There were anvils, brass bands, and a "collation" at the hotel.
But everywhere--overriding the most extravagant expectation and even
the laughter it provoked--the spirit of indomitable youth and resistless
enterprise intoxicated the air. It was the spirit that had made
California possible; that had sown a thousand such ventures
broadcast through its wilderness; that had enabled the sower to stand
half-humorously among his scant or ruined harvests without fear and
without repining, and turn his undaunted and ever hopeful face to
further fields. What mattered it that Indian Spring had always before
its eyes the abandoned trenches and ruined outworks of its earlier
pioneers? What mattered it that the eloquent eulogist of the Eureka
Ditch had but a few years before as prodigally scattered his adjectives
and his fortune on the useless tunnel that confronted him on the
opposite side of the river? The sublime forgetfulness of youth ignored
its warning or recognized it as a joke. The master, fresh from his
little flock and prematurely aged by their contact, felt a stirring
of something like envy as he wandered among these scarcely older
enthusiasts.
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