.p.-n-n. / 
 
 REESE LIBRARY 
 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNA. 
 MAR 15 1893 
 
 ( cessions Nn . 5 O 5" 5" 2^ , CL w Nn . 
 
MEMORIE AND RIME 
 
 BY 
 
 JOAQQTlsr MILLER 
 
 AUTHOR OF "80NG3 OF THE SIERRAS," " THE DANITES," EfO. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 FUNK & WAGXALLS, PUBLISHERS 
 10 AND 12 DEY STREET 
 
 1884 
 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1884, by 
 
 FUNK & WAGNALLS, 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, I). C. 
 

CONTENTS. 
 
 I. NOTES FROM AN OLD JOURNAL. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 In New York, 9 
 
 Going, 
 
 In Ayr, Scotland 12 
 
 In the Ruins of Melrose Abbey, 14 
 
 At Lord Byron s Touib, 15 
 
 In a Christian s "War, 17 
 
 In London, .......... 18 
 
 Settled Down in London, ....... 19 
 
 Cowley House, Cowley Street, Westminster, .... 23 
 
 Hunting for a Publisher, . . 23 
 
 My First Book, 26 
 
 The End of the Journal in London, . 27 
 
 Back in America, .28 
 
 Recollections of the Rossetti Dinner, ..... 29 
 
 What is Poetry ? 38 
 
 II. IN CALIFORNIA. 
 
 I. Old California, 51 
 
 II. Damming the Sacramento, ...... 59 
 
 III. An Elk Hunt in the Sierras, 72 
 
 IV. The Pit River Massacre, 80 
 
 V. The Girl of the Long Ago 88 
 
 To the Girl of Long Ago, 89 
 
 What is Love? 89 
 
 Who is Love? 91 
 
 III. IN OREGON. 
 
 I. In the Land of Clouds, 93 
 
 II. An Old Oregonian in the Snow, ..... 106 
 
 III. At Home 115 
 
 Farewell, .... . 117 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 IV. The New and the Old, 
 V. Fishing in Oregon Waters, 
 VI. The North Pacific Ocean, . 
 VII. "Idahao," ....... - * 133 
 
 IV. IN COLORADO. 
 
 I. The Colonel Bill Williams Mine, . . - 
 II. The Cow Widow of Colorado, 
 III. " Colorado Madge," 
 
 V. RHYMES FOR THE RIGHT. 
 
 1RQ 
 
 To Russia, . . . -. - 
 
 -ina 
 Mother Egypt, . , . . - 
 
 Miriam, . . . . .... 191 
 
 192 
 Jewess, . . ... . 
 
 . 193 
 Illinois, . . 
 
 104- 
 Washee-Washee, . . . , . . s 
 
 195 
 To Rachel in Russia, . .... 
 
 We Scribes, . ^ .. v - 
 A Flower from a Bat tie- Field : 
 
 Going up Head An Old Soldier s Story, . . . .197 
 
 VI. IN MEMORIAM. 
 
 I. Joseph Lane Senator, ..... 
 II. Tom Hood, . . . .- " ..... 
 
 III. 
 IV. Hulings Miller, 
 
 Minnie Myrtle," ... 
 
 V. Jonn Brown Joseph de Bloney, 
 
 A California John Brown in a Small Way, . . 232 
 
I. 
 
 NOTES FROM AN OLD JOURNAL. 
 
 Tired of carting around the world a mass of manuscript once 
 called a journal, but now worn almost to a circle, and yet not 
 willing to leave it for strangers to trouble over, I have copied 
 out these extracts and burned the rest of it. Whether or not I 
 should have cremated the whole crude heap is a question I am 
 quite prepared to hear decided in the affirmative by the reader. 
 Yet to have destroyed it entirely would have been like forgetting 
 one"* s first love. Besides that, these bits of the journal, you see, 
 pave the way to ivords of others worth hearing. And so it is I 
 have kept these few extracts, taking care, as you must credit me, 
 to leave out all names or allusions that might cause pain or dis 
 pleasure to even the most sensitive. Yet I half suspect that I 
 have, with them, left out much of the heart and life of the 
 thing. J. M. 
 
I live the days of long ago, 
 
 Because because I loved them so ; 
 
 And loved them so because thai she 
 Was of them so entirely. 
 
 I lift these lines, a monument 
 
 Above those dear, dead buried days, 
 
 When love led on which way we went, 
 When flowers bloomed in all our ways. 
 
 Her face, her earnest, baby face ; 
 Her young face, so uncommon wise 
 The tender love-light in her eyes 
 
 Two stars of heaven out of place. 
 
 Two stars that sang as stars of old 
 
 Their silent eloquence of song, 
 From skies of glory and of gold, 
 
 Where God in purple passed along. 
 
 That silent, pleading face ; among 
 Ten thousand faces just the one 
 1 still shall love when all is done, 
 
 And life lies by, a harp unstrung. 
 
 That face, like shining sheaves among ; 
 
 That face half hid, mid sheaves of gold ; 
 
 Thai face that never can grow old ; 
 And yet has never been quite young. 
 
I. 
 
 NOTES FROM AN OLD JOURNAL. 
 
 IX NEW YORK. 
 
 BEACHED New York to-day, August 17th, 1870, after 
 seven days and seven nights incessant ride from San 
 Francisco, and fourteen from Eugene City, Oregon. 
 Pandora s box ! New York at last ! Now I shall write 
 home and tell them I am on this side the Rocky Moun 
 tains. At Eugene I wrote a letter and left it behind 
 me, telling my parents I was going to " Frisco." Once 
 safely there 1 wrote them I was going East. And now 
 I shall give them the first hint of going to Europe. 
 Taken in pieces, it will not be so hard for them. And 
 oh ! but this is a tough town ! And the time I had in 
 landing on this island ! I have fought many battles 
 with Indians, I have seen rough men in the mines, but 
 such ruffians as assailed me on landing from the Jersey 
 ferry I have never encountered before. Two of these 
 literally hauled me into a coach. I cried out : they 
 shouted to the crowd and police that I was drunk ; and 
 another " tough," who said he was my friend, helped 
 them hustle me in, and held the door till they dashed 
 away. By and by they stopped, and one got down, and 
 holding the door meekly asked me to tell him again 
 what hotel I said 1 wanted to go to ! At the door of the 
 
10 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 hotel the Astor House the only name I could think 
 of or was familiar with, they demanded five dollars. I 
 paid it. But what makes me mad mad at myself as 
 well as them they gave me a Confederate five-dollar bill 
 in change ! How could they know I came from a land 
 where they use only gold, and we can t tell one kind of 
 green, greasy paper from another ? Ah, I see : this Con 
 federate is white or was white. Well, I am going to 
 cut off my hair the first thing, and get me a new hat. 
 
 Augustus. Shaved and shorn ! Now, let them come 
 after me ! . . . Great event to-day. My brave, good 
 brother, who heard the roar of war away out yonder by 
 the sounding Oregon, and came on here to see it 
 through, is with me. He is dark-haired and very hand 
 some. He dresses and looks just like these other fellows, 
 though, and, like Chinamen, one can hardly tell them 
 apart. But, dear, brave boy, he is not like these other 
 fellows a bit. And how he and I once quarrelled over 
 this war business ! True, I can remember, when we 
 were both little lads and father talked to us about the 
 slaves, how we planned together to steal the poor 
 negroes and help them away to the North. But when 
 the war came, and the armies went down desolating the 
 South, then, with that fatality that has always followed 
 me for getting on the wrong side, siding with the weak, 
 I forgot my pity for the one in my larger pity for the 
 other. And so my brother John shouldered his gun, 
 we shook hands, and I never saw him any more till to 
 day. His name is on the rolls of New Jersey, a lieuten 
 ant only. We do not mention the war. His side won. 
 But, as with many another noble fellow, it has cost him 
 his life I fear. I can see death on his pale, gentle face. 
 His deep blue eyes have lost their glory. What will 
 mother say ? 
 
GOING. 11 
 
 GOING. 
 
 August 19. I shall get out of this town at once. . . . 
 At Central Park to-day I wanted to rest under a tree, a 
 cool, clean tree, that reached its eager arms up to God, 
 asking, praying for rain, and a policeman, club in hand, 
 caught hold of me and shook me, and told me to keep off 
 the grass. " Keep off the grass !" There was no grass 
 there. Is ew York, if you will come to Oregon you may 
 sit untroubled under the trees, roll in grass that is grass, 
 and rest forever. ... I must put my pants inside my 
 boots. Then I am sure they won t know me, and get 
 after me everywhere I go. ... If I was living in this 
 town I would make those policemen give up their clubs. 
 Are the people here a lot of dogs, that these fellows have 
 to use clubs ? Take away their clubs, and give them 
 pistols and swords. If a man must be killed, let him be 
 killed like a gentleman, not like a dog. I am going to 
 get out of this town quick. I do not fit in here. . . . 
 Bought my ticket, $65, second class, ship Europa, 
 Anchor Line, to land at Glasgow ; and off to-mor 
 row. . . . Have tried so hard to get to see Horace 
 Greeley. But he woli t see me. Maybe he is not here. 
 But I think he is. ... Went over and tried to see 
 Beecher ; found a door by the pulpit open, and went in. 
 The carpenters were fixing up the church, but they 
 looked so hard at me that I did not ask for Mr. Beecher. 
 I went up on the platform and sat down and peeled an 
 apple, and put the peelings on the little stand. Then I 
 heard a man cough away back in the dark, and he came 
 and climbed up the little ladder, and took those peelings 
 in his thumb and finger long, lean, bony fingers, like 
 tongs and backing down the ladder he went to the door 
 and threw them away with all his might. Then he 
 
12 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 coughed again, but all the time did not let on to see me. 
 I felt awful, and got down and left soon. However, I 
 got some leaves from a tree by the door to send to 
 mother. . . . Two handsome, well-dressed gentlemen 
 spoke to me to-day, the only people who have spoken to 
 me since I have been here except to bully me ; said 
 they knew me in Texas, but could not recall my name. 
 
 IN AYK, SCOTLAND. 
 
 September 4, 1870. What a voyage ! Cold ? Cold 
 seas and cold seamen. I don t think I spoke a dozen 
 words in the whole desolate fourteen days. A lot of 
 Germans going home to fight filled the ship ; a hard, 
 rough lot, and they ate like hogs. . . . Saw an iceberg 
 as big as Mount Hood in the middle of the ocean. . . . 
 And why may there not be people on these broken bits 
 of the great sealed -up North ? Fancy Sir John Frank 
 lin s ship frozen fast and all in trim, he there stiff and 
 silent, glass in hand, his frozen men all about him at 
 their posts fancy all this drifting away to the friendly 
 warm waves of the South, on one of these great islands 
 of ice. . . . Saw Ireland on the north ; green as the 
 green sea ; dotted with cottages, crossed by stone fences 
 like a checker-board. It is a checker-board : the white 
 cottages are the chessmen. What games shall be 
 played ? Who play them ? And who win ? . . . 
 
 September 10. God bless these hale and honest Scotch 
 down here at peaceful Ayr ! Did not stop an hour in 
 Glasgow. It looked too much like New York. But 
 here I have come upon the edge of Godland ; mountains 
 and rivulets and cold, clear skies. It looks like Oregon. 
 Only I miss the trees so much. A land that is barren 
 of trees is old and ugly, like a bald-headed man, and 
 
IX AYR, SCOTLAND. 13 
 
 ought to get ready to die. ... I have made lots of 
 friends. One man showed me more than one hundred 
 books, all by Ayrshire poets, and some of them splen 
 did ! I have not dared tell any one yet that I too hope 
 to publish a book of verse. . . . 
 
 I go every day from here to the " Auld Brig" over 
 the Doon, Highland Mary s grave, and " Allo way s auld 
 haunted kirk!" . . . Poetry is in the air here. I am 
 now working like a beaver, and shall give up my journal. 
 If my mind is not strong enough to hold what I see, or 
 if my thoughts and notions are not big and solid enough 
 to stick together and stay with me, let them go. . . . 
 Heigho ! what a thing is the mind : a sieve, that catches 
 all the ugly things, stray and wreck and castaway, all 
 that is hard and hideous. But lo ! our sieves will not 
 hold the sweet pure water. . . . 
 
 September 12. Am going from here to Byron s tomb 
 in Nottingham very soon now. I have a wreath of 
 laurel, sent by a lady from San Francisco, for the great 
 poet s grave, and I go to place it there. Shall take in 
 Scott s home and tomb. . . . Good-by, Burns, brother. 
 I know you, love you. Our souls have wandered 
 together many a night this sweet autumn-time by the 
 tranquil banks of the Doon. . . . 
 
 September 16. They say Carlyle lives near here, on a 
 farm. I like Carlyle that is, the parts of him which I 
 don t understand. And that is saying that I like nearly 
 all of Carlyle, I reckon. 
 
 September 18. In the sunset to-day, as I walked out 
 for the last time toward the tomb of Highland Mary, I 
 met a whole line of splendid Scotch lassies with sheaves 
 of wheat on their heads and sickles on their arms. 
 Their feet were bare, their legs were bare to the knees. 
 Their great strong arms were shapely as you can con- 
 
14 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 ceive ; they were tall, and their lifted faces were radiant 
 with health and happiness. I stepped aside in the nar 
 row road to enjoy the scene and let them pass. They 
 were going down the sloping road toward some thatched 
 cottages by the sea ; I toward the mountains. How 
 beautiful ! I uncovered my head as I stepped respect 
 fully aside. But giving the road to women here seems 
 unusual, and one beautiful girl, with hair like the golden 
 sheaves she carried, came up to me, talked and laughed 
 and bantered in words that I could not understand, 
 much as I wanted to. ... And then the beautiful pict 
 ure moved on. O Burns, Burns, come back to the 
 banks of bonny Doon ! It is worth while. 
 
 How beautiful she was ! Why, she 
 Was inspiration. She was born 
 To walk God s summer-hills at morn, 
 Nor waste her by the cold North Sea. 
 What wonder, that her soul s white wings 
 Beat at the bars, like living things ? 
 
 I know she sighed, and wandered through 
 The fields alone, and ofttime drew 
 Her hand above her head, and swept 
 The lonesome sea, and ever kept 
 Her face to sea, as if she knew 
 Some day, some near or distant day, 
 Her destiny should come that way. 
 
 IN THE RUINS OF MELROSE ABBEY. 
 
 The Royal Inn, September 20. Waded the Tweed 
 yesterday, and looked over Sir "Walter Scott s " poem in 
 stones," as he called it. So beautiful, and so sad. 
 Empty as a dead man s palm is this place now. "Wet 
 and cold, I walked on to Melrose Abbey, three miles dis 
 tant. "Was let in through a great gate by a drunken old 
 woman. The sun was going down ; the place of buried 
 
AT LORD BYRON S TOMB. 15 
 
 kings seemed holy too holy at least to have a drunken 
 and garrulous and very ugly woman at my elbow. I 
 gave the old creature a half-crown and told her to leave 
 me. She did so, and I rested on the tombs ; still warm 
 they were with sunshine gone away. Then a sudden 
 fog drew in up the Tweed past Dryburg, where the 
 great wizard is buried, and I began to grow chill. I got 
 up and groped about in the fog among the tombstones 
 and fallen arches. But in a very little time I found the 
 fof* so dense that together with the night it made total 
 darkness. I hurried to the great gate. It was closed. 
 The wretched old woman had got still more drunk on my 
 half-crown, and I was there for the night. And what a 
 night I passed ! It would have killed almost any other 
 man. As it is, my leg is so stiff I can hardly hobble 
 down-stairs. 
 
 O master, here I bow before a shrine ; 
 
 Before the lordliest dust that ever yet 
 Moved animate in human form divine. 
 
 Lo ! dust indeed to dust. The mould is set 
 
 Above thee, and the ancient walls are wet, 
 And drip all day in dark and silent gloom ; 
 
 As if the cold gray stones could not forget 
 Thy great estate shrunk to this sombre room, 
 But learn to weep perpetual tears above thy tomb. 
 
 September 25. Something glorious ! The old man, 
 John Brown by name, took the wreath for Byron s 
 tomb and a sovereign and hung it above the tablet, 
 placed on the damp and dingy wall by his sister. 
 AVell then, the little old people who preside over the 
 little old church did not like it you see my bargain with 
 the old man is that he is to have a sovereign a year to 
 keep the wreath there as long as he lives (or I have sov- 
 
16 MEMORIK AND RIME. 
 
 ereigns) and lie faithfully refused to take down the 
 wreath, but nailed it to the wall. Then the little-souled 
 people appealed to the Bishop. And what has the 
 Bishop done ? What has the Bishop said ? Not a 
 word. But he has sent another wreath to be nailed 
 alongside of my wreath from California ! 
 
 O my poet ! Worshipped where the world is glo 
 rious with the fire and the blood of youth ! Yet here in 
 your own home ah well ! The old eternal truth of 
 Christ . . . but why say the truth of Christ ? Better 
 say the words of Christ ; and that means eternal 
 truth. ... I have not told any one here that I w r rite 
 verses. . . . Byron sang in the voice of a god : and 
 see what they say of him. But they may receive me. 
 " No prophet is without honor, save in his own land," 
 is the language of the text I believe. 
 
 September 28. Have written lots of stuff here. I have 
 been happy here. I have worked, and not thought of 
 the past. But to-morrow I am going to go down to 
 Hull, cross the Channel, and see the French and Ger 
 mans fight. For I have stopped work and began to look 
 back. ... I see the snow-peaks of Oregon all the time 
 when I stop work the great white clouds, like ham 
 mocks swinging to and fro, to and fro, as if cradling the 
 gods : maybe they are rocking and resting the souls of 
 great men bound heavenward. . . . And then the valley 
 at the bottom of the peaks ; the people there ; the ashes 
 on the hearth ; the fire gone out. . . there is no one 
 there to rekindle it. ... Stop looking back, I say. 
 Get back to the Bible truths : the story of Lot and his 
 lost. . . . Never look back. A man, if he be a real 
 man, has his future before him and not behind him. 
 The old story of Orpheus in hell has its awful lesson. I, 
 then, shall go forward and never look back any more. 
 
IN A CHRISTIAN S WAR. 17 
 
 Hell, I know, is behind me. There cannot be worse than 
 hell before me. . . . Yet for all this philosophy and this 
 setting the face forward, the heart turns back : 
 
 How proud she was ! How purely fair ! 
 
 How full of faith, of love and strength ! 
 
