It was to them not only the worship of God, nor an act by
which they recalled and commemorated better days, but was besides
an exercise of culture, where all they knew of art and letters was
united and expressed. And it made a man's heart sorry for the good
fathers of yore who had taught them to dig and to reap, to read and
to sing, who had given them European mass-books which they still
preserve and study in their cottages, and who had now passed away
from all authority and influence in that land - to be succeeded by
greedy land-thieves and sacrilegious pistol-shots. So ugly a thing
may our Anglo-Saxon Protestantism appear beside the doings of the
Society of Jesus.
But revolution in this world succeeds to revolution. All that I
say in this paper is in a paulo-past tense. The Monterey of last
year exists no longer. A huge hotel has sprung up in the desert by
the railway. Three sets of diners sit down successively to table.
Invaluable toilettes figure along the beach and between the live
oaks; and Monterey is advertised in the newspapers, and posted in
the waiting-rooms at railway stations, as a resort for wealth and
fashion. Alas for the little town! it is not strong enough to
resist the influence of the flaunting caravanserai, and the poor,
quaint, penniless native gentlemen of Monterey must perish, like a
lower race, before the millionaire vulgarians of the Big Bonanza.
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