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Show California's Admission Day. On the 8th inst. California celebrated the 67th anniversary of her admission into the Union. It was not so very long ago. A good many still survive who were there and joined in thy acclali&s of that day. But the changes since, who 6an tnke tli em in, who picture them? There Were but a few thousand on the golden- coast then; and all the way east from therV except a little oasis in Utah, was a wilderness profound. In the east the entire property of the Republic Repub-lic did not aggregate ten billions in value. Slavery Slav-ery -was entrenched in the Constitution and its advocates were arrogant in their assumptions. The first settlers in California wore more, than half southern states men; there was a full majority ma-jority of them in the convention that framed the first constitution of California; but when it came to deciding whether the new state should be free or slave, by an overwhelming vote the convention con-vention dedicated the state to freedom and the people by a pronouncod majority ratified that J clause. But when that constitution readied Washington Washing-ton it awakened a storm. The last great effort . of John .C. Calhoun's life was made to' defeat it, but it failed. It was then that secession vttfo determined upon by the fiery spirits of the South and the next seven years were spent in preparation prepara-tion for it. And with a strange Inconsistency the Southern men in California wore just as rabid as the fiercest ones in South Carolina and Mississippi. Mississip-pi. The stage all through those years was being set for the mighty tragedy that was to be. About the first acts of that tragedy were performed in California. The killing of Ferguson was one, of Broderiolc another, but they were promature, for they caused the North-born men in that state to assort themsolves and make clear that if secession se-cession was attempted there it would be contested con-tested to the death. . But it was not of those things wo meant to speak. The United States' had beon poor and a debtor nation for all the oighty years of its life until in steadily accelerating stream gold began to flow from California. In six yoars it supplied more gold to the nation than it had accumulated since its birth. It did more than that It gave to the Republic credit in the money centres of the world.- And ine then, In peace and war, that Itroam has steadily swollod from the West and Because of it in half a century the Republic, in the procession pf the nations, inarches at the head. No other such transformation was ever seen, nt other such will over again he seen unless in depths of South America or Africa. The frontier fron-tier of our country hris (passed away; there is no warring tribe iif savages leftj railroad after railroad rail-road has spanned tfre continent; temples and cities have been spead over all the region between the great Mississippi and the Pacific a continent has been dedicated to enlightenment, to industry, to progress and to peace. Slavery passed away and the bitterness engendered by the mighty tragedy Of its passing is mostly quenched. The charnal Ships have melted from the sea; the Pikb county 1 num. has put by the whip with the short handle T and the long lash; the prairie schooner, like the groat American bison, has mostly disappeared. Now from mid-continent, London is but ten days away and Yokohoma but fifteen days removed. The. nations have grown near together, the oceans are but ferries. In those days it required a month for a letter to pass between New York and. San Francisco, now it requires but four days and for Ulte one-third of the distance, men talk as though face to face through the telephone, and by he telegraph, we know what happened all around the world yesterday. ' And still there are .garrulous old fellows still around who are ready to tell what happened in California five years before that admission day; lipw they explored the hills, how since then the ral art of cooking beans, and baking bread in a Dutch oven has been lost; how the Sacramento p(nion was the best paper ever published, how bfetter whiskey could be bought then at $3.00 per gallon than can bo obtained now for $8.00, and hbjv the man that never wrapped his blanket argund him and lay dov,ii to sleep under the pines afid the stars on the high Sierras, doesn't know What sleep is. |