Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/272

260 prosperity: and it was only to be expected, for this was a prosperous country. Everybody was idle, and full of money, and happy. The streets were full. People moved about buoyantly, greeting each other, trading, exchanging wisdom. They stood on the street corners and in the lobbies of the hotels, with expensive cigars in the corners of their mouths, their thumbs tucked in the armholes of their vests. There were a good many heavy watchchains and diamonds. New buggies were flashing about. The streets were perpetually lively with processions of one sort or another—decorated and placarded loads of lumber for the new hotel, escorted by a band: visiting celebrity who has bought property, escorted by a band; announcement of new addition, escorted by a band, and so on. Millionaires of a day, in Van Dyke's expressive phrase; who were yesterday living in little outlying ranches or on windswept farms of the Middle West.

Most of them had acquired titles of one sort or another—Judge, Colonel, General, an occasional humble Captain, and all had gained the respect that goes with money and position. Their opinions were listened to and considered of value. And the people were buying potatoes brought down from Humboldt County, eggs imported from east of the Rockies, meat from Chicago, butter from Oregon. Their orchards and fields were growing up to mallow and mustard. Why work when you can hire somebody else to do it for you?

These new-made magnates were firm in their optimism. Why shouldn't they be? They were millionaires. To be sure they had not the background of experience that comes with most millions: they had not the habit of making considered judgments. Those who had always lived in the country knew nothing of city growths: and those who had always lived in the city were densely ignorant of natural resources or, indeed, whether beans grew in the ground or on trees.

"Don't it just beat hell!" they marvelled; and then loyally answered themselves that it did beat hell, and everything else this side of heaven, naturally, because it was California. It was a normal development, to be expected if you stopped and looked things squarely in the face. The only reason it seemed surprising