inviting moods; but Colorado, like every | in my ears. "You'll go back, sir, you'll

rado," replied C. "I came here with my brother's children to settle them, and I tried to make a little money and lost by the attempt."

"Nay," said D., "you can take before the magistrate, who has power to exact costs."

"Whoever has once tried that," an"I fear you speak truth," I replied; "in swered C., "will not run the risk again. America every produce is cheaper, the A young Englishman took my potato land number of farmers greater, and therefore on halves, that is, he rented the land, paycompetition forces down prices, profits be- ing half the produce as rent. A hundred come very small, and it is altogether wiser cattle broke into his crop, and devoured it. and safer not to engage in agriculture. In He was absent at market and my nephews early days much money was made in Col- did their utmost to drive them out, but orado by growing corn and rearing cattle, failed, their dog having been poisoned. many men becoming very rich. G. died When my tenant returned, out of sheer the other day, leaving his widow about anger and despair, he fired at a steer and 40,000l. and eighteen thousand cattle. wounded it, and that night left the counAnd a banker in this city, M., is said to try. It would have been a less crime to make about 12,000l. a year by his herds." | have shot the owner of the steer. A few "Yes," answered C.," but they were days afterwards, as I was binding wheat, fortunate as well as prudent. G., I know, the committee of public safety marched in escaped entirely that Indian raid which long single file, with the faces of undertakruined so many others engaged in cattle. And M. confesses to be the luckiest of men. They were both contractors in the war, I hear."

"You came here at a most unlucky period, and have certainly not had fortune on your side. Your ranches are about the best in the neighborhood, and your crops have been fine, but land, you know, as well as produce, has declined every year since you bought it, till it is now only worth half its original value. In your first year locusts snatched success out of your hand; in your second, ditto; in your third, Colorado was subject to the most terrible floods and snow that ever visited it, and so I suppose you must have lost money. In times like these, the greater the exertion made the more the loss. I condemn the policy of the government; if carried much further it will ruin America. But time will ease your complaint. You must be quite thickly peopled now-quite settled up."

"The part of the country in which I live," replied C., "is as thickly inhabited now as most counties in England, but I have no neighbors; in America men do not understand the meaning of the term neighbor. You have a ranch to defend against all comers. If the winter is rough they tear down your fences, open your gates at night, and admit their cattle. No exertion can keep your fence without a gap. If you complain, they say you have not a legal fence, i.e., your fence is either not of an exact legal form, or it has got old and is not strong enough to resist breechy steers. If you have a tight corral and pound their cattle they quarrel with you outright, and you must either have recourse to your revolver or make peace

with them."

ers at a funeral, into my field, and made for me. They said they knew I had wounded the animal, because I had threatened to shoot beasts if they broke into my crops. I verily thought they were going to hang me. But I made a stirring appeal to law, and after some demur and some furious threats and brandishing of bowies and revolvers they departed. In due time I was summoned before the magistrate, and in a court grandly and formally conducted a decision was given against me. The magistrate informed me privately that this was safer for me on account of the number of mounted ranchmen round the court: had I not done so, he said, they might have taken the matter into their own hands, when you would have fared worse. You can appeal."

66

Well," I said, "I think he acted wisely and in your favor."

"And how ended the appeal?" interrupted D.

"The summer passed and I heard nothing further," continued C.; "but in December, when the snow was on the ground, and I was playing a game of whist in my house, an under-sheriff rode up with an immediate summons to the county town where he said the judge was in session; I had to ride twenty-five miles that night, and to appear before a judge and jury at ten o'clock next morning. They sat up all next night, and then handed in a sealed verdict of guilty. The judge fined me ten dollars, the lowest fine the law allowed him to impose, but the costs amounted to sev enty dollars. The magistrates are generally persons without property who live on the produce of the cases they try; and their verdicts are consequently against the man who can pay. But this was not all

--

"You have scarcely shown us fair reason for giving up a plan deliberately entered on, my good friend," said I. "Granted you have been sufficiently tormented. You have been, as the saying is, through all three mills; your crops have been twice destroyed by locusts, and this third year you nearly lost your herd were in great fear, I hear, for ten days that you had lost every beast, and have had your fences washed away four times by the floods. Notwithstanding the sweeping away of all your hopes in that magnificent oat-crop, when three more days would have seen it cut, and perhaps in stack-notwithstanding the simultaneous loss of your tenant friend's potato-crop by oxen, and this year's terrible visitation of snow and hurricane there must be something more to have brought you to this determination. Come, now, let us hear, in plain English, why you have resolved to face once more the less material, but perhaps more really painful and annoying evils of modern English society. I may tell you these evils are, if anything, greater than they were."

I found another charge against me, which icans seldom like vinegar, and I confess I I imagined had been tacked to the main am not so partial to 'Nabob Pickle' as I charge which I have just described-a used to be. Squashes and cucumber precharge of illegal and false branding. I served in a very mildly acidulated applehad not my witnesses present; this en-juice are agreeable in hot weather, and abled the judge, under cover of a large Mexican chillies bottled in water are perbail to appear at the next sessions and fection." answer the charge, to give me my liberty. But I had to put all my cattle in bond to procure bail. It is a sad thing for a country when its people do not look for justice at the hand of the law, but trust rather to money and violence. I did not expect a calm and perfect sphere of peaceful labor when I came into the wilds of America; but I fear the evil here lies deeply bedded in the principles of the Constitution, and will not easily be eradicated. Wealthy men know the power of their dollars, and poor men are too well versed in the arts of a crooked political influence not to use them; for the election of magistrates by popular vote is a fertile source of evil. An Englishman stabbed his most intimate friend, and was taken and committed to prison. Ten thousand dollars,' said an American, will liberate him.' A bystander instantly made a bid. Give me a note for five thousand, and in a fortnight he shall be on the other side of the 'herring-pond.' But the English friends of the murdered man swore that they would shoot the villain if he were let loose. An American threatened to assault me, and I asked a magistrate whether the law could touch me if I shot him during the assault. 'Some magistrates would dismiss the case,' he said, 'thinking the homicide justifiable, but others would more wisely commit you for your own safety, lest the people might hang you on the first tree. And then six months' incarceration is not pleasant or profitable.' Private influence, bribery, and İynch law, any of these may trip a man up." "The revolver does not often come into play," remarked D.

