag was raised. Both expressed a little surprise at some of the events that had occurred, but neither called in question the wisdom of the policy which had been pursued. The report of a disposition on the part of these distinguished officers to cast reproach on events in California, are without a shadow of foundation. Com. Biddle has not come, it is true, to prosecute the measures of his predecessors, nor has he come to repudiate them. He desires, so far as his instructions will permit, to let them remain as he found them, and leave to time, that moral touchstone of wisdom and folly, the tests of their expediency.
Wednesday, March 17. I met a Californian to-day with a guitar, from which he was reeling off a merry strain, and asked him how it was possible he could be so light-hearted while the flag of his country was passing to the hands of the stranger. Oh, said the Californian, give us the guitar and a fandango, and the devil take the flag. This reveals a fact deeper than what meets the eye. The Californians as a community never had any profound reverence for their nominal flag. They have regarded it only as an evidence of their colonial relation to Mexico; a relation for which they have felt neither affection nor pride.
Thursday, March 18. A poor fellow came to me to-day, and complained that his wife had run away with another man, and wanted I should advise him what to do. I asked him if he desired her to come back; he said he did, for he had five children who required her care. I told him he must then keep still: the harder he chased a deer, the faster it would run; that if he kept quiet she would soon circle back again to him.
He hardly seemed to understand the philosophy of inaction: I told him there was hardly an animal in the world that might not be won by doing nothing; that the hare ran from us simply because we had chased it; that a woman ran for the same reason, though generally with a different motive: the one ran to escape, the other to be overtaken. He consented to try the do-nothing plan, and in the mean time I shal try to catch the villain who has covered an humble family with disaster.
Thursday, March 25. A California mother complained to me to-day, that her son, a full-grown youth, had struck her. Usage here allows a mother to chastise her son as long as he remains unmarried and lives at home, whatever may be his age, and regards a blow inflicted on a parent as a high offence. I sent for the culprit; laid his crime before him, for which he seemed to care but little; and ordered him to take off his jacket, which was done. Then putting a riata into the hands of his mother, whom nature had endowed with strong arms, directed her to flog him. Every cut of the riata made the fellow jump from the floor. Twelve lashes were enough; the mother did her duty, and as I had done mine, the parties were dismissed. No further complaint from that quarter.