Alas!  Mrs. Stanton, she has discovered a better business than butter-making.  She is going to marry—­sensible girl that she is—­and she is not going to marry a dairy-farmer either.

I doubt if any body in California will ever make as nice butter as this pretty Swede; certainly, every other dairy I saw seemed to me commonplace and uninteresting, after I had seen hers.  I don’t doubt that the young man who has had the art to persuade her to love him ought to be hanged, because butter-making is far more important than marrying.  Nevertheless, I wish him joy in advance, and, in humble defiance of Mrs. Stanton and her brilliant companions in arms, hereby give it as my belief that the pretty Swede is a sensible girl—­that, to use a California vulgarism, “her head is level.”

The hogs are fed chiefly on skim-milk, and belong entirely to the tenant.  The calves, except those which are raised for the proprietor, are, by agreement, killed and fed to the pigs.  The leases are usually for three years.

The cows are milked twice a day, being driven for that purpose into a corral, near the milk-house.  I noticed that they were all very gentle; they lay down in the corral with that placid air which a good cow has; and whenever a milkman came to the beast he wished to milk, she rose at once, without waiting to be spoken to.  One man is expected to milk twenty cows in the season of full milk.  On some places I noticed that Chinese were employed in the milk-house, to attend to the cream and make the butter.

The tenants are of different nationalities, American, Swedes, Germans, Irish, and Portuguese.  A tenant needs about two thousand dollars in money to undertake one of these dairy-farms; the system seems to satisfy those who are now engaged in it.  The milkers and farm hands receive thirty dollars per month and “found;” and good milkers are in constant demand.  Every thing is conducted with great care and cleanliness, the buildings being uncommonly good for this State, water abundant, and many labor-saving contrivances used.

At one end of the corral or yard in which the cows are milked is a platform, roofed over, on which stands a large tin, with a double strainer, into which the milk is poured from the buckets.  It runs through a pipe into the milk-house, where it is again strained, and then emptied from a bucket into the pans ranged on shelves around.  The cream is taken off in from thirty-six to forty hours; and the milk keeps sweet thirty-six hours, even in summer.  The square box-churn is used entirely, and is revolved by horse-power.  They usually get butter, I was told, in half an hour.

The butter is worked on an ingenious turn-table, which holds one hundred pounds at a time, and can, when loaded, be turned by a finger; and a lever, working upon a universal joint, is used upon the butter.  When ready, it is put up in two-pound rolls, which are shaped in a hand-press, and the rolls are not weighed until they reach the city.  It is packed in strong, oblong boxes, each of which holds fifty-five rolls.