 Her vast, deep eyes ! Her great hair s length 
 
 Her long, strong, tumbled, careless hair, 
 
 Half curled and knotted anywhere, 
 
 From brow to breast, from cheek to chin, 
 
 For love to trip and tangle in. 
 
 This woman was Madonna to 
 The tawny, brawny, lonely few 
 "Who touched her hand and knew her soul. 
 She drew them drew them as the pole 
 Points all things to itself. She drew 
 Men upward as a moon of spring, 
 High wheeling, vast and bosomful, 
 Half clad in clouds and white as wool, 
 Draws all the full seas following. 
 
 I love my own land, where the rabbits dance measures 
 
 At night by the moon in the sharp chaparral ; 
 Wliere the squirrels build homes in the earth, and hoard treasures ; 
 
 Where the wolves fight in armies, fight faithful and well ; 
 Fight almost like Christians ; fight on and find pleasures 
 
 In strife, like to man, turning earth into hell. 
 
 Calais, France, October 30, 1870. Been to the war ! 
 Brutes ! Slmttlecocked between the two armies, and ar 
 rested every time I turned around. I am sure the 
 Germans would have shot me if I could have spoken a 
 word of French. 1 am doubly certain the French would 
 have sabred me if I had been able to speak one word of 
 German. As I knew neither tongue, nothing about any 
 language except Modoc although 1 am trying to pick up 
 the English they contented themselves by tumbling all 
 
18 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 my manuscript winch, they could not read and send 
 ing me out of the country. And such heartlessness to 
 each other ! By the road one day I found a wounded 
 soldier. He had got out into the hedge : hundreds 
 passed soldiers, citizens, all sorts. He was calling to 
 all, any one. I got out of the mass of fugitives and tried 
 to help him. Then, when it was seen that some one was 
 at his side, others came up, and he was cared for, I 
 reckon. . . . Everybody running away ! I running 
 faster than ever cripple ran before. This would not 
 sound well in Oregon. I must put it in better form : I 
 will merely say I came on in haste. ... I am no great 
 talker, but do like to be in a land where 1 can talk if I 
 want to. ... I found a wounded horse on a battlefield 
 one day trying to get on his feet. I helped him. He 
 w r as bleeding to death, and soon sank down again. But I 
 tell you he looked at me like a human being. Poor 
 horses ! I am more sorry for them than the men. 
 
 IX LONDON. 
 
 London, November 2, 1870. Am at last in the central 
 city of this earth. 1 was afraid to come here, and so it 
 was I almost went quite around this boundless spread of 
 houses before I entered it : saw all these islands and 
 nearly all the continent first. But I feel at home almost, 
 even now, and have only been here three days. Tired 
 though, so tired ! And then my leg bothers me badly. 
 There is a bit of lead in there about as big as the end of 
 my thumb. But ever since that night in Mel rose Abbey 
 it has felt as big as a cannon-ball. And then I have been 
 rather active of late. Active ! The Oregonians ought 
 to have seen me running away from the French, the 
 Germans both at once. But you see they took my pis- 
 
SETTLED DOWN IS" LONDON. 10 
 
 tols away from me before I had a chance to protest or even 
 suspected what tl^ey were" going to do. Ah well ! I am 
 safe out of it all now, and shall, since I am too crippled 
 to get about, sit still and write in this town. When 1 
 came in on the rail from Dover, I left my bag at the 
 station ; paid two pence great big coppers, big as five of 
 America s and took a ticket for it, and so set out to walk 
 about the city. And how delightfully different from 
 New York ! 
 
 Now, I want to note something strange. I walked 
 straight to Westminster Abbey straight as the crooked 
 streets would let me ; and I did not ask any one on the 
 way, nor did I have the remotest idea where it was. As 
 for a guide-book, I never had one in my life. But my 
 heart was in that Abbey, going out to the great spirits, 
 the immortal dust gathered there, and I walked straight 
 to where my heart was. . . . And this encourages me 
 very much. ... As if by some possible turn of fortune 
 or favor of the gods 1 I may really get there, or at least 
 set out upon the road that these silent giants have jour 
 neyed on. . . . 
 
 The Abbey broods beside the turbid Thames ; 
 Her mother heart is nll d with memories ; 
 
 Her every niche is stored with storied names ; 
 They move before me like a mist of seas. 
 
 SETTLED DOWN IX LONDON. 
 
 After keeping on my feet till hardly able to stand, I 
 left the Abbey and walked up Whitehall, up Regent 
 Street, down Oxford Street toward St. Paul s. Then I 
 broke down, and wanted to find a place to stop. But I 
 must have looked too tired and wretched as I dragged 
 myself along. I told a woman finally, who had rooms 
 to let, that I was ill and must stop. She shut the door 
 
20 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 in my face, after forcing me out of the hall. New 
 cities, cities new to me, of course, haye new ways. If 
 one does not know their ways one frightens the honest 
 folk, and can t get on with them at all. 
 
 A public-house here is not a tavern or an inn. I tried 
 to get to stop at two or three of these reeking gin-mills. 
 They stared at me, but went on jerking beer behind the 
 counter, and did not answer. At one place I asked for 
 water. All stopped and looked at me women with 
 great mugs of beer half way to their brutal big red 
 mouths ; a woman with a baby in one arm, wrapped 
 tightly in a shawl along with herself, and a jng of beer in 
 the other, came up and put her face in mine curiously ; 
 then the men all roared. And then one good-natured 
 Briton paid for a pewter mug full of beer for me. But 
 as I had never tasted beer, and could not bear the smell 
 of it, I was obliged to refuse it. I was too tired to ex 
 plain, and so backed out into the street again and 
 hobbled on. I did not get the water. I now learn that 
 one must not ask for water here. No one drinks water 
 here. No public-house keeps it. "Well, to one from 
 Oregon, the land of pure water, where God pours it 
 down from the snowy clouds out of the hollow of His 
 hand the high-born, beautiful, great white rain, this 
 seems strange. . . . 
 
 All drinking-shops here or rather "doggeries," as 
 we call them in Oregon are called " publics." And a 
 man who keeps one of these places is called a publican. 
 Now I see the sense and meaning of the Bible phrase, 
 " publicans and sinners." 
 
 When I reached Aldersgate Street that first day, I 
 saw the name "Little Britain" to my left, and know 
 ing that Washington Irving had dwelt there, I turned 
 aside to follow where he had been, in the leaves of the 
 
SETTLED DOWN IN LONDON. 21 
 
 Sketch Book. But I could go but a little way. Seeing 
 the sign of the Young Men s Christian Association close 
 at hand, I climbed up the long crooked stairs, and soon 
 was made quite at home and well refreshed by a cup of 
 coffee and a roll at three half -pence ; also a great deal of 
 civility and first-class kindness for nothing at all. I had 
 bed and breakfast at the same reasonable rate ; and the 
 next morning, leaving my watch and money here, I 
 went to Mile End by bus, to see where Mr. Bayard 
 Taylor had lived when here. 
 
 I lost my way in one of the by-streets, and asked how 
 to get out. People were kind and good-natured, but 
 they spoke with such queer accent that I could not under 
 stand. At last a little girl of a dozen years, very bright 
 and very beautiful, proposed to show me the way to the 
 main street. She was a ray of sunlight after a whole 
 month of storms. . . . She was making neckties, she 
 said, and getting a sixpence a day ; five pence she paid 
 to a Mrs. Brady, who lived at 52 New Street, and this 
 left her a penny a day to dress and enjoy life upon ! 
 
 " And can I live with Mrs. Brady for five pence a 
 day ?" 
 
 Maybe so. Mrs. Brady has a room ; maybe you 
 can get it. Let us go and see." 
 
 We came, we saw, and settled ! I give Lizzie a shil 
 ling a day to run errands, for my leg is awful. She 
 went to the station and got my bag, and she keeps my 
 few things in perfect shape. I think she has some 
 doubts about my sanity. She watches me closely, and I 
 have seen her shake her head at this constant writing of 
 mine. But she gets her shilling regularly, and oh ! she 
 is so happy and so rich ! Mrs. Brady is about six feet 
 high, and very slim and bony. She has but one eye, and 
 she hammers her husband, who drives a wagon for a 
 
22 MEMORIE AND KIME. 
 
 brewery, most cruelly. He is short and stout as one of 
 his beer-barrels, and a good-hearted soul he is too. He 
 loves his old telegraph-pole of a wife, however, and re 
 fuses to pound her back when she pounds him, although 
 he assured me yesterday, in confidence, that he was cer 
 tain he could lick her if he tried. 
 
 November 8. Mrs. Brady must be very old or a very 
 great liar. Last night she assured me that her father 
 used to shoe Dick Turpin s horses. She went into de 
 tail to show how he would set the shoes on hind side 
 before to look as if he was going away from London, 
 when, in fact, he was coming this way. As if I did not 
 know anything about horses, and how that all this was 
 impossible. I expect she will next develop that she had 
 some intimate relations with Jack Sheppard, or, most 
 likely, some of his descendants. . . . 
 
 November 20. Lizzie is a treasure, but she will lie like 
 sixty. Yet she is honest. She goes out and brings me 
 my coffee every morning. Mrs. Brady acts as a sort of 
 mother, and is very careful of her in her coarse, hard 
 way. I must find out who she is, and get her to school 
 if I get on. She tells me her people live over on the 
 u Surrey side," wherever that is. But 1 have already 
 found that, like Mrs. Brady, she does not like to tell the 
 truth about herself if she can get around it. How odd 
 that poor people will lie so ! Truth, the best and chief- 
 est thing on this earth, is about the only luxury that 
 costs nothing ; and they ought to be persuaded to in 
 dulge in it oftener. New Street ! It is the oldest 
 street, I should say, in this part of London. This house 
 we are in is cracked, and has been condemned. The relia 
 ble Mrs. Brady says it has only a few months more to 
 stand ; that the underground railroad or something runs 
 under it. So I must get out, I guess. 
 
HUNTING FOR A PUBLISHER. 23 
 
 COWLEY HOUSE, COWLEY STREET, WESTMINSTER. 
 
 February Itt, 71. From Mile End to old Westmin 
 ster ! I am right back of the Abbey. From my garret 
 window I can see the Virginia creepers, which they say 
 were planted by Queen Elizabeth. The walls are high ; 
 but this garret of mine is still higher. They call it the 
 poet Cowley s house. As if any poet ever had money 
 enough to build so big a house, or ever had such bad 
 taste as to build such an ugly one. 
 
 I hear all the bells of Westminster here, and of Par 
 liament, big Ben, and all. And I hear perpetual pound 
 ing and hammering about the Abbey all the time 
 building or repairing. Not a good place to sleep or to 
 rest, immortal poets ! Such an eternal pounding and 
 pecking of stones and rasping of trowels and mortar no 
 one ever heard. I had rather rest in Oregon, 
 
 Where the plants are as trees ; where the trees are as towers 
 That toy, as it seems, with the stars at night ; 
 
 Where the roses are forests ; where the wild-wood flowers 
 Are dense unto darkness ; where, reaching for light, 
 
 They spill in your bosom their fragrance in showers 
 Like incense spilled down in some sacrament rite. 
 
 HUNTING FOR A PUBLISHER. 
 
 February 27, 71. I have nearly given up this journal 
 to get out a book. I wanted to publish a great drama 
 called u Oregonia," but finally wrote an easy-going 
 little thing which I called "Arizonian," and put the 
 two together, and called tiie little book " Pacific 
 Poems." It has been ready for the printer a long time. 
 But here one cannot get a publisher at all unless one 
 pays for it. And my money is out, my watch at my 
 Uncle Rothschild s, and I have nothing to pay with. My 
 
24 MEMORIE AND ItlME. 
 
 brother is slow about sending me money. I am so 
 afraid he is seriously ill. But the book must come out, 
 if I even have to publish it without a publisher ! 
 
 March 12. What a time I have had tramping about 
 this city with my printed " Pacific Poems" under my 
 arm. I think I have called upon or tried to call upon 
 every publisher in this city. I had kept Murray, son 
 of the great Murray, Byron s friend, to the last. I had 
 said to myself : " This man, whatever the others may do, 
 will stand up for the bridge that brought him over. If 
 all others fail I will go to the great Murray. . . . All 
 others failed, and I went, or rather I tried to go, but 
 only tried, the first time or two. I at first marched stiffly 
 and hastily up Albermarle Street, past the great pub 
 lishing house. I then went home. I had seen the 
 house, however. That was a beginning, at least. I slept 
 well here in the gloomy old Cowley House at the head 
 of Cowley Street, and next day boldly entered the great 
 publishing house, and called for Mr. Murray. The 
 clerk looked hard at me. Then, mentally settling the 
 fact that I really had business with the great publisher, 
 he said : " Mr. Murray is in. Will you send up your 
 card ?" 
 
 My heart beat like a pheasant in a forest. For the 
 first time I was to meet a great publisher face to face. 
 " No, no, thank you ; not to-day. I will come to-mor 
 row to-morrow at precisely this time." And I hur 
 ried out of the house, crossed the street, took a long 
 look at it, and went home the happiest man in Lon 
 don. 
 
 I came next day an hour before my time, but I did 
 not enter. I watched the clock at the Piccadilly corner, 
 and came in just as 1 had agreed. I think the clerk had 
 forgotten that I had ever been there. For my part, I 
 
HUNTING FOR A PUBLISHER. 25 
 
 had remembered nothing else. The great Murray came 
 down a tall, lean man, bald, with one bad eve, and a 
 habit of taking sight at you behind his long, thin fore- 
 linger, which he holds tip, as he talks excitedly, and shakes 
 all the time, either in his face or your own ; and I was 
 afraid of him from the first, and wanted to get away. 
 
 He took me tip-stairs, when I told him I had a book 
 all about the great West of America ; and there he 
 showed me many pictures of Byron Byron s mother, 
 among the rest, a stout, red- faced woman, with awful 
 fat arms and low, black curls about a low, narrow 
 brow. 
 
 I ventured to say she looked good-natured. 
 
 " Aye, now, don t you know, she could sine a poker at 
 your head, don t you know?" And the great Murray 
 wagged his finger in her face, as he said this, quite ig 
 noring me, my presence, or my opinion. Then he spun 
 about on his heel to where I stood in the background, 
 and taking sight at me behind his long, lean finger, jerked 
 out the words : " Xow, young man, let ns see what you 
 have got. " 
 
 I drew forth my first-born and laid it timidly in his 
 hand. He held his head to one side, flipped the leaves, 
 looked in, jerked his head back, looked in again, twisted 
 his head like a giraffe, and then lifted his long finger : 
 
 "Aye, now, don t you know poetry won t do? 
 Poetry won t do, don t you know ?" 
 
 " But will you not read it, please ?" 
 
 " No, no, no. Xo tise, no nse, don t yon know ?" 
 
 I reached my hand, took the despised sheets, and in a 
 moment was in the street, wild, shaking my fist at that 
 honse now and then, as I stopped in my flight and turned 
 to look back with a sort of nervous fear that he had fol 
 lowed me. 
 
20 MEM01UE AND RIME. 
 
 MY FIRST BOOK. 
 
 March 20, 71. Published ! And without a pub 
 lisher ! No publisher s imprint is on my little book ; a 
 sort of illegitimate child, I have sent it forth to the 
 press for a character. The type still stands, and if this 
 goes well I can get a hearing and shall have a lot more 
 of my rhymes set up, make a big book, and fire it right 
 at the head of these stolid Britons. 
 
 March 26. Eureka ! The St. James Gazette says 
 " Arizonian" is by Browning ! 
 
 Walter Thurnbury, Dickens s dear friend, and a better 
 poet than I can hope to be, has hunted me up, and says 
 big things of " Pacific Poems" in the London Graphic. 
 Two splendid Irish enthusiasts from the Dublin Univer 
 sity are at my side, stanch and earnest in their love. 
 Now, the new book must come out ! Yesterday I sub 
 mitted a list of names for it nine names and one of my 
 Irish friends settled on " Songs of the Sierras." And 
 that it is agreed, shall be the name of the new baby. 
 Good ! Good ! I see a vast new sun shouldering up in 
 the east over the dense fog of this mighty town. ... I 
 
 have met , the society poet of this city. I met him 
 
 through Tom Hood. And he is a character a sweet, 
 gentle character, but so funny. Yet here I am on for 
 bidden ground. The decent custom of Europe, which 
 forbids mention of men in channels such as this, cuts 
 out nearly all that is of interest in journals. Bat this 
 one man stands out like a star in his quaint and kind 
 originality. He gave me letters to almost everybody, 
 and I in turn gave him the manuscript of " Arizonian, " 
 written mostly on old letters and bills, for it was writ 
 ten in one night and at a single sitting and I got out of 
 paper. But I think this generous-hearted gentleman 
 
END OF THE JOURNAL IX LONDON. 27 
 
 half regretted giving me the letters ; and I shall not 
 present all of them. He has already taken me to see 
 Dean Stanley, and it is more than hinted that if I get 
 on I am to meet Her Majesty the Queen at the Dean s 
 in the Abbey some evening at tea. . . . 
 
 Dear, dear : yon should have seen him last night as 
 he stood with his back to the fire, fluttering his long, 
 black coat-tail with one hand, while his other hand 
 swung his eyeglass in a dizzy circle before his eyes. 
 And he tiptoed up and he fluttered and swung as he said, 
 with a final high flourish of his long black coat, " Yes, 
 yes ; I I I like the Americans. I must say that I 
 never found an American yet that was really vi-vi- 
 vicious. I have found some that I thought were 
 d-d-dreadful fools. But I never found one that I 
 thought was really vi-vi-vi- vicious !" 
 
 THE END OF THE JOURNAL IN LONDON. 
 
 April 19. The book came out ; and in the whirl of 
 events that followed, the " notes were neglected. It 
 was a great day a great year. Such a lot of favors and 
 countless courtesies ! For example, I had three letters 
 in succession come to me signed " Dublin." I could not 
 answer or even read all my letters, and so was not par 
 ticularly disturbed or elated to find these letters from 
 " Dublin," whoever " Dublin 1 might be. But one of 
 my young Irish friends discovered these letters one day, 
 and fairly caught his breath ! " His Grace, the Arch 
 bishop of Dublin ! He wants you to breakfast with 
 him. Why, your fortune is made !" The doors of all 
 social London are wide open. But somehow I am too 
 full of concern about home to be very happy. 
 
