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THE ROMANCE OF MONTEREY 101

surroundings all conducive to happiness and joy. Here were pioneers, who to reach this distant land, had bravely faced the formidable dangers of land and sea, but who had not lost their love for social pleasures, nor left behind their habits of ceremonious courtesy. The seeming strangeness of it all, however, will disappear when we reflect that the conditions in Spanish California were precisely those from

Yi) ees,

which have ever developed the re- = V a 3 finements that mark the social inter- ~ course of a leisure class. It was so in Greece and in Rome,

where

developed

a leisure class for whom

all

menial duties were performed by servitors of an inferior social caste. It was so in our southern states before the civil war, when slaves administered to the wants of an

aristocracy whose political influence long controlled our nation, and whose social prestige was recognized on two continents. And so it was in far away California in that wonderful pastoral period when the ceremonial Don was relieved of every uncongenial task by the numerous natives who became his willing servitors, and who cheer-

fully attended to his personal and his domestic needs. To this must, of course, be added the chivalrous inheritance of the Spaniard, and the delightful charm of his new found home.