The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems | Page 3

society, because they are necessary to make homes. But on this
coast, in early times, and more or less even now, men found they could
dispense with homes; they had been converted into nomads, to whom
earth and sky, a blanket and a frying-pan, were sufficient for their
needs. Unless we came to them armed with endurance to battle with

primeval nature, we became burdensome. Strong and coarse women
who could wash shirts in any kind of a tub out of doors under a tree,
and iron them kneeling on the ground, to support themselves and half a
dozen little, hungry young ones, were welcome enough--before the
Chinamen displaced them. We had some value as cooks, before men,
with large means, turned their attention to supplying their brothers with
prepared food for a consideration below what we could do with our
limited means. And then the ladies, the educated, refined women, who
followed their husbands to this country, or who came here hoping to
share, perchance, in the golden spoils of the mines! Where are they
to-day, and what is their condition? Look for them in the sunless back
rooms of San Francisco boarding-houses, and you will find them doing
a little fine sewing for the shops; or working on their own garments,
which they must make out of school hours, because the niggardly pay
of teachers in the lower grades will not allow of their getting them done.
Idealized indeed! Men talk about our getting out of our places where
we clamor for paying work of some kind, for something to do that will
enable us to live in half comfort by working more hours than they do to
earn lordly livings."
How much soever I might have liked to talk this labor question over
with my intelligent hostess at any other time, my curiosity concerning
her own history having been so strongly aroused, the topic seemed less
interesting than usual, and I seized the opportunity given by an
emphasized pause to bring her back to the original subject.
"Did you come first to California?" I asked.
"No. I had been married little over a year when Benton was born.
'Now,' I thought, 'my husband will be contented to stay at home.' He
had been fretting about having promised not to take me to California;
but I hoped the baby would divert his thoughts. We were doing well,
and had a pleasant house, with everything in and about it that a young
couple ought to desire. I deceived myself in expecting Mr. Greyfield to
give up anything he had strongly desired; and seeing how much he
brooded over it, I finally told him to be comforted; that I would go with
him to California if he would wait until the baby was a year old before

starting; and to this he agreed."
"How old were you at that time?"
"Only about nineteen. I was twenty the spring we started; and
celebrated my anniversary by making a general gathering of all my
relatives and friends at our house, before we broke up and sold off our
house-keeping goods--all but such as could be carried in our wagons
across the plains."
"You were not starting by yourselves?"
"O no. There was a large company gathering together on the Missouri
river, to make the start in May; and we, with some of our neighbors,
made ready to join them. I shall never forget my feelings as I stood in
my own house for the last time, taking a life-long leave of every
familiar object! But you do not want to hear about that."
"I want to hear what you choose to tell me; but most of all about your
second marriage, and what led to it."
"It is not easy to go back so many years and take up one thread in the
skein of life, and follow that alone. I will disentangle it as rapidly as I
can; but first let us have a fresh fire."
Suiting the action to the word, my hostess touched a bell and ordered a
good supply of wood, which I took as an intimation that we were to
have one of our late sittings. In confirmation of this suspicion a second
order was given to have certain refreshments, including hot lemonade,
made ready to await our pleasure. When we were once more alone I
begged her to go on with her story.
"We left the rendezvous in May, and traveled without any unusual
incidents all through the summer."
"I beg pardon for interrupting you; but I do want to know how you
endured that sort of life. Was it not terrible?"

"It was monotonous, it was disagreeable, but it was not terrible while
everybody was well. There were compensations in it, as in almost any
kind of life.