There is one thing a Digger cannot bear, and that is the comforts and luxuries of civilized life.  A number of my friends, who had taken Digger children to raise, found that as they approached maturity they fell into a decline and died, in most cases of some pulmonary affection.  The only way to save them was to let them rough it, avoiding warm bed-rooms and too much clothing.  A Digger girl belonged to my church at Santa Rosa, and was a gentle, kind-hearted, grateful creature.  She was a domestic in the family of Colonel H—.  In that pleasant Christian household she developed into a pretty fair specimen of brunette young womanhood, but to the last she had an aversion to wearing shoes.

The Digger seems to be doomed.  Civilization kills him; and if he sticks to his savagery, he will go down before the bullets, whisky, and vices of his white fellow-sinners.

The California Mad-House.

On my first visit to the State Insane Asylum, at Stockton, I was struck by the beauty of a boy of some seven or eight years, who was moving about the grounds clad in a strait-jacket.  In reply to my inquiries, the resident physician told me his history: 

“About a year ago he was on his way to California with the family to which he belonged.  He was a general pet among the passengers on the steamer.  Handsome, confiding, and overflowing with boyish spirits, everybody had a smile and a kind word for the winning little fellow.  Even the rough sailors would pause a moment to pat his curly head as they passed.  One day a sailor, yielding to a playful impulse in passing, caught up the boy in his arms, crying: 

“‘I am going to throw you into the sea!’

“The child gave one scream of terror, and went into convulsions.  When the paroxysm subsided, he opened his eyes and gazed around with a vacant expression.  His mother, who bent over him with a pale face, noticed the look, and almost screamed: 

“‘Tommy, here is your mother—­don’t you know me?’

“The child gave no sign of recognition.  He never knew his poor mother again.  He was literally frightened out of his senses.  The mother’s anguish was terrible.  The remorse of the sailor for his thoughtless freak was so great that it in some degree disarmed the indignation of the passengers and crew.  The child had learned to read, and had made rapid progress in the studies suited to his age, but all was swept away by the cruel blow.  He was unable to utter a word intelligently.  Since he has been here, there have been signs of returning mental consciousness, and we have begun with him as with an infant.  He knows and can call his own name, and is now learning the alphabet.”

“How is his health?”

“His health is pretty good, except that he has occasional convulsive attacks that can only be controlled by the use of powerful opiates.”

I was glad to learn, on a visit made two years later, that the unfortunate boy had died.