 London, May 3. I find heie among Uie^Pre-Raphaelites 
 
28 MEM OKIE AND HIME. 
 
 one prevailing idea, one delight the love of the beau 
 tiful. It is in the air. At least 1 find it wherever the 
 atmosphere of the Rossettis penetrates, and that seems 
 to be in every work of art beautiful art. I am to dine 
 with Dante Rossetti ! All the set will be there. I shall 
 hear what they say. 1 shall listen well, for this love of 
 the beautiful is my old love my old lesson. I have 
 read it by the light of the stars, under the pines, or 
 away down by the strange light on the sea, even on the 
 peaks of the Pacific everywhere. Strange that it 
 should be so in the air here. And they all seem intoxi 
 cated with it, as with something new, the fragrance of a 
 new flower that has only now blossomed after years of 
 waiting : a sort of century plant a quarter of a cen 
 tury plant, maybe. For, nearly twenty-five years ago, I 
 am told, these Pre-Raphaelites began to teach this love 
 of the beautiful. 
 
 BACK IN AMERICA. 
 
 Easton, Pa., August 3. At "Dublin s" breakfast, I 
 met Robert Browning, Dean Stanley, Lady Augusta, a 
 lot more ladies, and a duke or two, and, after breakfast, 
 " Dublin" read to me with his five beautiful daughters 
 grouped about from Browning, Arnold, Rossetti, and 
 others, till the day was far spent. When I went away he 
 promised to send me his books. He did so. I put them 
 in my trunk, and did not open them till I got to America. 
 Fancy my consternation as well as amazement and de 
 light to find that this " Dublin" was Trench, the author 
 of u Trench on Words." Ah ! why didn t he sign his 
 name Trench ? for I knew that book almost by heart. 
 
 Yes, back to America ! With the cup raised to my 
 lips I was not permitted to drink. I knew bad news 
 would come. I felt a foreshadowing of it all the 
 
THE KOSSKTTI WXXER. 29 
 
 ^. . . My brother wrote that our family circle, for 
 
 the first time, was broken. My only sister was dead. 
 And in that same letter my brother wrote with but a 
 feeble hand. He asked me to come and stand by his 
 side, for the sands were crumbling under his feet. And 
 so I left London, went down to the sea, and took the 
 first boat, sailing from Southampton, where poor Arte- 
 mus died, and so stood by my dying soldier brother, who 
 had never yet grown strong again after the war. And 
 here, while praise and abuse of my new book went on, I 
 saw and knew nothing of it all, but watched by my best 
 friend, the gentlest man I ever knew, at this little town 
 in Pennsylvania. 
 
 O boy at peace npon the Delaware ! 
 
 brother mine, that fell in battle front 
 Of life, so braver, nobler far than I, 
 The wanderer who vexed all gentleness, 
 Receive this song : I have but this to give. 
 
 1 may not rear the rich man s ghostly stone ; 
 But you, through all my follies loving still 
 And trusting me ... nay, I shall not forget. 
 
 A failing hand in mine, and fading eyes 
 
 That look d in mine as from another land, 
 
 You said : " Some gentler things ; a song for Peace. 
 
 Mid all your songs for men, one song for God. " 
 
 And then the dark-brow d mother, Death, bent down 
 
 Her face to yours, and you were borne to Him. 
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE EOSSETTI DINNER. 
 
 There is no ifang that hath not worth ; 
 
 There is no evil anywhere ; 
 There is no ill on all this earth, 
 
 If man seeks not to see it there. 
 
 September 28. I cannot forget that dinner with 
 Dante Gabriel Eossetti, just before leaving London, 
 
30 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 nor can I hope to recall its shining and enduring glory. 
 I am a better, larger man, because of it. And how 
 nearly our feet are set on the same way. It was as if wo 
 were all crossing the plains, and I for a day s journey and 
 a night s encampment fell in with and conversed with 
 the captains of the march. 
 
 But one may not give names and dates and details 
 over there as here. The home is entirely a castle. The 
 secrets of the board and fireside are sacred. And then 
 these honest toilers and worshippers of the beautiful are 
 shy, so shy and modest. But I like this decent English 
 way of keeping your name down and out of sight till the 
 coffin-lid hides your blushes so modest these Pre-Eaph- 
 aelites are that I should be in disgrace forever if I dared 
 set down any living man s name. 
 
 But here are a few of the pearls picked up, as they 
 were tossed about the table at intervals and sandwiched 
 in between tales of love and lighter thoughts and things. 
 
 All London, or rather all the brain of London, the 
 literary brain, was there. And the brain of all the 
 world, I think, was in London. These giants of 
 thought, champions of the beautiful earth, passed the 
 secrets of all time and all lands before me like a mighty 
 panorama. All night so ! "We dined so late that we 
 missed breakfast. If I could remember and write down 
 truly and exactly what these men said, I would have the 
 best and the greatest book that ever was written. I 
 have been trying a week in vain. I have written down 
 and scratched out and revised till I have lost the soul of 
 it, it seems to me ; no individuality to it ; only like my 
 own stuff. If I only had set their words down on 
 paper the next day instead of attempting to remem 
 ber their thoughts 1 Alas ! the sheaves have been tossed 
 and beaten about over sea and land for days and days, 
 
THE ROSSETTI DINNER. 31 
 
 till the golden grain is gone, and here is bnt the straw 
 and chaff. 
 
 The master sat silent for the most part ; there was a 
 little man away down at the other end, conspicuously 
 modest. There was a cynical fat man, and a lean phil 
 anthropist all sorts and sizes, but all lovers of the 
 beautiful of earth. Here is what one, a painter, a ruddy- 
 faced and a rollicking gentleman, remarked merrily to 
 me as he poured out a glass of red wine at the beginning 
 of the dinner : 
 
 "AVhen travelling in the mountains of Italy, I ob 
 served that the pretty peasant women made the wine by 
 putting grapes in a great tub, and then, getting into 
 this tub, barefooted, on top of the grapes, treading 
 them out with their brown, bare feet. At first I did 
 not like to drink this w^ine. I did not think it was 
 clean. But I afterward watched these pretty brown 
 women"- and here all leaned to listen, at the men 
 tion of pretty brown women " I watched these pretty 
 brown women at their work in the primitive wine 
 press, and I noticed that they always washed their feet 
 after they got done treading out the wine." 
 
 All laughed at this, and the red-faced painter was so 
 delighted that he poured out and swallowed another full 
 glass. The master sighed as he sat at the head of the 
 table rolling a bit of bread between thumb and finger, 
 and said, sitting close to me : "I am an Italian who 
 has never seen Italy. Belle Italia /" . . . 
 
 By and by he quietly said that silence was the 
 noblest attitude in all things ; that the greatest poets re 
 fused to write, and that all great artists in all lines were 
 above the folly of expression. A voice from far down 
 the table echoed this sentiment by saying : " Heard 
 melodies are sweet : but unheard melodies are sweeter." 
 
32 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 " Written poems are delicious ; but unwritten poems 
 are divine," cried the triumphant cynic. " What is 
 poetry? 1 cries a neighbor. " All true, pure life is 
 poetry, answers one. " But the inspiration of poetry ?" 
 " The art of poetry is in books. The inspiration of 
 poetry in nature." To this all agreed. 
 
 Then the master very quietly spoke : " And yet do 
 not despise the books of man. All religions, said the 
 Chinese philosophers, are good. The only difference is, 
 some religions are better than others, and the apparent 
 merit of each depends largely upon a man s capacity for 
 understanding it. This is true of poetry. All poetry is 
 good. I never read a poem in my life that did not have 
 some merit, and teach some sweet lesson. The fault in 
 reading the poems of man, as well as reading the poetry 
 of nature, lies largely at the door of the reader. Now, 
 what do you call poetry ?" and he turned his great Ital 
 ian eyes tenderly to where I sat at his side. 
 
 " To me a poem must be a picture," I answered. 
 
 Proud I was when a great poet then said : " And it 
 must be a picture if a good poem so simple that you 
 can understand it at a glance, eh ? And see it and re 
 member it as you would see and remember a sunset, 
 eh?" "Aye," answered the master, " I also demand 
 that it shall be lofty in sentiment and sublime in expres 
 sion. The only rule I have for measuring the merits of 
 a written poem, is by the height of it. Why not be 
 able to measure its altitude as you measure one of your 
 sublime peaks of America ?" 
 
 lie looked at me as he spoke of America, and I was 
 encouraged to answer : " Yes, I do not want to remem 
 ber the words. But I do want it to remain with me a 
 picture and become a part of my life. Take this one 
 verse from Mr. Longfellow : 
 
THE ROSSETTE DINNER. 33 
 
 " And the night shall be filled with music, 
 
 And the cares that infest the day 
 Shall fold their tents like the Arabs, 
 And as silently steal away. 
 
 " Good !" cried the fat cynic, who, I am sure, had 
 never heard the couplet before, it was so sweet to him ; 
 " Good ! There is a picture that will depart from no 
 impressible clay. The silent night, the far sweet 
 melody falling on the weary mind, the tawny pictu 
 resque Arabs stealing away in the darkness, the perfect 
 peace, the stillness and the rest ! It appeals to all the 
 Ishmaelite in our natures, and all the time we see the 
 tents gathered up and the silent children of the desert 
 gliding away in the gloaming." 
 
 A transplanted American, away down at the other 
 end by a little man among bottles, said : " The poem of 
 Evangeline is a succession of pictures. I never read 
 Evangeline but once." " It is a waste of time to look 
 twice at a sunset," said Rossetti, sotto voce, and the end 
 man went on : u But I believe I can see every picture 
 in that poem as distinctly as if I had been the unhappy 
 xVrcadian ; for here the author has called in all the ele 
 ments that go to make up a perfect poem." 
 
 u When the great epic of this new, solid Saxon tongue 
 comes to be written," said one who sat near and was 
 dear to the master s heart, " it will embrace all that 
 this embraces : new and unnamed lands ; ships on the 
 sea ; the still deep waters hidden away in a deep and 
 voiceless continent ; the fresh and fragrant wilderness ; 
 the curling smoke of the camp-fire ; action, movement, 
 journeys ; the presence the inspiring presence of 
 woman ; the ennobling sentiment of love, devotion, and 
 devotion to the death ; faith, hope and charity, and 
 all in the open air." 
 
34 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 i Yes,", said the master thoughtfully, "no great 
 poem has ever been or ever will be fitted in a parlor, or 
 even fashioned from a city. There is not room for it 
 there." 
 
 " Hear ! hear ! yon might as well try to grow a Cali 
 fornia pine in the shell of a peanut," cried I. Some 
 laughed, some applauded, all looked curiously at me. 
 Of course, 1 did not say it that well, yet I did say it 
 far better. I mean I did not use the words so carefully, 
 but I had the advantage of action and sympathy. 
 
 Then the master said, after a bit of reflection : 
 " Homer s Ulysses, out of which have grown books 
 enough to cover the earth, owes its immortality to all 
 this, and its out-door exercise. Yet it is a bloody book 
 a bad book, in many respects full of revenge, treach 
 ery, avarice and wrong. And old Ulysses himself seems 
 to have been the most colossal liar on record. But for 
 all this, the constant change of scene, the moving ships 
 and the roar of waters, the rush of battle and the anger 
 of the gods, the divine valor of the hero, and, above all, 
 and over all, like a broad, white-bosomed rnoon through 
 the broken clouds, the splendid life of that one woman ; 
 the shining faith, the constancy, the truth and purity of 
 Penelope all these make a series of pictures that pass 
 before us like a panorama, and we will not leave off 
 reading till we have seen them all happy together again, 
 and been assured that the faith and constancy of that 
 woman has had its reward. And we love him, even if he 
 does lie !" 
 
 How all at that board leaned and listened. Yet let me 
 again and again humbly confess to you that I do him 
 such injustice to try thus to quote from memory. After 
 a while he said : " Take the picture of the old, blind, 
 slobber- mouthed dog, that has been driven forth by the 
 
THE HOSSETTI DINNER. 35 
 
 wooers to die. For twenty years lie lias not heard tlie 
 voice of his master. The master now conies, in the 
 guise of a beggar. The dog knows his voice, struggles 
 to rise from the ground, staggers toward him, licks his 
 hand, falls, and dies at his feet." 
 
 Such was the soul, heart, gentleness of this greatest 
 man that I ever saw walking in the fields of art. 
 
 After a while they talked about the construction of 
 poetry. 
 
 " As for the construction of a poem, I hold that there 
 never was a long poem written continuously," said the 
 master ; "as a rule, great poems are built like Solomon s 
 temple, section by section, and put together without the 
 sound of the hammer. This brings us back to the asser 
 tion that all poems are pictures, and long poems only a 
 succession of pictures strung together on some sweet 
 story of devotion and love." And w^ith this the master 
 was a long time silent. 
 
 " Shining beads on a blessed rosary," piped in a 
 little poet not before heard from, away down among the 
 bottles, as he lifted his beaded glass of wine high in his 
 hand and adjusted the glasses on his nose preparatory to 
 drinking, lest they might fall into the glass. 
 
 " I find," said one, after a good deal of skirmishing 
 and idle talk, " that great poems are oftener born of 
 accident than design. In looking over the original 
 manuscripts of Childe Harold at Newstead Abbey last 
 summer, I noticed that Lord Byron had first written it 
 Oliikle Byron, instead of Childe Harold. And it was 
 clearly evident that it was not meant for publication at 
 lirst, but only as a brief chronicle of his own sentiments 
 and sad life on setting out on his pilgrimage." 
 
 Again the advocate of silence, the master, was 
 heard : u To me every man or woman who loves the 
 
3G MEMOlilE AND KI.MK. 
 
 beautiful is a poet. The gift of expression is a separate 
 affair altogether. I am certain that the greatest, sweet 
 est, and the purest poets upon earth are silent people - 
 silent as the flowers. Pictures of the beautiful are as 
 frequent to all really refined natures as are the flowers of 
 the field. Yet only one in millions has the gift and 
 power of expression." 
 
 " To me the savage or the negro is a truer poet than 
 the scholar of Oxford," cried a lover of Walt Whit 
 man. " They may have been alike born with a love of 
 the beautiful, but the scholar, shut up within the gloomy 
 walls with his eyes to a dusty book, has forgotten the 
 face of nature, and learned only the art of utterance. He 
 has been at school all his life." 
 
 " Been at school all his life ! Poor man ! How ig 
 norant he must be," sighed the fat cynic. 
 
 A great deal of merriment followed this, and finally 
 some one talked of alliteration. But the great master 
 sat silent, and did not venture to talk on this theme. 
 
 " As to the verbal construction of a poem," piped the 
 little man among the bottles, " add all the decoration 
 you can without covering up the proud proportions of 
 your structure. The world is round, and we are getting 
 back to the soft vowel sounds of the old Greek kings of 
 thought, who, if they ever knew the art of rhyme, had 
 the good sense to disdain it, and use only alliteration and 
 soft, assonant words. Tennyson, Browning, Morris, 
 Swinburne and the master, Rossetti, though they dis 
 agree in many things, are unanimous in alliteration and 
 soft sounds. Take a familiar example from Tennyson : 
 
 " I hold this true whate er befall ; 
 I feel it when I sorrow most ; 
 Tis better to have loved and lost, 
 Than never to have loved at all. 
 
THE ROSSETTI DIXXER. 37 
 
 Here is not only soft, liquid alliteration, hut the 
 vowels fall in, all through the little couplet, in a sad 
 musical sort of a way that gives us both sentiment and 
 song together." Then the man beyond the bottles gave 
 a verse from Atalanta and Calydon : 
 
 " Though the many lights dwindle to one light, 
 
 There is help if the heavens have one ; 
 Though the skies be discrowned of the sunlight 
 
 And the earth dispossessed of the sun, 
 We have moonlight and sleep for repayment, 
 
 When, refreshed as a bride and set free, 
 With the stars and sea-winds in her raiment, 
 
 Night sinks on the sea." 
 
 I remember a long pause here ; some changed seats ; 
 the dinner resolved itself into a sort of mass, or a blend 
 ing together of souls that attracted souls ; there was 
 more wine, much smoke, some laughter, and some stories 
 of love. But over all that was said or done or thought 
 shone like a halo this one delight the love of the beau 
 tiful. 
 
 By and by the master began, half sad, half humor 
 ously, and carelessly and indifferently threw out this 
 little thought : u Thousands of years ago a poet said, by 
 way of illustration, and in a forceful argument for charity 
 for all, for the good in all things, beauty in all thing?, 
 that even the toad, repulsive as it seemed, has a jewel 
 in its head. And so the dull, passive world accepted it 
 literally, and has gone on saying, The toad hath a jewel 
 in its head. I suspect millions of toads have been killed 
 by seekers after the traditional jewel. O my friends, 
 go out in the cool of the evening in your garden, and 
 there in the green grass of the fence corner fall down on 
 your knees, and look the panting little toad in the face 
 
38 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 look in liis soft, tender, love-lit and liquid eyes, and you 
 will understand. No, no ; all jewels are not to be worn 
 in rings and weighed in scales and sold at a pawn-shop. 
 The prettiest jewels, God hangs on the grass, hides~m the 
 light of the soft eyes of the toad, and forbids you to 
 touch them. Oh, it is a beautiful, beautiful world ! 
 Only let us have capacity to see the beauty that is in it, 
 and we will see nothing that is ugly at all nothing that 
 is evil at all." 
 
 But I have gone too far in this already. I have pro 
 faned this great man and occasion quite enough, and 
 shall attempt to quote no more of his wonderful utter 
 ances. Yet I shall go on with this thought these 
 thoughts and fancies further still. As one who has set 
 out upon a journey and finds that the sun has gone down 
 before he has yet reached the end continues to go on 
 the way he was directed by the light of the moon, so I, 
 for a few paces more, shall try to express something of 
 these teachings, so in accord witli my own early notions 
 of poetry and taste. 
 
 WHAT 13 POETRY ? 
 
 What was the poetry of Paradise? What was 
 poetry before poetry was written ? Beauty ! Beauty of 
 soul, thought, form, passion, expression beauty, visi 
 ble and invisible. The flight of a bird through the air 
 was a song. The sound of the wind through the trees 
 of Paradise, where every bursting bud was a miracle, as 
 it is now, where every leaf was an inspiration, as it is 
 
 now these were the minor poems read and understood 
 
 by Adam and Eve in the beginning of the world. The 
 wide-winged ship in the middle of the sea, pointing 
 straight to its course through its white path of foam, 
 as commerce grew, guided by the North Star and 
 
WHAT IS POETRY? 30 
 
 making no mistake, bearing in its bosom its little world 
 of love and faith and trust and truth and hope this is 
 of itself an epic. The bugle-call to battle, the shouts of 
 men and the neighing of horses, the roar of cannon, the 
 waving banners here is something sinfully poetic. The 
 spotted cattle on the hills, the winding rivers through 
 the valleys, the surging white seas against the granite 
 shores all life, all action that is beautiful and grand and 
 good is poetry, waiting for expression. The world is 
 one great poem, because it is very grand, very good, 
 and very beautiful. 
 
