It measured only about 8x12 inches. The paper was established by Walter
Colton who had had journalistic experience as editor of the Philadelphia
_North American_. This issue was published scarcely a month after the
American occupation.]
Colton decided that a new school house was necessary--"to be sixty feet
by thirty, two stories, with a handsome portico. The labor of the
convicts, the taxes on rum, and the banks of the gamblers must put it
up," he writes. "Some think my project impracticable; we shall
see,"--and he gives the following account of how some gamblers were made
to contribute to this enterprise:
"A nest of gamblers arrived in town yesterday, and last evening,
opened a Monte at the hotel."
After stationing a file of soldiers at the outer doors, Colton entered
to find no one, "save one Sonoranian, composedly smoking his cigarito. I
desired the honor of an introduction to his companions. At this moment a
feigned snore broke on my ear from a bed in the corner of the
apartment."
"'Ha! Dutre, is that you? Come, tumble up, and aid me in stirring
out the rest.' He pointed under the bed, where I discovered a
multitude of feet and legs radiating as from a common center."
"'Hallo there, friends--turn out.'... Their plight and discovery
threw them into a laugh at each other." He and his secretary found
others "in every imaginable position--some in the beds, some under
them, several in the closets, two in a hogshead, and one up a
chimney. Mr. R---- from Missouri--known here as the
'prairie-wolf'--I found between two bed-ticks, half smothered with
the feathers. He was the ringleader, and raises a Monte table
wherever he goes, as regularly as a whale comes to the surface to
blow. All shouted as he tumbled out from his ticks. Among the rest
I found the Alcalde of San Francisco, a gentleman of education and
refinement, who never plays himself, but who, on this occasion, had
come to witness the excitement. I gathered them all, some fifty in
number, into the large saloon, and told them the only speech I had
to make was in the shape of a fine of twenty dollars each. The more
astute began to demur on the plea of not guilty, as no cards and no
money had been discovered, and as for beds, a man had as good a
right to sleep under one as in it. I told them that was a matter of
taste, misfortune often made strange bedfellows, and the only way
to get out of the scrape was to pay up. Dr. W---- was the first to
plank down.
"'Come, my good fellows,' said the doctor, 'pay up, and no
grumbling: this money goes to build a school house, where I hope
our children will be taught better principles than they gather from
the examples of their fathers.'"
Of how the labor of the prisoners united with the money of gamblers to
build the needed school, he writes:
"One of the prisoners, an Englishman, ventured a criticism of the
stonework of another prisoner, which revealed the fact of his being
a stonecutter himself. I immediately set him at work at his old
trade. But he feigned utter ignorance of it, and spoiled several
blocks in making his feint good. I then ordered him into a deep
well where the water had given out, to drill and blast rocks....
Finding that the well was to be sunk some twenty feet deeper, ...
he requested that he might be permitted to try his chisel again.
Permission was given, and he is now shaping stones fit to be laid
in the walls of a cathedral. He was taken up for disorderly
conduct, and he is now at work on a school house, where the
principles of good order are the first things to be taught."
Colton gives an instance of trust justified on an occasion when, pressed
for funds, he created a "trusty."
"The most faithful and reliable guard that I have ever had over the
prisoners is himself a prisoner. He had been a lieutenant in the
Mexican army, and was sentenced, for a flagrant breach of the
peace, to the public works for one year. I determined to make an
experiment with this lieutenant; had him brought before me; ordered
the ball and chain to be taken from his leg, and placed a
double-barrelled gun, loaded and primed, in his hands.
"'Take that musket and proceed with the prisoners to the stone
quarry; return them to their cells before sunset, and report to
me.'
"'Your order, Señor Alcalde, shall be faithfully obeyed.'
"A constable reconnoitered and found all well. At sunset the
lieutenant entered the office, and reported the prisoners in their
cells, and all safe.
"'Very well, José, now make yourself safe, and that will do.' He
accordingly returned to his prison, and from that day to this has
been my most faithful and reliable guard."
"If there is anything on earth besides religion for which I would
die," Colton declares, "it is the right of trial by jury." And he
impanelled the first jury ever summoned in California. One-third
were Mexicans, one-third Californians, and the other third
Americans. The plaintiff spoke in English, the defendant in French,
the jury, save the Americans, Spanish--"and the witnesses all the
languages known to California."
