Page:California Inter Pocula.djvu/639



good character when he is already proved to be a thief?" roared the judge.

"Your honor, notwithstanding the one-sided evidence, the theft is not proved; moreover it is a presumption of law that a man is nmocent until he is proved guilty."

"Yes, my friend," concluded Uncle Zeke, "and there is another presumption of law, and that is that a justice of the peace is not bottomed with cast-iron. You may go on with your speech if you like, but I am going for my bitters right now."

Cerrutl tells the story of a scene which occurred in a justice's court at Sonoma while he was there engaged in writing from General Vallejo's dictation.

A Jew shop-keeper, at the instigation of his competitors, was arrested for violating the Sunday law, which decreed that all places of bushicss in California should be closed on the sabbath. The offender was fined ten dollars, which materially reduced that Sunday's profit. Thus forced to do reverence, the Jew thought he might as well keep his own sabbath as the Christian's, and so secure a better day for traffic here, and the seed of Abraham's reward hereafter. So the next week he sacredly regarded Saturday, and kept open shop as usual on Sunday. Arrested Monday morning, he was asked why he had transgressed the law a second time.

"I have broken no law," he declared; "I kept Saturday, which is the Jewish sabbath."

"Sir," said the judge, "do you propose to transplant Jerusalem to California? Clerk, enter a fine against the prisoner of twenty-five dollars."

Often in early times, as we have seen, justice and juleps were administered by the same hand; sometimes the storekeeper or the postmaster would add to his regular occupation the duties of alcalde. At Agua Frio we find in 1852 an unsuccessful miner metamor