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[148]
is the victim of his enterprise, the slave of his success.
All round this inland sea, the life is rich and strong: rich as the native fruit, strong as the native wine.
A Californian, fat and rosy as John Bull, his English ancestor, holds forth a grasp of welcome to his thin and bilious Yankee brother; pointing to a palm tree, heavy with the dates that are to round that stranger out with flesh.
If he had only time to eat and sleep, a Californian would be always fat, but where is the Californian who has time to either eat or sleep?
The people living on this sunny sea, are seldom in a state that country curates would describe as wholesome.
Too much sun is in the sky, too much wind is on the hill.
Warm air expands the lungs and frets the nerves.
Men eat too fast, and drink too deep, and work too long.
How loud they speak, how hard they drive!
At every turn you catch high words and mark the passage of swift feet.
Under the shadow of Lone Mountain lies a racecourse, where bankers and judges hold trotting matches, and wiry little ponies are excited by
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