"The inhabitants said it was what they liked--that there could be
no bribery in it--that the opinion of twelve honest men should set
the case forever at rest. And so it did, though neither party
completely triumphed." He gives the credit for the satisfactory
termination of this polyglot case to "the tact of Mr. Hartnell, the
interpreter, and the absence of young lawyers."
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."
[Illustration: COLTON HALL
The Capitol of California in 1849.]
[Illustration: THE RIVER ROAD, KEENE VALLEY, NEW YORK]
NEIGHBORLINESS AND A COUNTRY COMMUNITY
SARAH LOWRIE
With the growth of large cities in our country and the desertion of the
farms for the town, there has been a less observable but quite as
remarkable desertion of the city in favor of the country.
One would suppose that these two migrations would so balance each other
that neither the town nor the country would suffer by the exchange of
citizens. It would be reasonable to hope that going to the country would
bring just the right impetus needed by the stay-at-homes of each
community to brace them into new life.
But the thing has not worked out that way.
However much the shops and offices of the cities may have benefited by
the advent of the farmers' sons and daughters, and however much the real
estate agents and provision merchants of the country may have benefited
by the advent of the well-to-do towns-folk, the morale of the country
town, the ideals of the country people and the amalgamation of the
native men with their new neighbors into a better citizenship have not
prospered. Nor have the city institutions been able to replace the men
of affairs who, having ceased to use the city except as a means for
carrying on their business, have transferred their family and their
leisure interests into the country.
The city churches, the city philanthropies, and the civic improvement
organizations all tell the same tale: the rich men, the special
executive men, the professional men, once their actual business
engagements are over, turn their backs on the city with a sigh of relief
and depart country-wards for rest and enjoyment for the night, for the
week-end, and for the summer vacation. The city loses them, and they
gain the country. But it must not be supposed that the country in any
vital sense gains them. A man who has professedly moved from the town to
the country for rest and pleasure, and who observably needs both, feels
as free as a debutante to enjoy what is set before him in the way of
diversion, with no moral obligation toward his neighbors but that of
paying with a wry grin the outrageous prices levied upon all outsiders
by the genial natives.
Without quite meaning to, without indeed quite realizing it, the richer
men and women of this country, especially in our eastern states, have so
shifted the obligation of neighborliness that they have the air of being
transients everywhere and neighbors nowhere. Even their country places
are not theirs year in and year out for as long as a single generation.
We Americans like to change our minds and there is no telling what kind
of scenery or what style of architecture we may fancy next.
One hears a great deal about the unfaithfulness of the Irish cook who
may "up and leave" any day that she hears of a chance of "bettering
herself" elsewhere; but the mistress's unrest is nothing to the plight
of the farmer when one considers the lottery of the city folks. The
gamble of his crops and the weather is nothing to this other gamble. For
the farmer knows that no power under heaven can keep the city man
satisfied with his site, his house with five bathrooms, his fancy
chicken run, and his concrete garage if the whim should take his wife
that the environment was no longer a suitable one for the children.
There is no romance, therefore, to the farmer about either his potato
crop or his city neighbor. He knows it is not philanthropy that led the
city man to buy five acres of poor farm land at the highest notch price,
and that no desire for his company has urged the new comer to plant his
house on the other side of the back pasture. Being a sensible farmer he
makes what profit he can out of his potatoes and his city neighbor
before either crop has time to depreciate in value.
[Illustration: QUARTERS OF VISITING NURSE]
"What are you city people for, but to be skinned?" was the frank remark
of one of my nearest country neighbors one day, apropos of an outrageous
bit of sharp dealing on his part as property appraiser for that
district. It was not a flattering summing up of a relationship, nor did
its grim humor hide any more indulgent version of our economic value as
neighbors. In fact we were not, nor ever had been accepted by him and
his kind as neighbors. We were a crop. A crop more lucrative than his
potatoes, but from our arbitrary and unexpected demands, and the
shortness of our seasons, and the variation of our types a much more
"pernickery" crop to deal with. Perhaps I should have been flattered by
his frankness, but I was not! For the moment indeed, I even resolved to
deal no more with him or his, but on second thought I concluded that,
although he would be the loser of some $200, I would be out a
wash-woman, a chore boy, many dozens of fresh eggs, many quarts of milk,
a care-taker for the house during the winter, and an immunity from his
cows in my garden in the summer. In fact, I stood to lose double as much
as he, if peace of mind and leisure to enjoy my home could be computed
in hard cash. I concluded therefore that it would not pay to get mad.
