The Squatter and the Don A Novel Descriptive of Contemporary Occurrences in California

The life of Gabriel hung by a very frail thread for several days, and Clarence did not have the heart to leave him. He did not telegraph to Mercedes their arrival, for he would...

The lawsuits forced upon the Mechlins, to resist the fraudulent claims trumped up by Roper and Gasbang, obliged Gabriel to delay returning to his place at the San Francisco bank...

Darrell was not the man to make any delay in putting into practice a project, when once adopted. He therefore immediately wrote home saying that he "had located," and wished Cla...

If those kind eyes of the Goddess of Justice were not bandaged, but she could see how her pure white robes have been begrimed and soiled in San Diego, and how her lofty dignity...

"'_Assey de Bonaparte!_' cried France, in 1814. Men found that his absorbing egotism was deadly to all other men," says Mr. Emerson. "It was not Bonaparte's fault. He did all th...

The whir of threshing machines was heard in the valleys of the Alamar rancho, and wagons loaded with baled hay went from the fields like moving hills. The season had been good,...

Don Mariano had only said, "What is the plan?" a very natural and simple inquiry, and yet it threw Clarence into something of a flutter, as it flashed vividly before his mind th...

San Francisco seemed deserted, dusty and desolate to Clarence after his return from the Yosemite and the society of Mercedes. It was the step from the sublime to the ridiculous;...

"The one great principle of English law,"--Charles Dickens says, "is to make business for itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly and consistently maintained t...

Cards for Mrs. Mechlin's ball, on the 27th of December, had been out for two or three days, when, on the 20th of that same month and year--1873--Clarence arrived at the American...

Mercedes felt so comforted by what her father had said, that in less than ten minutes after he left she was sleeping like the good child that she was. Madam Halier watched her s...

The wharf was over-crowded. The steamer was about to leave. The last car-load of baggage had been quickly shipped, and Clarence had not been able to say a word to Mercedes which...

Voices were heard below. All listened. As Webster was coming down stairs he saw John Gasbang going out at the other end of the parlor, pushing a large arm-chair out upon the por...

It has generally been the custom of biographers to treat their subject after he is resting peacefully in his grave, indifferent to the world's opinion. Seldom has a man "_been w...

After waiting in the reception room for nearly two hours, Don Mariano and his two friends were at last ushered into the presence of ex-Governor Stanford. He was so well hid behi...

"Great men are the Fire Pillars in this dark pilgrimage of mankind; they stand as heavenly signs, ever living witnesses of what has been, prophetic tokens of what may still be--...

When Victoriano had left Everett at his front door, exacting the promise that he would come to breakfast with Clarence next morning, he merely delayed long enough to learn that...

"Yes; rather. We are a large family, and require a good deal of room. But before we do any more work I want to speak with your father. I want to ask him--ask him as a favor--and...

Of all the horrible tortures that the human mind is capable of conjuring up with which to torment itself, none was greater to William Darrell than the consciousness of being rid...

"There is no greater monster in being than a very ill man of great parts, he lives like a man in a palsy, with one side of him dead; while perhaps he enjoys the satisfaction of...

"My dear brother," said Clarence, in a hoarse voice that sounded unnatural, as if coming from a great depth, "I would like to have your company, but as I am not coming back, I c...

George Mechlin's wound was not mortal, but it made it necessary to convey him to town to have medical attendance near at hand, and no doubt it would be of a long and painful con...

"To be guided by good advice, is to profit by the wisdom of others; to be guided by experience, is to profit by wisdom of our own," said Mrs. Darrell to her husband, in her own...

If there had been such a thing as communicating by telephone in the days of '72, and there had been those magic wires spanning the distance between William Darrell's house in Al...

In vain did Mercedes scan the broad bosom of the Pacific Ocean in search of something to say that would be soothing to Clarence's feelings, very proper for her to utter, and ver...

Mr. Lawrence Mechlin and wife came to New York to meet George's bride and her sister and take them to Long Branch, where they had been sojourning for the last two months.

Eight delicious weeks passed--the most delightful that Clarence and Mercedes had ever lived. The first of September had dawned, and on the 16th they would be married. With the f...

The Darrell family had been the happy dwellers of their fine house on the Alamar rancho for nearly two months, and the three Misses Holman had been the guests of the Alamar fami...

The sun was quite high above the horizon when George joined Clarence on deck; and both began to promenade and talk while waiting for the ladies to come, that the four might go t...

"I am enjoying the novelty of the thing, but I don't know what I shall think of the opera. I suppose I shall like it better when I understand it. Thus far it is to me only a ver...

There was one thing that the gay New Yorkers, under Mrs. Mechlin's _chaperoning_, had to do before they left the capital. They must make an excursion across the Potomac to Arlin...

The Darrell house was now finished, the furniture had arrived, been unpacked and distributed in the rooms, but the house seemed to old Darrell entirely too sumptuous for the pla...

"All aboard for San Diego!" shouted a voice from a wagon, as it rumbled past Darrell, who walked leisurely with a satchel in his hand, swinging it unconsciously, lost in thought...

At the time when this moonlit picnic of four took place on the steamer's deck, as it glided northward over the glassy surface of the immense Pacific, the people of California ha...

On the 25th day of May, of '74, Elvira and Mercedes found themselves again under the paternal roof of their California home, in the Alamar rancho. They could have arrived ten da...

The golden rays of a setting sun were vanishing in the west, and a silvered moon was rising serenely over the eastern hills, when the phaeton, having distanced the other carriag...

George and his three companions had given the last lingering look towards the glorious rainbows and myriads of dazzling gems glittering in the sun's rays, which pierced the vert...