 I once strolled through a miserable Mexican village. 
 The ships went silently down the deep river to the 
 great sea ; the flashing mountain of snow in the dy 
 ing sun w^as like a mighty fortress of flame in the dis 
 tance. The shadows were creeping over the cabins, 
 where women came and went in silence, and men sat 
 smoking at the cabin-doors, while children played in 
 swarms by the water. The air was like a breath of God, 
 and all nature seemed as sacred as rest to a weary man. 
 A black, bent, old negro woman, all patches from head 
 to foot, frosty-headed and half-blind, came crooning 
 forth with a broken crock tied together, in which she 
 had planted a flower to grow by her door. I stopped, 
 watched her set it down and arrange it. And then, not 
 wishing to stare rudely at this bent, old creature, I said, 
 " Good evening, auntie; it s a pretty evening." She 
 slowly straightened up, looked at me, looked away at the 
 fading sunlight on the hills, and said softly, " Oh, it s a 
 pretty world, massa !" 
 
 That old woman was a poetess a prophetess. She 
 had a soul to see the beauty, the poetry about her. " Oh, 
 it s a pretty world, massa ! She had no other form 
 of expression, but that was enough. Hers was the 
 
40 MEMOniE AXD RIME. 
 
 pass-word to nature. " And God saw everything that 
 lie had made, and, behold, it was very good." 
 
 This and similar cases found among the lowly peo 
 ple, persuade us that these are the poets of the earth, 
 and from among them some day will walk forth a Burns. 
 They are the truest lovers of a beautiful world these 
 negroes with their tranquil natures, the Indians with 
 their deep insight, their silent dignity, and their awful 
 reverence for the God of Nature. They are content 
 with the world. To them it is indeed beautiful. The 
 silent savages and the patient negroes, people who can 
 not read their names, in the purity, in the poetic simplic 
 ity of their natures, repeat almost the very words of 
 the prophet thousands of years ago : " And God saw 
 everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very 
 good." 
 
 When we believe the world to be good and beauti 
 ful, when, in fact, w T e can see poetry in nature, we may, 
 in the course of time, learn to express that poetry by 
 rules of art, and so be a race of poets. 
 
 In Italy you see a man lie down under a fig tree, 
 sleep as if in a palace, and wake up singing an opera 
 without a centime in his pocket. He looks about him, 
 and he sees that the world is very beautiful. He sees 
 beauty in all things. He is tranquil, content, glad, and 
 full of faith and hope arid charity. And so they are a 
 race of poets in Italy, of painters and sculptors. An 
 Italian beggar is happier, a thousand times happier, than 
 any prince of fortune I ever saw. He accepts grate 
 fully the beautiful world that the good God has given 
 him ; he loves it, and he is glad. And I somehow some 
 times think this is very near the purpose of man s crea 
 tion, and not far, not very far, from the true religion. 
 
 For my part, I would rather choose your village poet 
 
WHAT JS POETRY? 41 
 
 for my companion, no matter whether lie expressed 
 poetry or not, only so that it was felt, much rather 
 than your mayor or your member of Congress ; for he 
 is a lover of the beautiful, and is therefore himself 
 beautiful in soul, and akin to the things of beauty. 
 
 I was once riding alone over the mountains of Du- 
 rango in North Mexico, when I was overtaken by what I 
 thought to be a band of robbers. There was no escap 
 ing them there was but this one mountain road climbing 
 up the back of the great, steep, rugged mountain and 
 so I did the best I could joined them, and fell into con 
 versation with the leader, half expecting all the time to 
 be murdered. At last as we climbed the lofty summit 
 and looked down over the rich valley with its cool 
 waters winding through it, this black, hard-looking 
 Mexican reined his mule, lifted his hat, and looking 
 over the valley exclaimed, u Que hermosa !" " How 
 beautiful !" I felt no fear after that. We slept together 
 that night, and he told me this man who could not read 
 told me many pretty things for my book. 
 
 lie was a poet a poet without expression a better 
 poet than I, a thousand times better. To these poets, 
 these lovers of the beautiful, these silent thinkers, these 
 mighty mountaineers, far away from the rush and roar 
 of commerce, these men w r ho have room and strength 
 and the divine audacity to think and to act for them 
 selves to these men who dare to have heart and enthu 
 siasm, who love the beautiful world that the Creator 
 made for them, I look for the leaven of our loaf. 
 
 The mighty march of the seasons is perhaps the sub- 
 limest poem in nature. The blowing clouds with their 
 fringes of fire, the forked lightning all the elements are 
 awful in their beauty, and every movement in the air is a 
 miracle. Then on the earth, the flashing fields of yellow 
 
42 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 wheat, the tall and tasselled corn, the woods with the 
 hues of autumn, the scarlet beech tree, the burning bush 
 where Moses saw the face of God this is poetry. 
 
 Would you like to know the secret of happiness ? a 
 secret that no navigator ever brought from the sea a 
 secret that no merchant prince was ever rich enough to 
 purchase ? I will tell you. The secret of happiness is 
 the appreciation of the beautiful in nature the appre 
 ciation of God s unwritten poetry. Ah, you are disap 
 pointed ! You expected me to tell you how to make a 
 fortune how to be famous. Do not be mistaken. The 
 secret of happiness is the love of the beautiful. The 
 secret of happiness is the appreciation of unwritten 
 poetry. It has been my singular fortune to meet and 
 mingle with many famous men. I have sat at great 
 men s feet. They have not, as a rule, found the secret 
 of happiness, nor have they been able to purchase it. 
 None of them have seemed so happy to me as that old 
 white-headed negress with the broken flower-pot by the 
 Mexican seas. How good is the good God ! for beauty is 
 as free for us all as the winds of heaven. 
 
 But you say you cannot appreciate beauty as I do. 
 Have you tried ? Have you tried as hard to appreciate 
 the beauty of a field as to possess it ? Have you tried a 
 hundredth part as hard to appreciate beauty as you have 
 to accumulate wealth ? Have you given the subject one 
 hour a day ? one minute a day ? Have you ever 
 thought of it at all ? If you have, you are just that 
 much happier than the one wealthiest man I ever met. 
 
 But you cannot read the sibyl books of nature while 
 you are counting your coins. Nature is a jealous God. 
 Man is strong, but he cannot hold the four winds in his 
 hand at once. He is very tall, but he cannot pluck the 
 stars standing in the mud. 
 
WHAT IS POETRY? 43 
 
 Bring a nude savage into your library and let him look 
 at your books. Of what good are they to him ? The 
 beauty, the valor, the virtue that is chronicled there, the 
 mighty deeds they are indeed a sealed book. He does 
 not even know the alphabet. It would take him five, 
 ten, twenty years to master the mysteries of these works 
 of man. Well, nature s book, too, has an alphabet, and 
 we are even more blind and helpless than that savage, 
 for he has read and does understand the book of nature 
 from which the books of man were all copied, while 
 we, proud, blind, and vain of our knowledge of the 
 books of men, know nothing of the source of all. Were 
 I a great preacher, or speaker of any kind, I would make 
 it my mission to teach this one lesson to America the 
 love of the beautiful. Then would I teach the true 
 poetry, and my country would be a world of poets. Wo 
 would then be a happy, religious, contented and cult 
 ured people, instead of a race of vulgar and suspicious 
 money-getting merchants, with our laws of bankruptcy 
 and splended system of failures. 
 
 Where is Tyre, Thebes, Babylon ? They were capK 
 tals of commerce, but they gave the world no poet. 
 They very properly perished from the earth all but in 
 name. And but for the poets of Jerusalem not even 
 their names would have reached us. Jerusalem is in 
 deed a city set upon a hill. Her sublime poets, another 
 name for prophets, her lovers of the beautiful, have 
 made her the centre of the universe. Little Greece to 
 day spreads broader over the map of your mind than all 
 Europe, Asia and Africa together, save Jerusalem. 
 Why ? Because she was a lover of the beautiful, and 
 she therefore had poets to give expression to that love of 
 beauty. 
 
 We take lessons in French at school, in art, in litera- 
 
44 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 tare a thousand tilings ; a thousand lessons from the 
 hooks of men, hut not one lesson from the hook of nature. 
 Are our fathers afraid that we will not huild our com 
 mercial Tyre fast enough ? Are they afraid if they 
 teach us to look into the heavens for the beauty of the 
 stars, we will forget to look into the mud for money ? 
 
 Get acquainted with the world you live in. It will 
 seem better and more beautiful as you get acquainted 
 with it. I saw a student at Dartmouth college last year 
 walking in the forest with his face to a book. It was an 
 insult to nature. The mighty, mossy trees there reach 
 ing their long, strong arms in silent eloquence, were de 
 spised. He could not read his book there, nor did he 
 love nature, or he would not have attempted it. That 
 student walking there may in time fill his memory, but 
 his heart will be forever empty his heart will be as 
 cold and empty as a dead man s hand. 
 
 To me the grandest poem on earth is night in a deep 
 half-tropical forest. There is nothing so mighty, so 
 Miltonic as this the myriad voice of night. When I 
 was living in the southern Sierras, one of our great 
 preachers came that way. I by chance got to talking 
 with him about the voices and the noises of night high 
 up on the mountains. He was honestly amazed. He 
 said he thought the world slept for the night. I told 
 him that only man slept in the wilderness, that he would 
 find the w r orld very much awake if he would spend a 
 night high up from the habitations of man. He was 
 resolved to see. And so with two blankets and two pis 
 tols, some bread and a bottle of water, we climbed 
 up the steep, timbered mountain a mile above any habi 
 tation. We spread our blankets under a mighty tree. 
 "We saw the day fade and die on the far, forked snow- 
 peaks, and its ghost came down in darkness and covered 
 
WHAT IS POETRY? 45 
 
 us with its wings. The first tiling we heard was a great, 
 black bug that came buzzing along. It struck the bark 
 of the tree, and fell down on the doctor s blanket. 
 Nothing dangerous in a bug. The doctor was delighted. 
 He caught it up, classified it with a Latin name big 
 enough to kill it, put a pin through it, and resolved to 
 keep it as a specimen and trophy of the night. Sud 
 denly, far across on the other mountain-side, there rose 
 the howl of a hundred wolves. Then a thousand wolves 
 high above us on the mountain-top made the woods 
 tremble. The doctor was not a bit frightened. He only 
 pat up a little closer to me, and whispered gently that he 
 thought it was going to rain. Then a broad-winged 
 bird, a black owl, struck in the boughs above us as if it 
 meant to tear down the tree. u I am subject to rheu 
 matism," said the doctor, " and I don t want to get 
 wet." Then there came a crash ! A great grizzly bear, 
 that evidently had business in somebody s hog-pen, tore 
 down through the brush and woods on his way to the 
 settlement. Possibly the doctor wanted that bear for a 
 specimen also, for he sprang up, forgot his bug, and 
 started for the nearest house, lie should have waited to 
 see the moon come wheeling up and out of the Sierras, 
 white and vast as the snow-peaks, as she laid her broad 
 shoulders bare to the white clouds dragging through the 
 dark pines ; to hear the far, faint call of the night 
 birds, the beasts the thousand notes in the poetry and 
 song of nature at night. 
 
 I would say, learn to read the book of nature every 
 day around you all is open before you and then the 
 books of men will be simple things, for the greater in 
 cludes the less. Love and comprehend beauty, for then 
 you will love and comprehend the world. The Yen- 
 dome Column of France is mounted by the figure of a 
 
46 MEMORIE AND KIME. 
 
 mighty soldier. The colossal figure of a sailor looks 
 down through the smoke of London from Trafalgar 
 Square. But the poet and the painter, the lovers of the 
 beautiful, look calmly down upon you from the high 
 niches of Italy and to which of these lands does the 
 heat turn most tenderly ? This love of the beautiful, 
 another name for poetry this worship of the beautiful, 
 is the best that is in us. Study it every day, when you 
 walk, when you ride, when you rest by the roadside 
 the flight of a bird gracefully drooping, curving 
 through the air ; the shape and tint of a single autumn 
 leaf ; the sweet curled moon in the Leavens ; the still, far 
 stars ; the presence of a proud, pure woman, the lifted 
 f ace the lovely lifted face as she looks into space for 
 God. 
 
 If you \vill take the pains to consider this a moment 
 and you ought to give it years of consideration you will 
 find that all things are beautiful, or trying to be beauti 
 ful ; the whole earth, all things on the earth or in the 
 sea everything is struggling all the time for some ex 
 pression of beauty. The law of the beautiful is as gen 
 eral and as absolute as the law of gravitation. You may 
 drop the vilest piece of earth on the roadside as you 
 pass. You come along next year and find it giving some 
 expression of beauty in little flowers, or tall, strange 
 weeds, or little mosses that lift a thousand perfect spears 
 and spangles from out its velvet carpet. 
 
 Yet you cannot come to love the beautiful in a day or 
 to understand nature utterly, after having forgotten her 
 from your birth. You shall not rush into her temples 
 with soiled hands and benumbed soul, and be glad. She 
 will cast you out if you attempt it. On entering the 
 Mosque at Constantinople they made me take off my 
 shoes, bow my head and be silent, in this temple of man. 
 
WHAT IS I OETKY? 47 
 
 How much more sacred are the temples of nature ! 
 Democratic and accessible as she is, she must have at 
 least something of the respect that we pay to man. You 
 must pass into her temple by degrees. It is a half-life s 
 journey to her heart from the outer door, where you 
 must leave your shoes as you enter, 
 
 It is not pleasant to hear a young miss talk of the 
 beauties of nature, with her mouth full, and foolishly, as 
 she laughs and takes honest delight with her young 
 friends at the picnic. I like her : she is honest, she is 
 impulsive, she is good ; I reach her my hand, and I 
 would like to lift her higher ; but her prattle is profan 
 ity. She has been shut up in a school-house all her life. 
 She talks of the beauty of nature because it is getting to 
 be the fashion. She could not tell a pawpaw leaf from 
 the leaf of a poplar. She could walk with her lover in a 
 iield, praising the color and texture of the weeds and 
 grasses under foot, and then as likely as not sit down in 
 a nest of nettles. 
 
 Xo, you cannot walk the moment you are born upon 
 earth ; you cannot swim without some effort ; you can 
 not read even the books of imitative man without long 
 and patient study. Pray do not be so vain as to imagine 
 you can read the books of nature any more easily after 
 all your long neglect of her. You must ascend a moun 
 tain step by step. Wealth will not help you. I imagine, 
 indeed, that the less gold you have to carry on -your 
 shoulders as you climb up the height, the less trouble 
 you will have in the ascent. 
 
 The life of a great good man is a poem, written or 
 unwritten. Life is poetry, because life is beauty, and 
 the world is one vast unwritten poem. When you go 
 out in the world at night lift yonr face to the storm, or 
 to the myriad stars, and be glad. They are poetry : 
 
43 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 " When the morning stars sang together." There is 
 more gold in a single little star than in all the dirt of the 
 earth. A storm is so beautiful ! Listen to the winds 
 and love them ; they are just fresh, let loose from the 
 hand of God. Love the tranquil summer, the golden 
 autumn, the silvered moon overhead and the rustling 
 leaves under foot. In the depths of winter lift your 
 face to the pure white snow, for every flake is a palace 
 for a fairy. And love the rushing rain the wide 
 and white- winged angel, rain. See beauty, grandeur, 
 goodness in all things ; for this is poetry, so free for all. 
 And the lovers of the beautiful world are brothers and 
 sisters : they are the true poets of the universe. 
 
Across the broad, brown, peaceful hills, 
 With blossoms to our bronchos knees, 
 
 With singing birds by broken rills, 
 We rode through seas of drowsy bees. 
 
 The, ardor of myjpeech grew still 
 As we rode on that perfect day, 
 
 Ttie brown birds piping from the hill; 
 The crickets had it their own way. 
 
 Then we fell weary with the day. 
 
 God s bars of gold across the west 
 Before us drew and bade us stay 
 
 Beside a blossomed rill and rest. 
 
 The camp-fire blazed, the bronchos grazed, 
 And belly-deep in bloom and grass 
 
 Would blink as by the bright Jlame dazed, 
 Or sniff to smell the panther pass. 
 
 The massive stars of gold stood out, 
 Bright camp-fires of poor, weary souls 
 
 Bound heavenward. While all about 
 Couched peace, with blossoms for patrols. 
 
II. 
 
 IN CALIFOKlSriA, 
 
 I. 
 
 OLD CALIFORNIA. 
 
 San Francisco, October 5, 1871. Again in the 
 golden West, where we are baptized in the fire of the 
 setting sun, and all things have a line, a fervor, a 
 flavor all their own. Civilization took a mighty step 
 when she set her foot from the shores of England to 
 those of America. Manhood took a still broader stride 
 from the shores of the Atlantic to those of the Pacific. 
 England is honest, good, great. There is, indeed, more 
 solid honesty in one square foot of England than in all 
 Gotham ; but she is far behind America in the salient 
 features of civilization. 
 
 But what is civilization ? Is it heart ? Humanity ? 
 I think so. Certainly it is not in strength of armies or 
 might of cannon. But whatever it is, commend me to 
 the old Californian. I should say that an old gold 
 hunter of -19, standing on a peak of the Sierras with the 
 world behind him, storm-blown and beaten, yet with 
 hands and heart open, unsullied by any sin of the popu 
 lous world below, stands not far from God. 
 
f>2 MK.MORIE AND RIME. 
 
 They climb d the rock-built breasts ot earth, 
 
 The Titan-fronted, blowy steeps 
 
 That cradled Time . . . Where Freedom keeps 
 
 Her flag of white-blown stars unfurl d, 
 
 They turn d about, they saw the birth 
 
 Of sudden dawn upon the world : 
 
 Again they gazed ; they saw the face 
 
 Of God, and named it boundless space. 
 
 All, there have been clouds in the old Californian s 
 life, storms and wrecks, and years of clouds. And 
 even still there are more than enough in the West to 
 make the sunset glorious. But the world is away off 
 to him. He has memories a lock of hair in his hand, 
 a little song in his heart. He lives alone in the past. 
 Life, love all with him are over ; "but he does not com 
 plain. May he strike it yet in the shaft he is still sink 
 ing, in the great tunnel he is still boring into the moun 
 tains, and go back to his waiting wife and babes. Alas ! 
 his babes are full-grown ; he will never see his babies 
 any more. 
 
