Lyon County times. [volume] (Silver City, Nev.) 1874-1907, 1875-10-17
Our California Letter.
rPRoM THE SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
OF THE TRI-wEEKLY TINES.

thing has downward tendency, and
depression is more or less noticeable
in all kinds of business.
The resumption of the bank of
California has already got to he an
old story. Nobody says anything
about it, and nobody talks any more
about the Palace Hotel, which,
though occupied, is not entirely
cleaned of rubbish.
The lowest price for suit of rooms
for two persons-parlor, bedroom and
bath-is two hundred and seventy
five dollars per month, the rooms
| looking on the court. One thousand
per month is paid for suit by one
gentleman and wife, who, suppose,
have not sense enough to get rid of
twelve thousand dollars per year
in more satisfactory manner than
using it for board and lodging. In
stead of seeing how much comfort
can be had for certain sum, most
peoples pleasures seem to take the
form of trying to get rid of as large
an amount of money for little pur-
pose as possible. This is what is
characterizing the habits of the pres
ent generation, and making US so
really poverty stricken, as most of us
are. An English lady, who had
lived on the continent of Europe
great deal, once said that every
English family alrost waste enough
to support continental family of
the same size, and consequently the
poverty of Great Britain was far
more squalid than any found else
where. Instead of striving to see
how far and to what advantage every
thing We have can be made to go,
our present generation seem to be in
structing themselves in the art of ex-
pending great deal, to gain after
all but very little. We try to live in
California. To do so comfortably
we must board with rents as high as
they are, or, as the placards on 80
many houses of furnished rooms sug-
gest, live in the easements and be-
come proprietors ourselves, in small
way, of an establishment to get along
with an income which, elsewhere,
would make US comfortable. But
that is not all; we must live Gle
gantly. Furniture, few years old,
is out of fashion, and must be re-
lewed. Our rooms will not rent if
not elegantly upholstered, and then
comes heavy bedroom sets for show,
which suggest nothing of comfort;
ornamental bureaus with shallow
drawers, few of them architectural;
bedsteads which frown gloomily
upon us as we repose beneath the
shadow of their headboards, and
offering continual temptation to SER
| wants to shirk the trouble of moving
them until the dust of ages rests be-
meath them; chairs, stiff backed, of
every conceivable shape and fashion,
with stiff, new springs, and comfort
less, til we long for something old,
even broken down, if it need be, in
which we can take a little comfort.
Who really thinks Of comfort in
these days of show and ostentationl
An old wooden rocking chair, stuffed
and cushioned by our grandmother:
would be seized upon even in the
Palace Hotel, with all its newness;
but who would dare to have such a
thing7 it would be almost disrepu-
table. We pay in every way for our
extravaganza with discomfort; but
that does not matter, we are all
shoddy. Shoddy likes newness;
shoddy has no grandmother, no in
heritance, and it would be a shame to
have anybody suppose that piece of
mahogany grown rich with age, was
fit for anything but an old furniture
shop, because shoddy could not COM
pete with heirlooms. Give US black
walnut, turned out by machinery,
and plenty of it, that is the cry, and
houses are filed with it. Dat meal,
cracked wheat, and farinaceous food
come in in San Francisco with all
this show and ostentation. 1t is good
for the boarding houses, as everybody
eats it, and, as the old farmer said
about baked Jeans, they are the
fillingest things" but when people
have to deny their stomachs to supply
their backs and build show houses
for people to envy, it is as safe as
anything else to experiment with,
and the Scotch bone and muscle
produced by oat meal is often expa-
tiated upon by impecunious land
ladies struggling to pay for their
furniture.