Americans seldom shoot," I answered, as long as they are sober; and you know how sober they usually are hereabouts."

"I never cast eyes on a drunken man since I have been in America," said C., "but then I never visit the towns. I have been a teetotaller myself since I have been here, but I find coffee too stimulating, and have twice been ill through adhering to my rule too closely. If you will drink tea or coffee twice or thrice a day, you must eschew beefsteaks and venison pasty, and make your every-day diet to consist of a slice of fried bacon, tinned fruits and tomatoes, or dried fruits stewed. Amer

"I came hither," answered C., "expecting to find a country where the last remnants of an old race might lay down without sorrow their traditions, and live an honest life without want, by diligence. I knew well there would be much trouble, some peril to be endured, but I trusted to find compensations. Perhaps, like others, I bought too much land, but I naturally expected land would not fall to a lower value than the price at which I purchased; the probability was it would rise. I expected that labor and money expended on land would bring a fair remuneration. In the first place land is unsalable; in the next, no amount of labor on it brings a profit. Direct labor, working for another man, is the surest, nay, the only means of obtaining monetary payment. In other words, the order of society is being rapidly reversed. In Colorado, labor gets good wages. I believe, on the other hand, that there are more openings for the educated classes in England, and that they will be happier there than in America, even with less comparative income. For myself, while directing the settlement and overlooking the interests of my nephews, I hoped to

English rivers. The red deer on Braemar have lost their fleetness and their nose, and the dwindling packs of grouse can scarcely wing over the wall that hides their deadly foes."

live a simple life without care or excessive | turn back from the steaming and oleagilabor, but I find that care has more victims nous perfumes that lade the breezes of here than in more civilized regions, that labor is excessive, and that the attention and honor paid to age and tenderness for infirmity are absent. There is no trace here of that reverence which surrounds the old man in the beloved country of our birth. And I fear that owing to the fundamental faults of the present political constitution of America, she may not always be blest with the same good fortune that she has had, and may have to suffer unexpected and terrible convulsions of human passion."

"Well," said C., "I may come here three years hence to fling a fly on_the_Rio Grande, or to catch a salmon in the Colorado, on your distinct assurance, supported by affidavit, that there is a salmon in that river, namesake of this land, and likewise a three-pound trout in the Rio Grande; but I'm older than I was, and strongly "Mark me, C.," said I, "you'll come suspect D. would prefer lying on the sofa back here after all. You'll find on every with the Times in his hand, or slowly pleasant hill in the old country the sand- pacing one of those grand cathedrals which wich bags and empty bottles of picnickers. show what glorious thoughts possessed On every stream lauded as prime fishing- the human soul in former times. At any ground, you will meet with the well-worn rate I'm off for England as soon as possipad of a thousand disappointed Waltons. ble." The very salmon that have a sense left,

C. S.

ENGLAND FIFTY YEARS AGO.-In those | what were called watch-papers, on which were days there were no envelopes for letters, and printed or written texts from Scripture, moral postage was calculated by distance; twopence maxims, passages from the poets, or tender in the metropolitan district, tenpence to York, love effusions purporting to be original. Still one shilling and twopence to Edinburgh, two more recently, and when in my prime, I reshillings to John o' Groat's House, and some-member that it was considered contra bonos thing almost prohibitive to the Continent of mores and all the proprieties for a lady to ride Europe. "Franks" were in great request; in a hansom cab, or for a gentleman to smoke and members of both Houses of Parliament in a lady's presence; and worse still, if possiwere daily, if not hourly, besieged by letter- ble, for a lady to be seen in the streets with a writers, to obtain the privilege of their names gentleman who had a pipe or a cigar in his on the corners of epistles, which would not mouth. I remember-and it is scarcely a have been sent through the post at all unless memory of older date than thirty years when they could have been sent gratis. When Sir a gentleman in full dress was not compelled by Rowland Hill proposed his scheme of a uni- fashion to attire himself like a clergyman or a form rate of postage, he was considered a tavern waiter; when the fashionable evening daring revolutionist, destined to ruin the coun- dress was a blue coat and gilt buttons and a try, even when he fixed the rate temporarily at colored or embroidered vest, and when bright fourpence. When, after a quiet interval, to colors in the waistcoat were not considered the accustom the panic-stricken public to the great exclusive right of the footman or the costerchange originally contemplated, the rate was monger. I remember, too, when ladies were reduced to a penny, elderly people held up not ashamed to be economical in their attire, their hands in dismay and predicted the col- and did not allow their silks or satins to trail lapse, not only of the Post Office, but of the on the ground, but wore their "gowns,' empire of Great Britain. When I was a they were called, of a length that just reached youth, women wore pattens. Are such arti- the ancle, and allowed the dainty little feet and cles ever seen in our day? At that time it a portion of the leg to be seen. This fashion was considered vulgar for a gentleman to wear pleased the gentlemen, and did no harm to the a cotton shirt or a silk hat. The shirt of fine ladies, conduced greatly to comfort in walklinen and the hat of beaver were de rigueur. ing, besides saving a considerable sum in the Watches had double cases, between the outer dressmaker's account. and inner of which it was the custom to insert

All The Year Round.

as