If my English readers only
knew what a sweet, pretty little thing is a Monterey girl, they would
all pack up their wardrobes to go there and get married. It would be a
great pity, for with your mistaken ideas of comforts, with your love of
coal-fire and raw beef-steak, together with your severe notions of what
is proper or improper, you would soon spoil the place, and render it as
stiff and gloomy as any sectarian village of the United States, with its
nine banks, eighteen chapels, its one "a-b-c" school, and its immense
stone jail, very considerately made large enough to contain its whole
population.
The governor was General Morreno, an old soldier, of the genuine
Castilian stock; proud of his blood, proud of his daughters, of himself,
of his dignitaries, proud of everything--but withal, he was benevolence
and hospitality personified. His house was open to all (that is to say,
all who could boast of having white blood), and the time passed there in
continual fiestas, in which pleasure succeeded to pleasure, music to
dancing; courting with the eyes to courting with the lips, just as
lemonade succeeded to wine, and creams to grapes and peaches. But
unhappily, nature made a mistake in our conformation, and, alas! man
must repose from pleasure as he does from labour.
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