Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 April 1880 — The Saddest Phase of Life in the Gold and Silver-Mining Regions. [ARTICLE]

The Saddest Phase of Life in the Gold and Silver-Mining Regions.

The saddest phase of this coast—probably of all gold and silver-mining regions—is the absence of homes. We mean real homes, whose founder laid the first hearthstone and made the first clearing with the thought that on that spot he was to do his life’s work, and there, at last, amid familiar scenes, sink into that sleep that is final. The absence of this disposition has made nomads of the men of this coast. They came here originally with the thought th.i in a little while they would return and make the home of their future in the lands of their birth. Could the aircastles which have been erected in thought by men on this coast, while lying in bunks in rude cabins, or in blankets around camp-fires, be woven into a picture, what a city it would make. But the years have stolen by; except in isolated! cases, the bewitching dreams nave never been realized, and while the hoped-for homes were never bnilded back in the land of childhood, neither, alas, have they been builded here. We do not mean to say that there are not plenty of families living in what they call homes. But those who have homes which were created with the expectation that they would be permanent, that in and about them was to be hoarded the gathered treasures of a life time, are very few. This might, perhaps, be expected here in the desert, but the same is true of California, especially in the country. As. a rule, the farm-houses of California and their surroundings are a perpetual sign of “ For Sale.” On many of those farms men and families have lived for a quarter of a century, and still it has never been home in any rightful sense of the word. There has never been a time that the husband and father has not intended to sell out in the course of a few months and never a time that the family has not hoped he would.— Virginia (Nev.) Enterprise.