 It is to be allowed that these men were not at all care 
 ful of the laws, either ancient or modern, ecclesiastical or 
 lay. They would curse. They would fight like dogs- 
 aye, like Christians in battle. But there was more solid 
 honor among those men than the world will ever see 
 again in any body of men, I fear, till it approaches the 
 millennium. Is it dying out with them ? I find that 
 the new Californians are rather common cattle. 
 
 Do you know where the real old Californian is ? the 
 giant, the world-builder ? 
 
 He is sitting by the trail high up on the mountain. 
 His eyes are dim, and his head is white. His hands are 
 not strong. His pick and shovel are at his side. His feet 
 are weary and sore, He is still prospecting. Pretty 
 soon he will sink his last prospect-hole in the Sierra. 
 
OLD CALIFORNIA. 53 
 
 Some younger men will come along, and lengthen it 
 out a little, and lay him in his grave. The old miner 
 will have passed on to prospect the outcroppings that 
 etar the floors of heaven. 
 
 lie is not numerous now ; but I saw him last summer 
 high up on the head waters of the Sacramento. His 
 face is set forever away from that civilization which has 
 passed him by. He is called a tramp now. And the 
 new, nice people who have slid over the plains in a palace 
 car and settled down there, set dogs on him sometimes 
 when he comes that way. 
 
 I charge yon, treat the old California!! well wherever 
 you find him. He has seen more, suffered more, prac 
 tised more self-denial than can now fall to the lot of 
 any man. 
 
 I never see one of these old prospectors without think 
 ing of Ulysses, and wondering if any Penelope still 
 weaves and unweaves, and waits the end of his wander 
 ings. AVill any old blind dog stagger forth at the sound 
 of his voice, lick his hand, and fall down at his feet ? 
 
 No, he will never return. lie has not heard from home 
 for twenty years. He would not find even the hearth 
 stone of his cabin by the Ohio, should he return. Per 
 haps liis own son, a merchant prince or the president of 
 a railroad, is one of the distinguished party in the palace 
 car that smokes along the plain far below. 
 
 And though he may die there in the pines on the 
 mighty mountain, while still feebly searching for the 
 golden fleece, do not forget that his life is an epic, noble 
 as any handed down from out the dusty eld. I implore 
 you treat him kindly. Some day a fitting poet will 
 come, and then he will take his place among the heroes 
 and the gods. 
 
 CD 
 
 But there is another old Californian, a wearier man, 
 
54 MEMORIE AKD RIME. 
 
 tlie successful one. He, too, is getting gray. But lie is 
 a power in the land. He is a prince in fact and in act. 
 What strange fate was it that threw dust in the eyes of 
 that old Californian, sitting by the trail high up on the 
 mountain, and blinded him so that he could not see the 
 gold just within his grasp a quarter of a century ago ? 
 And what good fairy was it that led this other old Cali- 
 fornian, now the banker, the railroad king, or senator, 
 to where the mountain gnomes had hidden their gold of 
 old? 
 
 What accidental beggars and princes we have in the 
 world to-day ? But whether beggar or prince, the old 
 Californian stands a head and shoulders taller than his 
 fellows wherever you may find him. This is a solid, 
 granite truth. 
 
 Our dead are the mighty majority of old Californians ! 
 No one would guess how numerous they are. Califor 
 nia was one vast battlefield. The knights of the nine 
 teenth century lie buried in her bosom ; while here and 
 there, over the mountain-tops, totters a lone survivor, 
 still prospecting, 
 
 And I sit here, at forty year, 
 Dipping my nose in the Gascon wine." 
 
 There is an older Californian still " the oldest inhab 
 itant," indeed. I knew him, a lusty native, a quarter of 
 a century ago, in the impenetrable forests and lava, beds 
 around the base of Mount Shasta. He, too, is dead ; 
 dead in spirit at least, if not altogether in fact. 
 
 If valor, is a virtue, let us at least concede that to the 
 red man of the California mountains. There were bat 
 tles fought here between the miners and red men before 
 General Canby was ever heard of. They were bloody 
 battles, too. But they never got to the ears of the 
 
OLD CALIFORNIA. 55 
 
 world. If Captain Jack with his handful of braves 
 held the United States army at bay for half a year, you 
 may well understand that we miners met no boy s play 
 there when these Indians were numerous and united. 
 
 But the Indian, as I knew him there, is utterly extinct. 
 About the fisheries of the McCloud, and along the stage 
 road on the head waters of the Sacramento River, you 
 see little houses now and then not unlike our miners 
 cabins of old. There are the homes of the few remain 
 ing Indians of Northern California. There is a little 
 garden and straggling patches of corn about the door ; 
 two or three miserable ponies nibble about the barren 
 hills hard by, and a withered, wrinkled old squaw or 
 two grunts under a load of wood or water, as she steps 
 sullen and silent out of the path to let you pass. And 
 that is about all. Her husband, her sons, are dead or 
 dying of disease in the dark, smoky cabin yonder. He 
 accepted the inevitable, and is trying to be civilized. 
 Alas ! long before that point is reached, he will have 
 joined his fathers on the other side of darkness. 
 
 I spent a week at Soda Springs, near Mount Shasta, 
 in sight of our old battle-ground in Castle Rocks, or 
 Castillo del Diallo, as it was then called. I tried to 
 find some of the men who had fought in that little bat 
 tle. But one white man remained. At the time of this 
 fight, which took place on the 15th day of JTme, 1855, 
 he was married to the daughter of a friendly chief, and, 
 as he was the only alcalde in all that country, was a sort 
 of military as well as civil leader, and in the battle was 
 conspicuous both for courage and good sense. He tried 
 to keep me back and out of danger. He told me that I 
 was of no account in the fight, and only in the way. 
 But when I was shot down at his side in a charge 
 through the chaparral, he took me in his arms and car- 
 
56 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 ried me safely aside. He cared for me afterward, too, 
 till I got well. How glad I was to find him still alive ! 
 When you go up to Soda Springs, jump out of the stage 
 at Sweetbrier Ranch, only a few miles this side of 
 Soda, and look him up. Do you think him an illiterate 
 boor ? He is of one of the best families in New York, 
 and a scholar. 
 
 A few years ago one of his wealthy sisters came out 
 to visit the old man from the Eastern States. From 
 San Francisco she telegraphed her approach and the 
 probable day of her arrival at his mansion. 
 
 She came ; but she did not find him. The old Califor- 
 nian had long contemplated prospecting the rugged sum 
 mit of an almost inaccessible mountain. He felt that the 
 time had come for this work, as his venerable maiden 
 sister, with all her high ideas of " family," approached. 
 He called his spouse and his tawny children about him, 
 bade them take up their baskets and go high, very high 
 up into the mountains, for acorns. And the gray old 
 Calif ornian sinched his little mule till she grunted, tied 
 a pick, pan, and shovel to the saddle, and so pointed her 
 nose up the peak, and climbed as if he was climbing for 
 the morning star. . . . 
 
 I wonder how many of us are alive to-day ! I saw the 
 old earthworks only last week. They are almost levelled 
 now. The brown grass and weeds covered them. As I 
 climbed the hill to hunt for our old fortress, a squirrel 
 scampered into his hole under the wall, while on the 
 highest rock a little black lizard basked and blinked in 
 the sun and kept unchallenged sentinel. . . . 
 
 I remember when we came to bury the dead. We 
 could not go to town for a preacher, and so one of our 
 party had to officiate. That was the saddest burial I ever 
 saw. The man broke down who first began to read. 
 
OLD CALIFORNIA. 57 
 
 His voice trembled so lie could not get on. Then 
 another man took the Bible and tried to finish the chap 
 ter ; but his voice trembled too, and pretty soon he 
 choked up and hid his face. Then every man there 
 cried, I think. 
 
 Oh, this search for the golden fleece ! Death and ob 
 livion for so many ! Fortune for so few ! While writ 
 ing of wealth where gold is a god, let me implore you do 
 not much care for it. ]S r or would I have you very much 
 respect those who possess it. 
 
 In the first place, the foundations of nearly all the 
 great fortunes of the Far West have been almost purely 
 accidental. After that it became merely a question of 
 holding on to all you could get. Of course, many threw 
 away their opportunities. But remember that many 
 gave away all they had to help others, and are now gray 
 and forgotten in the mountains, while they might have 
 been to-day at the head of their fellows in the city. 
 
 I know it is hard to teach and to preach against the 
 traditions and the practices of all recorded time. But 
 while money may remain to the end "the root of all 
 evil," I think one may grow, if not to despise it, cer 
 tainly not to worship it. And so it is that I wish to 
 sandwich and wedge in this fact right here. I beg you 
 do not too much admire the rich men of this rich land, 
 where wealth may be had by any man who is mean 
 enough to clutch and hold on tight to it. 
 
 I tell you that, in nine cases out of ten, great acquired 
 wealth lifts up monumental testimony to the meanness of 
 its possessor. 
 
 1 knew two neighbors, old Californians, who had 
 about equal fortunes. They were both old settlers, both 
 rich, and both much respected. In that fearful year, 
 1852, when the dying and destitute immigrants literally 
 
58 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 crawled on hands and knees over the Sierra trying to 
 reach the settlements, one of these men drove all his 
 cattle up to the mountains, butchered them, and fed the 
 starving. He had his Mexicans pack all the mules with 
 flour, which at that time cost almost its weight in gold, 
 and push on night and day over the mountains to meet 
 the strangers there and feed them, so that they might 
 have strength to reach his Ranch, where they could have 
 shelter and rest. 
 
 The other man, cold and cautious, saw his opportunity, 
 and embraced it. He sat at home and sold all his 
 wheat and mules and meat, and with the vast opportuni 
 ties for turning money to account in that new country 
 soon became almost a prince in fortune. 
 
 But his generous neighbor died a beggar in Idaho, 
 where he had gone to try to make another fortune. He 
 literally had not money enough to buy a shroud ; and as 
 he died among strangers, by the roadside, he was buried 
 without even so much as a pine board coffin. 
 
 I saw his grave there only last year. Some one had 
 set up a rough granite stone at the head. And that is 
 all. ]STo name not even a letter or a date. Nothing. 
 But that boulder was fashioned by the hand of Almighty 
 God, and in the little seams and dots and mossy scars 
 that cover it He can read the rubric that chronicles the 
 secret virtues of this lone dead man on the snowy moun 
 tains of Idaho. 
 
 The children of the " Prince" are in Paris. Upheld 
 by his colossal wealth, their lives seem to embrace the 
 universal world. He is my friend. He buys all my 
 books, and reads every line I write. When he comes to 
 this sketch he will understand it. And he ought to un 
 derstand, too, that all the respect, admiration, and love 
 which the new land once gave these two men gathers 
 
DAMMING THE SACRAMENTO. 59 
 
 around and is buried beneath that moss-grown granite 
 stone ; and that I know, even with all his show of splen 
 dor, that his heart is as cold and as empty as that dead 
 man s hand. 
 
 II. 
 
 DAMMING THE SACRAMENTO. 
 
 WHILE we are in these hills and mountains of the 
 Sierras, let me tell yon the story of our journey from 
 Oregon. 1 will tell you a true story about a boy among 
 the hundred old heroes of the epic age of America. I 
 want you to like the story. I want you to love the boy. 
 
 Away up under the shadows of Mount Shasta, plung 
 ing down to the south, foaming, shouting, thundering 
 down the land as if to shake the mountains loose, the 
 new-born Sacramento River is as cold and clear and 
 white as the eternal snows that feed his thousand gold- 
 bearing tributaries. 
 
 Long ago, in the early days of California, when all the 
 rivers there were thought to be full of gold, it was con 
 sidered a matter of course that the great Sacramento, 
 far up at its source, was also gold-bearing, and that it 
 only needed men and a little labor to " wing-dam" this 
 stream some summer, and find a vein of gold almost as 
 rich as the famous deposits of the Feather and the 
 American rivers, which feed the Sacramento and drain 
 the melting snows of the Sierras far away to the south. 
 
GO MEMORIE AND 11IME. 
 
 And so it was in the spring of 18 , with this purpose 
 in view, that a party of strangers in San Francisco 
 hastily pooled their fortunes, consisting mainly of hope 
 and muscle, and, ascending the Sacramento River to 
 within thirty miles of its source, settled down there and 
 began to cut it in two with a wing-dam. 
 
 How, in one short and yet uncompleted summer, these 
 ten men had managed to do the amount of work which 
 they had, it is hard to say. Winter was not far off at 
 the furthest in this altitude, but, then, how a man work 
 ing for himself will strike out with the thought con 
 stantly before him that the very next blow of his pick 
 may mean to him wife, children, father, mother, home, 
 or, what is the same thing, gold that wo aid pave the road 
 leading back to these and all else dear to man ! 
 
 Late one evening, as the brawny, hairy, half-robed 
 miners still wrestled with the boulders down in the bed 
 of the river, which as yet had yielded no sign of its 
 secrets, a pale, slim boy stood on the bank and inquired, 
 in a helpless way and with a weak, tired voice, if they 
 did not want " to hire help." 
 
 The men stopped, looked up, then at each other, then 
 at the boy above them on the bank ; and then they 
 roared with laughter. 
 
 " Hire help ! Look here, are you the help ?" howled 
 the strongest of them, called " Samson." 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 Again the ragged men leaned on their picks and 
 shovels, lifted up their heads, and roared. 
 
 " Say, are you an orphan?" laughed " Colonel 
 Lasses," turning a quid. " We re all orphans here, and 
 a long ways from home. Are you an orphan and a long 
 ways from home ?" 
 
DAMMING THE SACRAMENTO. 01 
 
 "No, sir," piped the tired boy, " I am not an 
 orphan ; but I am a long ways from home." 
 
 Well, you better start home, then. It will be dark 
 by the time you get there, I guess. From the Flat, eh ?" 
 
 " From tiie Flat, sir ? Where is that ?" 
 
 " Why, Portuguese Flat," chimed in a tall fellow, 
 with a touch of gentleness in his voice. " It s four 
 miles down, the only mining camp on this end of the 
 river. Where did you come from, my kid, that you 
 didn t know that, eh?" 
 
 " Why, sir, I came from the other way down from 
 Oregon. There s been a battle away up the river. I 
 was hit, you see, and am only now come down. " 
 
 Some of the men looked at each other, and others 
 shook their heads. But the very tall and ragged one, 
 who was called " Nut Crackers," leaned soberly aside on 
 liis pick. 
 
 At last one of the men, a sprightly, handsome young 
 fellow called Timothy, threw dotvn his long-handled 
 shovel and, coming up out of the mine, said : 
 
 " Well, my kid, you may not be an orphan, but 
 you re a mighty long ways from home ; about a thou 
 sand miles, I guess. And as you can t get back there 
 to-night, you d better bunk with us eh, boys ?" 
 
 " Bet your boots ! cheerily cried Nut Crackers at 
 his side, as he twirled a finger playfully through the 
 boy s yellow hair. 
 
 A heavy-booted, half-bear creature, that came crawl 
 ing out of the mine after his younger partners, grunted 
 out a qualified assent, and the party went slowly string 
 ing out toward the brush shanty of the company, which 
 stood a little way back from the foaming river. Others 
 followed, for the sun was down and it was time to 
 "knock off." 
 
62 MKMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 The boy was weary and altogether wretched. He was 
 tall and pale and thin, like a weed that has grown in 
 shadow, and was not likely to be an addition to the 
 working-force of the mine ; but he was reserved and re 
 spectful, and so eager to help about the camp in bringing 
 wood and water, and so careful not to be in the way, 
 that he was tolerated until after the tired men had had 
 their suppers. And then when they had filled their 
 pipes, and had thrown themselves about the roaring and 
 sweet-smelling fire of yew and juniper, he was made to 
 feel quite at home, and soon fell so soundly asleep by the 
 fire that he knew nothing more till the sun came down 
 over the mountains, next morning, and looked him full 
 in the face and wakened him. 
 
 It was Nut Crackers s " cook-week," and he had left 
 a tin cupful of coifee hot by the fire, where the boy 
 still lay. With an air of desperation, he was now down 
 011 his knees, with his sleeves rolled up, before a tubful 
 of boiling hot water and obstinately greasy tin plates. 
 He made an experimental dive with his big fist into the 
 boiling water, and then suddenly leaped up, and hopping 
 high on his naked heels, launched into a series of inco 
 herent oaths, which was timidly interrupted by the boy. 
 
 " Let me wash em for you, please." 
 
 < You ?" said Nut Crackers, savagely, in an effort to 
 vent some of his irritation on the new-comer. 
 
 " Yes, as soon as I wash my hands." 
 
 " You d better drink your coffee, and get some color 
 in your face first." 
 
 " I will. But, sir, I want to wash the dishes for you. 
 I know how. I always washed the dishes for mother at 
 home when she was sick." 
 
 Nut Crackers stopped swearing. Pretty soon he came 
 up to the boy, who was washing his hands and face in 
 
DAMMING THE SACRAMEXTO. fi3 
 
 the little stream that slid through the camp, and, snap 
 ping his fingers, which were as red as boiled crawfish, 
 said : 
 
 " Kid, have you got a mother and do you ? But 
 bah ! Yes, wash em. It s not a man s place to wash 
 dishes. Wash em and clean up about camp. Got no 
 money to pay you ; we re all on the verge. But you 
 clean up about here, and stay round for grub ; time 
 enough to get down to the Flat after beans." 
 
 And with this he unrolled his sleeves and hobbled off 
 down to the mine, leaving the boy in charge of the few 
 blankets, brush-beds, camp-kettles, pans, and old boots 
 which made up the tangible fortune of the u Sacramento 
 Wing-dam Company." 
 
 When the ten tired men came up to dinner that day, 
 they found such a change for the better that they per 
 suaded the boy to stay. True, they had no money, even 
 for themselves ; but when they " struck it" and strike 
 it they must the very next week he should be paid, and 
 paid well. And with this understanding they w^ent back 
 to their work that afternoon, leaving behind them a boy 
 with a lighter heart than he had borne for half a year. 
 
