pines, with the snow-clad peaks of the Sierra Nevada for a background.

You also receive the impression of cleanliness. If there were any old
cans, scraps of paper and miscellaneous rubbish lying about in any town
through which I passed, I did not notice them. One is struck, too, by
the absence of the "vacant lot" - that unsightly blot of such frequent
occurrence in all towns in the process of building, especially when
forced by "booms" beyond their normal growth. Fortunately the very word
"boom," in its significance as applied to inflated real estate values,
has no meaning in these towns, with the result that they are compact.
One may search in vain for the "house to let" sign. When no more houses
were needed, no more houses were built. This compactness of form,
cleanliness, and the elimination to a great extent of the rectangular
block, contribute in no small measure to that indefinable suggestion of
the Old World - a charm that haunts the memory and finally becomes
permanent acquisition.

However clever the stories of the romancers - of whom Bret Harte
preeminently stands first - after all, their characters were
intrinsically but creatures of the imagination; the pioneers were the
real thing! Yet such is the nature of this topsy-turvy world, the copies
will remain, whilst the originals will fade away and be forgotten! The
writer will always hold it a privilege that he had the pleasure of
meeting in the flesh a remnant of the men who laid the foundation of the
institutions by means of which this great Commonwealth has grown and
prospered; big, broad-minded, strong men who, whatever their failings -
for they were very human - were generous to a fault, ever ready to
listen to the cry of distress or help a fallen brother to his feet,
scornful of pettiness, ignorant of snobbery, fair and square in their
dealings with their fellows. Alas, that it should have come to "Hail and