But the remark rankled and in the end set this and that motive to work
in my mind until my brain and heart became fallow ground for the
cultivation of another sort of relationship than that of city folk and
native, buyer and seller, employer and employed, or even giver and
receiver. In the end we learned to be neighbors--he and I--not because
his ground adjoined mine, but because we both began to feel a common
civic interest in the same village and in the same country side, and
because in a very particular and picturesque sense we both shared in an
enterprise from which we both derived comfort and pleasure. The change
in me was greater than the change in him for he had always been
interested in the village life apart from his property, and apart from
his comfort, and during all the year. The bond that brought us together
was not the church, nor the library, nor the base-ball field--all
donations in times past of the summer people to the natives, but it was
the Neighborhood House, a donation from the country people and the
summer people alike, not to any particular class but to all the dwellers
in that mountain valley.
Of course, I realize that the particular Neighborhood House, which fits
so well the need of our valley, might not do for just any valley. For
instance, our valley in the Adirondacks has a scattered population of
nearly a thousand people with two villages about five miles apart, and
several little settlements here and there among the hills. In the larger
village there are perhaps one hundred children in the school. The
nearest hospital lies twenty-four miles across a mountain road, and
several hours by boat across Lake Champlain at Burlington, Vt. An
infirmary that could be used by the natives for long illnesses, and by
the city cottagers for emergency operations was vitally needed; so our
Neighborhood House has a sunny airy infirmary and a perfectly equipped
little operating room.
Our village and the country people and the lumber camps back in the
mountains can only depend on the services of two physicians, one of them
an old and feeble man. To supplement their visits and for emergency
calls for the summer visitors a district nurse was needed, so a
bed-room, bath-room, and pleasant sitting-room for such a nurse were
planned in the Neighborhood house to connect with the infirmary. To
supplement the somewhat limited primary grades in the village schools
and to provide occupation for restless little city children, a summer
kindergarten had been established and proved most successful, so on the
lower floor of the Neighborhood House a large, many-windowed room was
set apart to be used, not only for this purpose, but for adult classes
in domestic science, sewing, embroidery and dancing. There was no proper
room in the village for fairs, church suppers, glee clubs, rehearsals,
informal village meetings, etc. There was added, therefore, to this
large room a kitchen to be used in connection with it for such
entertainments and for cooking classes. There had been a successful
men's club in the village for years, but the women and girls had no
common meeting place and indeed no real center of interest outside their
homes. A woman's club room therefore was made an important part of our
Neighborhood House. It has an open fireplace, a store closet and
cupboards, a writing table, tea and game tables, comfortable chairs, and
a pretty color scheme, with prints and water colors on the wall,
oriental rugs on the hardwood floors, pleasant chintzes, books, and
flower bowls.
[Illustration: CORNER OF WOMEN'S CLUB]
Though the village women had been long accustomed to make extra
pin-money by selling eggs, maple sugar, balsam pillows, bread and cake,
and rag-carpet rugs, there has been no store where these things could be
ordered. We set apart one room in our Neighborhood House, therefore, for
a Village Exchange, which was open for three months in the summer.
During the winter months this pleasant little room was used by the boys
for a game room. There was no hotel or even boarding house in the
village for transient guests, which remained open throughout the winter;
so two guest rooms were set aside in our Neighborhood House to be used
by the strangers, lecturers, clergymen, visiting surgeons, and city
visitors who might pass that way during the late autumn and the winter
months.
Neither the village people nor the summer cottagers were well supplied
with sick room appliances, and among the poorer citizens of the valley
there was even a lack of necessary articles for confinement cases, while
crutches, invalid chairs, and wheel chairs were difficult to procure in
an emergency by rich and poor alike. So an emergency closet, stocked
with such things was set aside for general use in the Neighborhood
House. The rooms in the rest of the house were the house dining-room and
kitchen, the pantry, cool room, linen and store closet, the stewardess's
bed-room, and an up-stairs sleeping porch for the infirmary, and a
splendid attic. Outside the house were the wood shed, earth closet, tool
shed and ice house, an ample vegetable and fruit garden, a lawn space
for croquet and tether ball, a small flower and shrub garden, and wide
verandas.
The house was originally a boarding house, and the only additions which
had to be made to the original structure were the cellar, summer kitchen
and the sleeping porch. The total cost of these additions and of the
equipment and alterations including all gifts came to about $3,000. The
original purchase price of the property was $2500. The cost of
maintaining the house including the salary of the visiting nurse, the
wages of the stewardess, and all household expenses, as well as the
expenses of the summer school, extra service, etc., amount to about
$2,500 yearly. The income derived from patients in the infirmary,
transients boarding in the house, and out-patients' fees, exchange dues,
etc., amount to about $700 a year.