 The men worked like beavers now. The summer had 
 slipped away, and winter had taken possession of the 
 summits of the mountains and set them with snowy cas 
 tles. The river was rising every day, inch by inch. 
 They must cut quite across the river-bed and strike the 
 vein before the river broke over the wing-dam, or all 
 their labor would be lost. They had already, even in 
 midsummer, pierced the centre of the river-bed, and 
 thrown the stormy stream behind them. They w T ere 
 now on the farther side, and were cutting straight for the 
 bed-rock bank that cropped out not twenty feet away. 
 They had begun with the bed-rock bank on the other 
 
MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 side, and had followed the bed-rock across the entire bed 
 of the river. The gold must lie somewhere ahead of 
 them somewhere within the next twenty feet. It was 
 now only a question of days, of hours. This, be it re 
 membered, was in the early days, when all men still ob 
 stinately believed that gold must lie in veins and strata. 
 
 How full of hope, of heart, were these men who had 
 been shut up there in a gaping crevice of the earth all 
 summer ! Not one doubted that they would strike it 
 a little yellow vein deep in the bed of this stormy river, 
 where the finger of God had placed it in the dawn of 
 creation. Banks might fail, ships founder at sea, but 
 this gold it was there ! It had to le there ! A little 
 yellow river of virgin gold ! 
 
 These ten men did the work of forty. They could 
 hardly wait for dawn, and they worked at night while 
 the stars stood sentinel at the castles of snow above 
 them. They scarcely ate their food, they were so eager. 
 However, there was but little to eat. They did not 
 wear much clothing, although winter was in the air. 
 One man had not even the fragments of sleeves to his 
 only remaining shirt. This was the man called Samson. 
 He had arms like a giant, and would show die knots of 
 muscle on his arms by the fire-light, and boast of his 
 strength by the hour. He had a theory that the arms 
 should always be entirely naked. He said he had torn 
 off and thrown away his splendid sleeves in order to give 
 the muscles of his arms full play, and he advised all the 
 boys to do the same. But it so happened that one 
 night, after one of these boastful exhibitions, having un 
 dertaken to dry the socks of these giants on a pole by 
 the fire as they slept, the boy discovered that Samson 
 had torn off the covering of his arms in order that he 
 might protect his feet. 
 
DAMMING THE SACRAMENTO. 65 
 
 It is to be recorded that the early California!! was 
 particularly partial to Biblical names. There was one of 
 this party called Joseph. " We calls him Joseph 
 because one day he fell in the pit ; and then, he s the 
 bashfullest un in the camp," said Lazarus, a bony, pock 
 marked, thoughtful man, aside to the boy. 
 
 One of this new company was called Colonel Lasses. 
 Colonel Lasses was from the South, and chewed tobacco. 
 Perhaps nothing pleased the colonel better than firing 
 tobacco juice at the thousand little lizards that danced 
 up and down the shining white boulders that strewed the 
 bar. I forgot to say that Colonel Lasses was not his 
 name. Lazarus, in a burst of confidence toward the boy, 
 had informed him that they at first had called the col 
 onel " Molasses Jug" not because he was sweet, but 
 because he looked it. But they had found it a little 
 too long, and finally polished it down to " Lasses." 
 
 There now remained only a few feet between the en 
 ergetic miners and the abrupt bed-rock wall before 
 them. Yet no man for a moment entertained a shadow 
 of a doubt that his fortune lay there, in virgin gold. Or 
 if any man for an instant had a doubt, he kept it to 
 himself. True, only a few feet remained. But even a 
 few inches would be enough to hide a vein of incalcula 
 ble wealth. Who should come to doubt, after all they 
 had endured and dared ? K"o, there was no possible 
 show for Fortune to escape them. The gold must be 
 there. For was not winter nipping at their heels ? Was 
 not the last bit of rusty old bacon in the camp-kettle 
 with the last handful of Chili beans ? They had not tasted 
 bread since the Sunday before, the last time they had all 
 gone down to the Flat, and then they had pawned the last 
 six-shooter of the crowd for a last square meal. Bread ! 
 Their bread was hope. And of that they had plenty. 
 
66 MEMOBIE ASTD RIME. 
 
 But now the boy fell ill suddenly and seriously ill. 
 He had never quite pulled up, and now, all at once, just 
 as they were about to strike it, just on the eve of the 
 next to the last day, he broke quite down, and lay half- 
 delirious with a fever, as the men came up from the 
 mine by. moonlight and quietly gathered about him. 
 They had somehow learned to love him in spite of 
 themselves. 
 
 He was indeed very ill. But what could they do ? 
 There was no doctor at the Flat. There was not even a 
 drug-store. And if there had been, what then ? Every 
 pistol, rifle, knife, every available article, had been 
 pawned " put up," as they called it to carry on the 
 work. 
 
 " Boys," at last cried Timothy, the impulsive young 
 fellow who had first welcomed him, ." boys, I have an 
 idea ; yes, boys, I have. Let s make the kid a pard- 
 ner !" 
 
 " J ist as we re strikin it ?" murmured a voice with a 
 Southern accent, out on the edge of the dark. Then 
 after a pause, long enough to turn a quid, the voice an 
 swered itself, "Wa-al, .yes, Timothy." 
 
 Nut Crackers was not a talker. His lips quivered a 
 little, and he went out aside in the dark. 
 
 There was a deep silence. The proposition seemed 
 absurd to nearly every man there. The river surged on, 
 now louder, now softer ; the fire leaped and licked its 
 red tongue, as if about to break the stillness, and that 
 was all. But Timothy was in dead earnest, and hearing 
 a voice out in the dark breaking the awkward silence 
 never so faintly, was on his feet. 
 
 " He may die, boys. He may not live till morning." 
 
 " In that case in that case, I guess we can do it," 
 chipped in the man from Maine. 
 
DAMMING THE SACRAMENTO. 
 
 " Look here, boys, if we strike it, there is enough for 
 us all. And if if here Timothy s two forefingers 
 hooked together angrily, as if they were ready to stran 
 gle each other at the thought " if we don t strike it _ " 
 
 Several of the men were on their feet and glaring at 
 each other. The speaker hastened on : 
 
 " But of course we will. Boys, it s there. Of course 
 it s there. It s got to be there. I never doubted it, 
 boys. But I am a bit superstitious. And as I sat there 
 looking in that boy s face, I says to myself, says I, boys, 
 God wouldn t, couldn t, disappoint that face. Now, if 
 he was in with us, boys, we couldn t possibly miss it 
 to-morrow." 
 
 Ko man answered, but several crossed over to the 
 other side of the fire to the boy, and Lazarus put out his 
 hand to the sufferer, and said tenderly, as he took up the 
 thin and helpless fingers : 
 
 Shake, pardner, shake. You re one of us now. 
 Even the sour and silent man from Maine came up and 
 shook the boy s hand ; then, as he shuffled off to his 
 own side of the fire, he said, half to himself : 
 
 Well, if we do miss it neow, there s one good deed 
 we git credit for, anyheow." 
 
 "Key-rect, boys," said the laconic colonel, as he 
 gave the hand of fellowship, and walked off, feeling 
 somehow broader in the chest and bigger about the heart 
 than he had for a year. "But if God A mighty goes 
 back on us now after what we ve done wa-al, I ll 
 jist But the last of this speech was drowned in the 
 roar of the Sacramento Eiver as it rolled away in the 
 darkness with its mighty secret that, on the morrow, 
 should be torn from its very heart. 
 
 la the lull which followed, a voice was heard out in 
 the dark in the direction toward which Nut Crackers had 
 
08 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 gone, stumbling and twisting his long, ungainly legs 
 over the great boulders. And as one of the men spoke 
 to the kid by the fire of to-morrow, of the gold, his 
 going home, the wife waiting at the door three thousand 
 miles away, the old mother waiting with one foot in the 
 grave, who could not go to rest till she said good-by to 
 her boy, the moon seemed to come down out of heaven 
 to see and the river to stop and listen. 
 
 This was the eve of battle. What victory or defeat 
 for to-morrow ! N~o coward had as yet ever set his face 
 for the Sierras. Each man here was a hero. And every 
 one of these worn-out fellows had a heart like a girl. 
 Even the laconic colonel hooked his knuckles in his eyes 
 and, turning away so as not to be seen, muttered : 
 
 " Blast me, if ISTut Crackers ain t out there a-prayin ." 
 As the man came back out of the dark, a song burst 
 out in the mountains by the camp-fire, such as the Sier 
 ras had never heard before and will never hear again. 
 It was not the words, not the air, not the singular occa* 
 sion. But it was the heart, the hope the extreme of 
 hope which is despair. It was the old and simple song, 
 lined by the man from Maine : 
 
 " From Greenland s icy meount ins ; 
 
 From Injy s coral stran ; 
 Where Afric s sunny feount ins 
 Koll down their golden san ." 
 
 Perhaps it was the " golden sand" that had so long filled 
 their souls, sleeping and waking ; maybe it was the 
 " icy mountains" about them that invoked the song. 
 But whatever it was, the hymn broke out and rolled on 
 to full completion as strong and as resolute as the river 
 it outsung. The man from Maine sang loudest of all ; 
 it seemed that the power of the mountain pines was in 
 his voice. 
 
DAMMING THE SACRAMENTO. G9 
 
 And the boys no longer looked down or turned aside 
 now. They shook hands in hearty mountain fashion, 
 and sang and sang together again. It seemed that they 
 had never become acquainted through all that summer 
 before. 
 
 When they had finished the hymn for the second 
 time, the man from Maine grasped the hand of Lazarus 
 and Nut Crackers, and cried out : 
 
 " Once more, boys ! Once more ! And, boys, the 
 p int and main thing in the pray in and the singin is 
 that the kid gits well, of course. But, boys, chip in a 
 sort o side prayer for the mine. Now, all together : 
 
 " From Greenland s icy ineo-u-n-t ms, 
 
 Yes, hoys, heave it in for the mine, on the sly, like. 
 Keep her up, now ! 
 
 " From Injy s coral str-a-n , 
 Where Afric s sunny feo-u-n-t ins 
 Roll down their golden s-a-nV 
 
 Aye, boys, weather eye on the mine ; don t cost a cent 
 more, you know, to come right out flat-footed for the 
 mine, so that she can t miss in the inornin under no 
 possible sarcumstances. " 
 
 "The song was finished, and with light hearts they laid 
 down at midnight soldiers in the trenches, waiting for 
 the dawn. 
 
 The boy had heard and understood it all. He was not 
 so ill now. Care, the thought of those at home, the 
 hope deferred these things had made the heart sick 
 and the body sick. But now he should have gold ! 
 Gold ! Gold ! Not for himself had he come to the 
 Sierras. But there was a mother who had been tenderly 
 reared, there was a father who had been a scholar in his 
 day, then the little ones all these had been pitched 
 
70 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 headlong into the wilderness, and were utterly out of 
 place. How he pictured the return the escape from 
 the wilderness ! It made the blood leap in his heart, 
 and after a night of sleep he felt a new flush of strength 
 with the first gray of dawn, when the men were on 
 their knees before Fortune in the mine. 
 
 No man had tasted food. No man thought of that. 
 And well enough, too. No ! Their first meal should be 
 down at the Flat. They would all take back their pis 
 tols, rifles, rings, and knives, and pay the men with gold 
 ravished from the unwilling river. 
 
 The boy sat on the bank, wrapped in a blanket, just 
 above the knot of eager, breathless men. The dull, 
 blunt pickaxes were driven to the eyes at every blow. 
 The worn-out shovels sent the gravel ringing to the rear. 
 Only one foot now remained ! 
 
 Was the gold hidden in the last little crevice in the 
 river ? Where was it ? It was there ! It must be 
 there ! But where ? 
 
 At last the pickaxe struck through. The gravel 
 shelved off and fell down with a dull thud, and a pan 
 was washed in a trice. 
 
 Not a color ! 
 
 And not an oath was heard ! Draw a red line right 
 here, and remember it. Not a. single oath was heard. 
 And these men were neither unskilled nor out of prac 
 tice in that line. 
 
 Quietly and mechanically the boy went back and 
 gathered up the few old blankets that would bear trans 
 portation. Joseph went up the river a little ways, 
 opened the floodgates, and as the last man climbed out 
 of the pit, leaving the battered tools behind him, the 
 waters came booming over like a mighty inflowing tide. 
 
DAMMING THE SACRAMENTO, 71 
 
 The huge and weary old wheel ceased to creak, and the 
 Sacramento swept on in its old swift fashion. 
 
 The group of men was not so depressed, not so miser 
 able, after all, as you might think, as they hobbled back 
 to camp and took up their blankets. True, they turned 
 their heads for a last look as they climbed the hill away 
 from the bar, but it was noticeable that they still did 
 not swear. The man from Maine muttered something 
 about yet making the river pay by rafting lumber down 
 it, but that was all. 
 
 The boy s legs failed him at the first hill, and Xut 
 Crackers took him upon his shoulders. Soon another 
 took him, arid so in a sort of glorious rivalry these van 
 quished Trojans reached Portuguese Flat. And as, tired 
 and heartless, they stumbled into the town, they lustily 
 sang a song with these words for the chorus : 
 
 " And we dammed the Sacramento 
 As it never was dammed before." 
 
 Joseph had the boy on his shoulders, while Nut Crackers 
 followed close behind ; and in this order they entered 
 the only hotel, with the others stringing in after them. 
 
 " Barkeep ," began Joseph, as he settled the load on 
 his shoulders, " we wants to pawn this ere boy. Yes, 
 we do. We wants to pawn this ere boy for one squar 
 meal to git away on, and we ll come back in the spring 
 and redeem him. Yes, we will. If we don t, barkeep , 
 may we never strike it here, or up yonder." 
 
 And what a dinner it was ! 
 
 But Joseph, Timothy, Samson, Lazarus, gentle ]S~ut 
 Crackers, where are you now ? And what has befallen 
 you, brave soldiers of fortune ? Are you climbing the 
 mountains still ? Or have you left them forever and 
 become merchant princes, railroa^Lrkujgs, and leaders of 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
72 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 your fellow-men ? If there is one of you living any 
 where, in whatever circumstances, answer one who 
 writes these lines and who loves you well ; for he it was 
 you pawned for your dinner when you dammed the 
 Sacramento. 
 
 in. 
 
 AN ELK HUNT IN THE SIERRAS. 
 
 WHEN it was discovered that gold did not exist in great 
 paying quantities on the head-waters of the Sacramento 
 River, the thousands there who had overrun the land and 
 conquered the Indians melted away. But I had been 
 kindly treated by the Indians, partly perhaps because I 
 was the only white boy in the country at that time, and 
 partly maybe because I had been badly wounded in a 
 battle against them, and was still weak and helpless after 
 a sort of peace was patched up ; and so I went freely 
 among them. The old chief s family was strangely kind 
 to me. He had a very beautiful daughter. But I needed 
 the services of a surgeon, and as the summer passed I set 
 out for the settlements, a hundred miles down the Sacra 
 mento River to the south. 
 
 Early in the fall of 1855 I reached Shasta City, in my 
 slow journey from Soda Springs, after the battle of 
 Castle Rocks, and there had the services of an Italian 
 doctor, who quite healed my wounds and set me once 
 more on my feet. We became greatly attached, and this 
 
AX ELK HUNT IN THE SIKRRAS. <3 
 
 new friend of the Old World seemed resolved to be my 
 friend indeed. He had a cabin and a mining claim near 
 Shasta City, and was counted rich in gold dust. In this 
 cabin he established me, set me to reading all sorts of 
 books, and began to teach me Italian and Spanish But 
 my heart was not always in that cabin or with my books. 
 Often and often I climbed the highest mountain looking 
 away toward Mount Shasta to the north. Somebody was 
 waiting up there, I knew. I knew that two dark eyes were 
 peering through the dense wood toward the south ; two 
 soft brown hands parting the green foliage, looking out 
 the way that I should come, certain that I would come 
 at last. My friend and benefactor had furnished me 
 with a fine horse and the finest saddle that the place 
 could furnish ; besides, he had armed me like a brigand, 
 clad me in a rich, wild fashion, and filled my purse with 
 gold dust. Great plans he had for our future going to 
 the Old World and resting all the years in Italy. I was 
 not strong enough or yet quite content enough to work 
 much, and so was often absent, riding, dreaming, plan 
 ning how to get back to the north and not hurt the kind 
 heart of my new friend. One night when I was absent 
 thus he and his partner were both murdered in their 
 cabin and robbed of their gold. When I returned the 
 cabin was cold and empty. 
 
 When the spring came tripping by from the south 
 over the chaparral hills of Shasta, leaving flowers in 
 every footprint as she passed, I set my face for Mount 
 Shasta, the lightest-hearted lad that ever mounted horse. 
 A hard clay s ride brought me to Portuguese Flat, the 
 last new mining camp and the nearest town to my be 
 loved Mount Shasta. Here I found my former partner 
 in the Soda Springs property, Mountain Joe, and to 
 gether we went up to Mount Shasta. 
 
74 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 The Indian chief, Blackboard, gave me a beautiful 
 little valley, then known as Now-ow-wa, but now called 
 by the euphonious (?) name of Squaw Yalley, and I built 
 a cabin there. As the winter settled down and the snow 
 fell deep and fast, however, the Indians all retreated 
 down from out the spurs of Mount Shasta and took 
 refuge on the banks of the McCloud River. I nailed up 
 my cabin, and on snowshoes recrossed the fifteen miles of 
 steep and stupendous mountains, and got down to winter 
 at my old home, Soda Springs. But a new Yankee 
 partner had got his grasp about the throat of things there, 
 and instead of pitching him out into the snow, I deter 
 mined to give it all up and set my face where I left my 
 heart, once more, finally and forever, with the Indians. 
 Loaded down with arms and ammunition, one clear, 
 frosty morning in December I climbed up the spur of 
 Mount Shasta, which lay between me and my little valley 
 of snow, and left the last vestige of civilization behind 
 me. It was steep, hard climbing. Sometimes I would 
 sink into the snow to my waist. Sometimes the snow 
 would slide down the mountain and bear me back, half 
 buried, to the place I had started from half an hour be 
 fore. A marvel that I kept on. But there*was hatred 
 behind, there was love before elements that have built 
 cities and founded empires. As the setting sun gilded 
 the snowy pines with gold I stood on the lofty summit, 
 looking down into my unpeopled world of snow. 
 
