[Gutenberg 13832] • Romance of California Life / Illustrated by Pacific Slope Stories, Thrilling, Pathetic and Humorous

It certainly was hard. What was the freedom of a country in which the voice of the original founders was spent in vain? Had not they, the "Forty" miners of Bottle Flat, really started the place? Hadn't they located claims there? Hadn't they contributed three ounces each, ostensibly to set up in business a brother miner who unfortunately lost an arm, but really that a saloon might be opened, and the genuineness and stability of the camp be assured? Hadn't they promptly killed or scared away every Chinaman who had ever trailed his celestial pig-tail into the Flat? Hadn't they cut and beaten a trail to Placerville, so that miners could take a run to that city when the Flat became too quiet? Hadn't they framed the squarest betting code in the whole diggings? And when a 'Frisco man basely attempted to break up the camp by starting a gorgeous saloon a few miles up the creek, hadn't they gone up in a body and cleared him out, giving him only ten minutes in which to leave the creek for ever? All this they had done, actuated only by a stern sense of duty, and in the patient anticipation of the reward which traditionally crowns virtuous action. But now-oh, ingratitude of republics!-a schoolteacher was to be forced upon Bottle Flat in spite of all the protest which they, the oldest inhabitants, had made!