I suppose in different localities expenses of such an enterprise as the
Neighborhood House would be dealt with in a variety of ways. In our
valley a number of men and women bought the property and made the
fundamental improvements. An association was then formed comprising as
many of the citizens of the valley as cared to join. The annual dues for
each associate member were fixed at one dollar. To this association the
owners of the property leased the house and grounds for a period of
several years. The duties of the association were to pay the taxes and
maintain the property in good condition, and their privileges were to
use the property for the benefit of the members of the association and,
as they saw fit, for the general good of the community.
There were three kinds of memberships in the association:
Active members $ 1
Contributing members 10
Sustaining members 50
Through this means the annual income of the Neighborhood House
Association amounts to about $1,800, irrespective of the income derived
from the fees, etc., mentioned above. Without any great strain on any
one's purse, therefore, the house has been maintained by the association
without a deficit.
[Illustration: A HOMELIKE CORNER]
[Illustration: LOOKING INTO THE SCHOOL ROOM]
Towards the equipment of the house gifts were received to the amount of
$2,635.82. But besides these gifts of money, the village people
themselves donated both labor and building materials and furniture and
rugs. The summer kitchen, so far as labor was concerned, was the gift of
the village carpenters. The infirmary was furnished principally by the
women and the girls of the village who raised the money among
themselves. The farmers of the neighborhood donated wood, potatoes,
apples, etc., to the store closet. One man donated his weekly Sunday
paper, another the vines for the porches. One New York physician, whose
child had profited by the care of the visiting nurse, gave the sleeping
porch, three or four of the other physicians who had summer cottages
gave the surgical instruments for the operating room, the children of
the village brought plants for the garden, one old lady knitted
washcloths for the bath-room, the village house painter helped hang all
the pictures and the bracket-lamps, and the village artist helped raise
the money for the emergency closet by painting the scenery for the
benefit play. There was really a chance for every one to give to that
house, and with but few exceptions, every one did give, not only
willingly and generously, but eagerly and joyfully.
And because each in his or her way had had a share in making that house
a Neighborhood House, the valley people, natives and cottagers alike,
promptly and without any self-consciousness turned heartily in and used
the house. It had never occurred to most of us that the village had
needed such a house, indeed the woman whose beautiful thought it was,
had died a year before the Neighborhood House Association was so much as
spoken of; but once it stood there, warm and glowing with its happy life
that winter night of its opening, there was no question as to its
usefulness all day long, summer and winter, in most of our minds.
During the past year the visiting nurse has been occupied in and out of
the House over 2,600 hours and has treated fifty-four cases; the
infirmary has had seven patients with 160 hospital days; from the
emergency cupboard 300 loans have been made. The Women's Club has
eighty-two members and has met weekly for lectures and socials. The
Girls' Club with twenty-seven members has met once and sometimes twice
weekly. The Glee Club has held many rehearsals and gave a concert in
May. The sales from the exchange, open only in the summer, in two years
have amounted to about $900.00. The Village Improvement Committee has
held two farmers' institutes, has made progress in securing good side
walks, has planned for improved roads and tree planting, and has
arranged for a prize essay and oratorical contest by pupils of the
public school. During the past year there were about 5400 visits to the
house; the largest number of visits in one month was 1064 in December.
The question may well be asked, however: Who guides these clubs and
classes, who arranges for these parties, who welcomes these guests, who
sees to it that the house is clean and orderly, that the meals are
properly served, that the patients are well looked after, that the
stewardess is up to her work? Who is the hostess, and who, at the close
of the house's festivities, speeds the parting guest? It would have to
be a woman of tact and gentle blood, for the village people would not
brook so much power lodged in any one who was less or even quite one of
themselves. It would have to be a person who lived in the valley both
winter and summer and who thus understood the conditions of both the
summer and winter life. It would also require one who understood the
care of an infirmary, as well as the care of the house, who could devise
sick room diet, as well as substantial meals for transient guests.
Fortunately for our Neighborhood House we found such a woman in our
visiting nurse and after some experimenting on other lines, she was made
the head of the house. She is a social worker when she is not required
in the infirmary or for out-patients, and when these last demand all or
more than all of one nurse's time, an emergency nurse is procured who
works under the head of the house.