 An hour of glorious gliding, darting, shooting on my 
 snowshoes, and I stood on the steep bluff that girt above 
 and about my little valley. A great, strange light, like 
 silver, enveloped the land. Across the valley, on the 
 brow of the mountain beyond, the curved moon, new 
 and white and bright, gleamed before me like a drawn 
 cimeter to drive me back. Down in the valley under 
 
AX ELK HUNT IX THE SIERRAS. 15 
 
 me busy little foxes moved and shuttle-cocked across the 
 level sea of snow. But I heard no sound nor saw any 
 other sign of life. The solitude, the desolation, the 
 silence, was so vast, so actual, that I could feel it hear 
 it. A strange terror came upon me there. And oh, I 
 wished how devoutly I wished I never shall forget 
 that 1 had not ventured on this mad enterprise. But I 
 had burned my ship. It had been as impossible for me 
 to return, tired, hungry, heartsick as I then was, as it 
 had been for me to lay hold of the bright cold horns of 
 the moon before me. With a sigh I tightened my belt, 
 took up my rifle, which I had leaned against a pine, and 
 once more shot ahead. Breaking open my cabin door, I 
 took off my snowshoes and crept down the steep wall of 
 snow, and soon had a roaring fire from the sweet-smell 
 ing pine wood that lay heaped in cords against the 
 walls. Seven days I rested there, as lone as the moon 
 in the cold blue above. Queer days ! Queer thoughts I 
 had there then. Those days left their impression clearly, 
 as strange creatures of another age had left their foot 
 prints in the plastic clay that has become now solid stone. 
 When the mind is so void, queer thoughts get into one s 
 head ; and they come and establish themselves and 
 stay. I had some books, and read them all through. 
 Here I first began to write. 
 
 On the eighth day my door was darkened, and I sprang 
 up from my work, rifle in hand. Two Indians, brave, 
 handsome young fellows, one my best and dearest friend 
 in all the world, stood before me. And sad tales they 
 told me that night as I feasted them around my great 
 fireplace. The tribe was starving over on the McCloud ! 
 The gold-diggers had so muddied and soiled the waters 
 the season before that the annual run of salmon had 
 failed, the Indians had for the first time in centuries no 
 
73 MEMORIE AKD RIME. 
 
 stores of dried salmon, and they were starving to death 
 by hundreds. And what was still more alarming, for it 
 meant the ultimate destruction of all the Indians con 
 cerned, I was told that the natives of Pit River Valley 
 had resolved to massacre all the settlers there. After a 
 day s rest these two Indians, loaded with flour for the 
 famishing tribe, set out to return. Again I was left 
 alone, this time for nearly three weeks. The Indians 
 returned with other young men to carry flour back to 
 the famishing, while we who were strong and rested pre 
 pared for a grand hunt for a great band of elk which we 
 knew wintered near the warm springs, high up on the 
 wooded slopes of Mount Shasta. Perhaps I might men 
 tion here that this cabin full of provisions had remained 
 untouched all the time of my absence. I will say further 
 that I believe the last Indian would have starved to death 
 rather than have touched one crumb of bread with 
 out my permission. These Indians had never yet come 
 in contact with any white man but myself. Such hon 
 esty I never knew as I found here. As for their valor 
 and prowess, I can only point you to the Modoc battle 
 fields, where the whole United States Army \vas held at 
 bay so long nearly twenty years after, and pass on. 
 
 After great preparation, we struck out steeply up the 
 mountain, and for three days wallowed through the snow 
 in the dense, dark woods, when we struck the great elk 
 trail. A single trail it was, and looked as if a saw-log 
 had been- drawn repeatedly through the snow. The 
 bottom and sides of tin s trail were as hard and smooth as 
 ice. Perhaps a thousand elk had passed here. They 
 had been breaking from one thicket of maple and other 
 kinds of brush which they feed upon at such times, and 
 we knew they could not have gone far through this 
 snow, which reached above their backs. We hung up 
 
AN ELK HUNT IN THE SIERRAS. 77 
 
 our snowslioes now, and, looking to our arms, shot ahead 
 full of delightful anticipation. At last, climbing a little 
 hill, with clouds of steam rising from the warm springs 
 of that region, we looked down into a little valley of 
 thick undergrowth, and there calmly rested the vast herd 
 of elk. I peered through the brush into the large, clear 
 eyes of a great stag with a head of horns like a rocking- 
 chair. He was chewing his cud, and was not at all dis 
 concerted. It is possible we were not yet discovered. 
 More likely their numbers and strength gave them un 
 common courage, and they were not to be easily fright 
 ened. I remember my two Indians looked at each other 
 in surprise at their tranquillity. We lay there some time 
 on our breasts in the snow, looking at them. The In 
 dians observed that only the cows were fat and fit to kill. 
 Some of the stags had somehow died their horns, it 
 seemed. There were no calves. So the Indians were 
 delighted to know that there w r as yet another herd. We 
 fell back, and formed our plan of attack at leisure. It 
 was unique and desperate. We did not want one or two 
 elk, or ten ; we wanted the whole herd. Human life 
 depended upon our prowess. A tribe was starving, and 
 we felt a responsibility in our work. It w&s finally de 
 cided to go around and approach by the little stream, so 
 that the herd would not start down it their only means 
 of escape. It was planned to approach as closely as pos 
 sible, then fire with our rifles at the fattest, then burst in 
 upon them, pistol in hand, and so, breaking their ranks, 
 scatter them in the snow, where the Indians could rush 
 upon them and use the bows and arrows at their backs. 
 
 Slowly and cautiously we approached up the little 
 warm, willow-lined rivulet, and then, firing our rifles, we 
 rushed into the corral, pistols in hand. The poor, help 
 less herd was on its feet in a second, all breaking out 
 
78 MEMOKIE AlTD KIME. 
 
 over the wall of snow, breast high on all sides. Here 
 they wallowed and floundered in the snow, shook their 
 heads and called helplessly to each other. They could 
 not get on at all. And long after the last shot and the 
 last arrow were spent 1 leisurely walked around and 
 looked into the eyes of some of these fat, sleek cows as 
 they lay there, up to their briskets, helpless in the snow. 
 Of course the Indians had no sentiment in this matter. 
 They wanted only to kill and secure meat for the hungry, 
 and half an hour after the attack on the corral of elk 
 they were quartering the meat and hanging it up in trees 
 secure from the wolves. In this way they hung more 
 than a hundred elk, not taking time to skin or dress them 
 in any way. The tallow was heaped about our camp- 
 fire, to be defended against the wolves at night. And 
 such a lot of wolves as came that night ! And such a 
 noise, as we sat there feasting about the fire and talking 
 of the day s splendid work. The next morning, loaded 
 with tallow, my two young friends set out on the long, 
 tedious journey to the starving camp on the McCloud 
 River. They were going to bring the whole tribe, or, at 
 least, such of them as could make the trip, and the re 
 mainder of our winter was to be spent on Mount Shasta. 
 I was once more left alone. J3ut as our ammunition at 
 hand was spent, I was in great fear and in real danger of 
 being devoured by wolves. They drew a circle around 
 that camp and laid siege to it like an army of well- 
 drilled soldiers. They would sit down on their haunches 
 not twenty steps away, and look at me in the most appe 
 tizing fashion. They would lick their chops, as if to 
 say, " We ll get you yet ; it s only a question of time." 
 And I wish to put it on record that wolves, so far as I 
 can testify, are better behaved than the books tell you 
 they are. They snarled a little at each other as they sat 
 
AN ELK HUJST Itf THE SIERRAS. 79 
 
 there, over a dozen deep, around me, and even snapped 
 now and then at each other s ears ; but I saw not one 
 sign of their eating or attempting to eat each other. By 
 day they kept quiet, and only looked at me. But it was 
 observed that each day they came and sat down a little 
 bit closer. Xight, of course, was made to ring with 
 their howls both far and near, and I kept up a great fire. 
 At last ah, relief of Lucknow ! my brave boys came 
 back breathless into camp. And after them for days 
 came stringing, struggling, creeping, a long black line 
 of withered, starving, fellow-creatures. To see them 
 eat ! To see their hollow eyes fill and glow with grati 
 tude ! Ah, I have had some few summer days, some 
 moments of glory, when the heart throbs fall and the 
 head tops heaven ; but I have known no delight like this 
 I knew there, and never shall. Christmas came and 
 went, and I knew not when, for I had now in my care 
 less happiness and full delight lost all reckoning of time. 
 But, alas, for my dream of lasting rest and peace with 
 these wild people of Mount Shasta ! As the birds of 
 spring began to sing a bit, and the snow to soften about 
 our lofty camp, a messenger came stealing tiptoe over 
 from the Pit River Valley. And lo ! the Indians had 
 risen, starved and desperate, and murdered every white 
 man there. And I knew that I should be accused of 
 this. 
 
80 MEMOEIE AND RIME. 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE PIT RIVEK MASSACRE. 
 
 THE English spell tlie name of this river with an addi 
 tional letter, as if after the name of an eminent states 
 man. But I think the above is right, as the name is 
 certainly derived from the deep and dangerous pits that 
 once made this whole vast region here Pit River Valley 
 very dangerous ground for strangers. These pits, dug 
 in trails and passes by squaws who carried the dirt away 
 in baskets, were from ten to twenty feet deep, jug-shaped 
 and covered with twigs and reeds and leaves. At the 
 bottom lay sharpened elk and deer antlers, and some 
 times sharpened flints and spears, pointed up to receive 
 the victim. Even if one was not disembowelled on first 
 falling into the pit, the ugly shape of it made it not only im 
 possible for man but for even the most savage and supple 
 wild beast to climb again to the light ; and darkness and 
 a lingering death were the inevitable end. These pits of 
 course made the land a terror, and it was not until as 
 late as 1856 that this most lovely valley in all California 
 was fairly possessed by settlers. Once in possession, the 
 white man of course soon found out the secret pits, and 
 they gradually filled up as they fell into disuse. Yet in 
 the Pit River war, which followed the massacre, I know 
 that one man and several horses were disembowelled by 
 these dreaded pits ; for after the Indians again got pos 
 session they attempted to restore this curious means of 
 defence against invasion. 
 
 The buds were beginning to swell and birds to sing in 
 the sunniest places about my Indian camp on the south- 
 
THE PIT RIVER MASSACRE. 81 
 
 ern slope of Mount Shasta as the news came of the Pit 
 Kiver massacre. I was the only white person left in all 
 the country round. And I knew at once that I would 
 be accused of having advised and directed the massacre. 
 For all knew that I sympathized with the Indians. I 
 cannot enter into detail to show how the Indians had been 
 wronged ; how they had been driven to this ; how their 
 men had been shot down for no other offence than that 
 of having wives which the gold hunters and gamblers 
 desired ; how that, after one year of this bloody work, 
 they found themselves starving and dying and desperate ; 
 how they rose up and swept away every white man into 
 eternity, and fed their little ones on the thousand cattle. 
 But I take the responsibility of saying that the Indians 
 were entirely in the right. Politic it was not. It meant 
 their final annihilation. But they died finally not with 
 out some revenge. s~or will I trouble myself with any 
 detailed denial of complicity in the massacre. If I had 
 had any part in it at all, I certainly should not hesitate to 
 say so frankly. For after a quarter of a century, look 
 ing at the matter with maturer sense, and from all sides 
 and in all lights, I do not see how the Indians could have 
 done anything else and retain a bit of self-respect. And 
 I do not see how the white men could have expected 
 anything else in the end. The rape of the Sabines was 
 as nothing compared to the ruthless way in which these 
 men had seized upon the handsomest Indian women of 
 the valley and murdered their fathers, brothers, husbands, 
 who dared protest or even ventured to beg about their 
 doors as the winter went past, while they housed in 
 comfort in the snowy valley and fed their fattened herds 
 in half a dozen great corrals made of ricks of hay. This 
 hay was fired simultaneously in the half-dozen barracks 
 scattered over the valley, generally by the hand of a 
 
82 MEMORIE AXD RIME. 
 
 captive squaw ; and as the white men fled out over the 
 snow they were shot down by the Indians, And this is 
 the story of the massacre as it came to me at my camp 
 early in the spring of 1857. Two white men only had 
 escaped. They had not been pursued ; but they were 
 known to be at that time trying to make their way 
 through the snow to Yreka, three days travel away to 
 the north-west. As I knew their line of retreat would 
 be not far from my camp, I had bonfires set on a cliff of 
 rocks overlooking the country, in hope that they might 
 be guided to my camp and be fed. But they made their 
 way to Yreka without finding me, and there gave the 
 world the first news of the destruction of the settlement. 
 Of course I did not know of their final escape, but think 
 ing to give the first information of the deplorable event, 
 and desiring to be quite certain of my report, I set out 
 at once for Pit River Valley, sixty miles distant, and far 
 below my camp on the spurs of Mount Shasta. 
 
 Blackboard, the chief of the tribe I had cast my fort 
 unes with, did not say much. He advised me, however, 
 to keep away and out of the whole affair. But I had an 
 image all the time of those two men struggling through 
 the snow in death, and terror ringing in their ears, and I 
 wanted to meet and help them. And then we had been 
 shut up in camp so long, were so full of rest, that re 
 straint was hard to bear. I resolved, however, to go no 
 nearer than the great bald mountain overlooking the 
 valley, from which I could see with my glass and be able 
 to say positively whether or not the last hay fort had 
 been burned. My two favorite young I ndians were per 
 mitted to go with me. But the chief told me that he 
 should lead his people still deeper into the fastness. of 
 Mount Shasta, try to keep his young men from taking 
 sides in the coming war, and wait to see what might 
 
THE PIT RIVER MASSACRE. 83 
 
 happen. I do not think the old chief doubted my devo 
 tion to him or questioned the sincerity of my cherished 
 purpose of establishing my Indian republic, or sort of 
 Indian territory, with Mount Shasta for its geographical 
 centre and he for its head chief. But I think he gravely 
 doubted my judgment, as well he might at that time, 
 and so he did not give me his confidence at all. In fact, 
 so far from trusting me, he deceived me. For I could 
 see busy preparation for battle going on all about me. 
 The morning I set out with my two young followers, 
 with the promise to go no farther than the great bald 
 mountain overlooking the valley, I missed several of our 
 best warriors from the camp. They had, like Job s 
 war-horse, " sniffed the battle from afar," and had gone 
 like true gentlemen to champion their color and their 
 kind, and to battle for the right, as it was given them to 
 see the right, and die ! 
 
 S x 
 
 After such a swift day s run over the snow as seems 
 almost incredible, we stood in the sunset on the summit 
 of the bald mountain overlooking Pit River Valley. No 
 smoke curled any more against the cold blue sky that 
 rounded above the vast valley. The stillness of death 
 hung over it. Where the great hay-ricks had been 
 drawn around the herds of cattle in secure corrals, with 
 the houses in the centre, only black spots were to be 
 seen. The snow had disappeared from the valley, and 
 instead of the weary and eternal white that had met my 
 eyes everywhere for so many months, I witnessed the 
 welcome green of spring spread like a carpet beneath 
 me. I could almost smell the flowers. Far beyond and 
 across the two great rivers that cleave the glorious valley 
 1 could see a boundless field of blue. This was the 
 camas blossom. This flower sweeps over and purples all 
 Oregon in the early spring. Civilization has laid hand 
 
84 MEMORIE AND HIME. 
 
 on it, named it the hyacinth, and grows it in single stems 
 from bulbs carefully kept in windows and warm places 
 in the spring-time. 
 
 How I wanted to go down and gather a handful of 
 flowers ! What gift would be so precious for some one 
 waiting for my return back in the camp of snow and 
 woods ? I know this sentence and this sentiment read 
 absurdly, and my only excuse for it is its absolute truth. 
 I knew quite well that away down there in each of those 
 dark spots dead men lay unburied, and that the beauti 
 ful valley before me, another Eden from which man had 
 been newly expelled, was soon to be the scene of bloody 
 war ; that my own life was in peril from both races and 
 in all places now ; and yet all this, all these perils were 
 as nothing compared to my desire, my determination to 
 have a handful of flowers. 
 
 As we stood there the stars came out they came out 
 shyly, timidly, as on tiptoe. I saw them come out while 
 it was yet day, twinkle a bit and then go back, as if 
 afraid. By and by they trooped out in armies, and all 
 heaven was ablaze with the biggest stars this side of 
 Syria. They stood out above the gleaming snow-peaks 
 about us so near and clear that you might almost fancy 
 you heard them clink against their fronts of icy helmets. 
 The stillness was like a song, an immortal melody. We 
 listened, we leaned and listened ; the stars leaned out of 
 heaven listening. No sound of life. No sound of strife 
 now. Ederi was as still on the day before the fashioning 
 of man. Should I turn back as I promised ? Perhaps 
 if I had not promised so certainly I had not so madly 
 resolved to see more. Yet I could have resisted all the 
 temptation to slide down that steep mountain of snow 
 and see and know all, had it not been for the flowers. 
 Oh, the mad glory of going down there and grasping the 
 
TIIK PIT HIVEK MASSACRE. 85 
 
 summer in my hand and taking her back to winter in 
 the wilderness ! 
 
 Pretty soon Indian camp-fires began to gleam about 
 the green and wooded girdle of the valley. Fate set one 
 of these camp-fires almost at our feet. Seven miles dis 
 tant and one mile perpendicular ! We looked each other 
 in the face as we stood there on the starlit summit of 
 snow and saw the camp-fire gleam through the green 
 pine tops at our feet. That light down there was death 
 to any moth that might flutter too closely about it. But 
 it was irresistible. And then the flowers ! 
 
 I tightened my belt. The Indians did the same. 
 Then with but a single word we bounded down that 
 steep mountain of snow with a wild and savage delight 
 that I defy any mortal to feel inside the pale of civiliza 
 tion. The night was our friend. With her protecting 
 arms about us, her mantle shutting us in from the sight 
 of unfriendly eyes, we would look in upon the Indian 
 camp, we would hear their speeches about the council 
 fire, see their wild, splendid gestures ! Ah, we would 
 have something to tell when we returned. And then 
 the flowers ! 
 
 I dare not cay how soon we reached that camp, nor 
 have I time to enter into detail. What narrow escapes 
 of discovery as we lay on our bellies under the sweet- 
 smelling pines and listened to -the stirring eloquence of 
 the nearly naked warriors. How the blood tingles at 
 such times ! What a spice peril like this gives to life ! 
 
 Soon the feasting began. Then the tempting smell of 
 roasted beef was too much for our hungry stomachs to bear 
 longer, and as we could hear nothing more and could 
 really do nothing at all, we passed on around the camp 
 and went still on till we came to the level valley and the 
 warm naked earth with flowers at her breast and girdle. 
 
86 MEMORIE AND HIME. 
 
 I snatched these flowers from the hand of nature that 
 reached them up from the south, and then, with a little 
 detour where we saw a nude dead man a mute, unchal 
 lenged witness of the massacre we began, weak and 
 hungry, to climb the mountain on our return. 
 
 Day dashed in upon us like troopers long before we 
 knew it. We had forgotten the stars in the dial-plate 
 above in the intense excitement before us, and before we 
 had quite left the edge of the open valley we were in the 
 full light. 
 
 Suddenly we met two old women. They were at 
 tached to an outpost which we had passed in the night, 
 and were on their way to the camp we had been spying 
 out. We took them with us, and ran up the hills as fast 
 as our weak and worn legs would carry us. When quite 
 in the woods and well up the mountain-side, the Indians 
 wanted to kill the women, fearing that they might 
 escape and give the alarm. I protested. The old 
 women listened and understood all that was said. They 
 of course took sides with me. The young Indians seemed 
 very much set on this notion of theirs, and finally, odd 
 as it may seem, we deliberately sat down there on the 
 steep and snowy mountain-side and argued the thing 
 quite a while, the old women taking a very active part 
 in the argument, as you may well believe. 
 
 Finally one of them broke away and escaped. Then 
 of course we set the other loose and dashed ahead with 
 all the strength that desperation could lend us. A hun 
 dred swift fellows would be at our heels in an hour, we 
 knew right well. 
 
 As we climbed one hill, with a great hollow behind 
 us, we could see the trees alive on the ridge behind us 
 and across the steep, deep hollow. But they were too 
 far away to shoot at us yet. One more hill before us ! 
 
THE PIT RIVER MASSACRE. 87 
 
 As we finally struggled to the summit of the old bald 
 mountain, where we had stood in the twilight of the day 
 before, I being literally borne and dragged between my 
 two companions, we saw the base of the hill black with 
 savages. And 1 could scarcely stand ! It was decided to 
 descend the mountain to the left and cross the McCloud. 
 The Indians tore off some tough cedar bark from a dead 
 trunk, tied me in this hollowed cradle, and so dragging 
 me darted down the hill toward the McCloud Kiver on a 
 swift run. Once safely near the river we began to feel 
 relieved. On the bluff above the river they took me 
 out, stood me between them and rushed down the steep 
 wooded hill to the water s edge. The enemy stopped on 
 the steep bluffs above and overlooking the river. They 
 were within pistol-shot behind the trees scattered about 
 the brow of the hill. But they knew too much to follow 
 us into the thicket. Ko, they preferred to pick us off 
 at their leisure as we attempted to swim the river. 
 
 But swim that river, swift and strong and cold as death, 
 I could not. So my two Indian friends rolled a light dry 
 log into the water as we lay close under the bank hidden 
 from the enemy above, who were waiting to see us plunge 
 into the stream before us. I lay down on this log, one of 
 the Indians taking charge of my arms. Then they came 
 into the water with me. They pushed the log down the 
 river under the steep bank, unseen by those on the hill, 
 and both clung to it as the swift current bore us away. 
 This was our escape ! Before the Indians on the bluff 
 suspected it, we were a mile away down the river and 
 climbing the bank on the other side. They did not 
 follow us further. The two brave fellows left me and 
 went on for help when certain we were not followed. 
 And so I finally reached camp, barely alive, and with no 
 sign of summer or sweet flowers in my feeble hand. 
 
88 MEMOKIE AKD RIME. 
 
 V. 
 
 THE GIRL OF THE LONG AGO. 
 
 OH, yon all have seen her. And you all have loved 
 her, and loved her honestly and well. An honest old 
 miner I met yesterday told me he saw her first a tow- 
 headed, barefooted girl, thirty years ago, licking mo 
 lasses in a Wabash sugar-camp from a wooden ladle ; that 
 she was lovely, honest, and good as gold ; that her eyes 
 were lost bits of the blue heaven overhead, and her hair 
 like spun gold ; that she was only a baby then and he a 
 boy of a dozen years, but for all that he loved her and he 
 loves her still. We know and he knows too, if he would 
 only admit it to himself, that Time has stolen the roses 
 from her pretty baby face, bowed and made slow and 
 sad the willowy form, filled the blue heaven of her eyes 
 with pitiful tears, and sifted his cold snows thick through 
 the gold of her hair. Yet to him she stands there eter 
 nally young, eternally fair, licking the sugar ladle, 
 laughing at him, looking down in love through the blue 
 heaven of her beautiful eyes. 
 
 Another old man has taken me into his confidence, and 
 has told me with a shake of his few gray locks that the 
 girls of to-day are not what the girls used to be when he 
 was in the States. Ah, there was one, he went on to 
 say very earnestly, who loved her mother, loved her 
 father, loved him, and did not flirt at all. She sat 
 knitting all the time with meek and downcast eyes, and 
 talked of butter and eggs, little chickens, and the coming 
 crop. She had helped to plant the corn, she milked 
 the cows, minded the calves, and had spun and woven 
 every shred of every garment she wore. 
 
THE GIRL OF THE LONG AGO. 
 
 In the better or rather the broader walks of life, I find 
 the same doubt and question. But ah, iny dear old boys, 
 human nature has not changed. It is we that have 
 changed. A girl of eighteen is still a girl of eighteen to 
 every touch of the hand, to every thrill of love and 
 every pulse of her proud, pure heart. Confidentially, 
 my dear old comrades of the mining camp, it is we that 
 have changed. The trouble is we are no longer eight 
 een ourselves, not by a long shot ! And the trouble is 
 the girls know it. But if it is any consolation to you, 
 here are the lines you solicited, to the memories of the 
 past : 
 
 TO THE GIRL OF LONG AGO. 
 
 I think she was fairer than the girl of to-day 
 
 She was dearer by far, I know ; 
 And never I questioned the queenly sway 
 
 Of the girl of long ago. 
 
 Then where is the darling of long ago, 
 When the blood ran warmer than wine ? 
 
 Is she under the lilies or under the snow, 
 The darlingest girl of mine ? 
 
 Has she laid down to rest with the sod on her breast, 
 
 The cherished of long ago ? 
 Has she wandered afar, where the strange ways are ? 
 
 Is her dark hair white like snow ? 
 
 Oh, whether afar where the strange ways are, 
 
 Or whether above or below, 
 God keep her from harm, for her heart was so warm 
 
 And oh, I loved her so ! 
 
 WHAT IS LOVE? 
 
 What is love ? or who is love ? Count the leaves on 
 the trees and count the kinds of trees there are, and mark 
 their changes, their color, their kind ; define each well 
 
90 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 the development, the decay, the beauty, the glory of 
 their full flower, the pathos of their decline, the pity of 
 the strewn leaves that once lorded and laughed high in 
 the sun such is love, my innocent boy, my old and 
 cynical sinner, such is love. And the man who says he 
 can hold love and bind him in thongs or lay down law 
 that love will obey and so live with him, is a very young 
 man. 
 
 I can only advise this : be worthy of being loved. And 
 then, like a tree that bears perpetual flowers, the busy 
 bees will seek you soon or late, and will not be in haste 
 to fly away, but will stay and stay and come again and 
 again. This is a very business-like world. Without 
 caring to admit it, without even knowing it, perhaps, the 
 best of us will find that this is a world of commerce, even 
 in love. You get just about as much as you give. 
 You must pay for love with love. You must pay for 
 love with real love, mind you, not counterfeit love, not 
 make-believe love, not a greenback love, away below 
 par, but a real gold coin, full measure, sixteen-dollar-to- 
 the-ounce love, and my word for it the eternal equity of 
 the court of heaven will see that you we not cheated 
 out of a single cent that you honestly invest. 
 
 But oh, this idea of trying to put love in a cage and 
 keep it there, as you would a monkey or a parrot, while 
 you go out and have a good time, and expect to find it 
 there when you come back ! It won t do. Love has 
 more sense in one minute than the cunningest man 
 that ever lived ever had in his whole life. And you 
 can t fool with love without being made a fool of 
 yourself. No; give love the liberty you love so well 
 yourself. Give love the liberty to go, and he will stay 
 right there forever and forever, if you will only give him 
 a pole to perch on and even so much as a cracker to eat. 
 
THE GIRL OF THE LONG AGO. 91 
 
 "WHO IS LOVE ? 
 
 Why, Love, my love is a dragon-fly 
 
 That weaves by the beautiful river, 
 Where waters flow warm, where willows droop by, 
 
 Where lilies dip waveward and quiver ; 
 Where stars of heaven they shine for aye, 
 If you take not hold of that dragon-fly, 
 
 By the musical, mystical river. 
 
 Let Love go his ways ; let the lilies grow- 
 By that beautiful, silvery river ; 
 
 Let tall tules nod ; let noisy reeds blow ; 
 Let the lilies lips open and quiver ; 
 
 But when Love may come, or when Love may go, 
 
 You may guess and may guess, but you never shall know, 
 While the silver stars ride on that river. 
 
 But this you may know : If you clasp Love s wings, 
 
 And you hold him hard by that river, 
 Why, his eyes grow green, and he turns and he stings, 
 
 And the waters wax icy and shiver ; 
 The waters wax chill and the silvery wings 
 Of Love they are broken, as broken heart-strings, 
 
 While darkness comes down on that river. 
 
Tis a land so far that you wonder whether 
 E en God would know it should you fall down dead 
 
 Tis a land so far through the wilds and weather, 
 That the sun falls weary and flushed and red, 
 
 That the sea and tJie sky seem coming together, 
 Seem dosing together as a book that is read : 
 
 Oh ! the nude, weird West, where an unnamed river 
 Rolls restless in bed of bright silver and gold ; 
 
 Where white flashing mountains flow rivers of silver 
 As a rock of the desert flowed fountains of old ; 
 
 By a dark wooded river that calls to the dawn, 
 
 And makes mouths at the sea with his dolorous swan: 
 
 Oh! the land of the wonderful sun and weather, 
 With green underfoot and with gold over head, 
 
 Where the sun lakes flame and you wonder whether 
 Tis an isle offlre in his foamy bed: 
 
 Where the ends of the earth they are welding together 
 In a rough-hewn fashion, in a forge-flame red. 
 
III. 
 
 OREGON. 
 
 I. 
 
 IN THE LAND OF CLOUDS. 
 
 MONTHS ago we steamed away from San Francisco for 
 the wild and savage coast of Oregon. A rugged coast 
 is hers ; a hard and almost impenetrable hull like a wal 
 nut s, and with a kernel quite as sweet when once you 
 get inside. Almost a thousand miles, as the sea runs, 
 and hardly a single inviting harbor. 
 
 But once inside her white sea-shores, and a world so 
 grand, so sublime and vast, so entirely new, is yours, 
 that you stand uncovered, as if you had entered the 
 home of the eternal. 
 
 ? Tis the new-finished world ; how silent with wonder 
 Stand all things around you ; the flowers are faint 
 
 And lean on your shoulder. You wander on under 
 ^ The broad, gnarly boughs, so colossal and quaint, 
 
 You breathe the sweet balsam where boughs break asunder 
 The world seems so new, as it smelling of paint. 
 
 The Indians tell you that giants dwelt here of old ; 
 that they fought for this peerless land, fought for it to 
 the death, and that these seventeen peaks of ever- 
 
94 MEMO III E AND RIME. 
 
 lasting snow are their monuments, which they built 
 above their dead. 
 
 Well, whatever be the traditions, or the truths, it is 
 something to have seen this land when it came first from 
 the Creator s hand to the possession of man. It is 
 sweet to have loved it first, last, and always. So sweet 
 to have set the cross of song on its everlasting summits, 
 and so sit down and wait for stronger and better and 
 more cunning minstrels to come and subdue it to their 
 dominion. 
 
 Yet on the proudest of these peaks I tried to set some 
 thing more than a song. There are footprints on its 
 topmost limits, for frowning and cloud-roofed Mount 
 Hood is not at all unapproachable ; but even woman, if 
 she loves him well and has the daring and audacity of 
 some English travellers I have known, may conquer him, 
 put him under her pretty feet, easily. 
 
 Here lifts the land of clouds ! The mantled forms, 
 
 Made white with everlasting snow, look down 
 
 Through mists of many canons, and the storms 
 
 That stretch from Autumn-time until they drown 
 
 The yellow hem of Spring. The cedars frown, 
 
 Dark-brow d through banner d clouds that stretch and stream 
 
 Above the sea from snowy mountain crown. 
 
 The heavens roll, and all things drift or seem 
 
 To drift about and drive like some majestic dream. 
 
 Mount Hood stands about sixty miles from the great 
 Pacific, as the crow flies, and about two hundred miles 
 up the Columbia River, as it is navigated. The Colum 
 bia is tranquil here mild and calm and dreamy as Lake 
 Como. But twenty miles higher, past the awful over 
 hanging snow-peak that looks as if it might blow over 
 on us as we sail up under it, the grand old river is all 
 torrent and foam and fearful cataract. 
 
 Mount Hood stands utterly alone. And yet he is not 
 
IX THE LAXD OF CLOUDS, 05 
 
 at all alone. He is only a brother, a bigger and taller 
 brother, of a well-raised family of seven snow-peaks. 
 
 At any season of the year, you can stand on almost 
 any little eminence within two hundred miles of Mount 
 Hood and count seven snow-cones, clad in eternal winter, 
 piercing the clouds. There is no scene so sublime as 
 this in all the world. 
 
 The mountains of Europe are only hills in comparison. 
 Although some of them are quite as high as those of 
 Oregon and Washington Territory, yet they lie far in 
 land, and are so set on the top of other hills that they 
 lose much of their majesty. Those of Oregon start up 
 sudden and solitary, and almost out of the sea, as it were. 
 So that while they are really not much higher than the 
 mountain peaks of the Alps, they seem to be about twice 
 as high. And being all in the form of pyramids or 
 cones, they are much more imposing and beautiful than 
 those of either Asia or Europe. 
 
 But that which adds most of all to the beauty and sub 
 limity of the mountain scenery of Mount Hood and his 
 environs is the marvellous cloud effects that encompass 
 him. 
 
 In the first place, you must understand that all this 
 region here is one black mass of matchless and magnifi 
 cent forests. From the water s edge up to the snow- 
 line, clamber and cling the dark green fir, pine, cedar, 
 tamarack, yew, and juniper. Some of the pines are 
 heavy with great cones as long as your arms ; some 
 of the yew trees are scarlet with berries ; and now and 
 then you see a burly juniper bending under a load of 
 blue and bitter fruit. And nearly all of these trees are 
 mantled in garments of moss. This moss trails and 
 swings lazily in the wind, and sometimes droops to the 
 length of a hundred feet. 
 
96 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 In these dark forests is a dense undergrowth of vine- 
 maple, hazel, mountain ash, marsh ash, willow, and brier 
 bushes. Tangled in with all this is the rank and ever- 
 present and imperishable fern. This fern, which is the 
 terror of the Oregon farmer, stands so rank and so thick 
 on the ground in the forests that oftentimes you cannot 
 see two yards before you, and your feet can hardly touch 
 the ground. Through this jungle, with the great dark 
 trees towering hundreds of feet above, prowl the black 
 bear, the panther, the catamount, and the California 
 lion. 
 
 Up and through and over all this darkness of forests, 
 drift and drag and lazily creep the most weird and won 
 derful clouds in all this world. They move in great 
 caravans. They seem literally to be alive. They rise 
 with the morning sun, like the countless millions of 
 snow-white geese, swans and other water-fowl that fre 
 quent the rivers of Oregon, and slowly ascend the moun 
 tain sides, dragging themselves through and over the 
 tops of the trees, heading straight for the sea, or hover 
 ing about the mountain peaks, as if they were mighty 
 white-winged birds, weary of flight and wanting to rest. 
 
 They are white as snow, these clouds of Oregon, fleecy, 
 and rarely, if ever, still. Constantly moving in contrast 
 with the black forests, these clouds are strangely, sadly 
 sympathetic to one who worships nature. 
 
 Of course, in the rainy season, which is nearly half the 
 year here, these cloud effects are absent. At such times 
 the whole land is one vast rain-cloud, dark and dreary 
 and full of thunder. 
 
 To see a snow-peak in all its sublimity, you must see 
 it above ihe clouds. It is not necessary that you should 
 climb the peak to do this, but ascend some neighboring 
 hill and have the white clouds creep up or down the val- 
 
IX THE LAND OF CLOUDS. 97 
 
 ley, through and over the black forest, between you and 
 the snowy summit that pricks the blue home of stars. 
 What color ! Movement ! Miraculous life ! 
 
 A few months ago, I met a party of English travel 
 lers who were completing the circuit of the world by way 
 of San Francisco. I was on my way to Oregon, and this 
 party decided to sail up the coast with me, and, if possi 
 ble, ascend Mount Hood. 
 
 The party consisted of a gentleman and his wife, his 
 wife s sister and brother, besides their little child of 
 about ten years, a pale little cripple on crutches. The 
 journey around the world had been undertaken, I was 
 told, in the hope of restoring her to health. So she was 
 humored in every way, and everything possible done to 
 please and amuse her. 
 
 We sailed pleasantly up the barren, rocky, and moun 
 tainous coast of Oregon for two days, and all the way we 
 watched the long, moving lines of white clouds clinging 
 about the mountain-tops, creeping through the mountain 
 passes in long, unbroken lines, or hovering wearily 
 around some snowy summit ; and the English travellers 
 counted it all strangely beautiful. 
 
 Not a sail in sight all these two days. And the waters 
 of this, the vastest of all seas, as still and as blue as the 
 blue skies above us. 
 
 Whale/ kept spouting about us, and dolphins tumbled 
 like circus men before us ; and the pale little cripple, 
 sitting on the deck on a soft chair made of shreds of 
 cane or rattan by the cunning Chinamen, seemed very 
 happy. She had a lapdog, of which she was amazingly 
 fond. The dog, however, did not seem so fond of her. 
 He was a very active fellow, full of battle, and much 
 preferred to lying in her lap the more active amusement 
 of running and barking at the sailors and passengers. 
 
98 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 After some ugly bumps on the sand-bars at the mouth 
 of the Columbia a place strewn with skeletons of ships 
 we at length entered this noble river. It is nearly ten 
 miles wide here, and many little islands, covered w r ith 
 tangled woods from water s edge to summit, dot the 
 wide and tranquil harbor. 
 
 Half a day s hard steaming up the river, with here and 
 there a little village nestling in the dense wood on the 
 water s edge at the base of the mighty mountains on 
 either side, and we were in Portland and preparing to 
 ascend Mount Hood. 
 
 It seems incredible, but, unlike all other mountains of 
 importance, this one has no regular guides. We had to 
 hunt up and make an entire outfit of our own. 
 
 Of course the little cripple was left behind, with her 
 nurse and dog, when we five gayly mounted and rode 
 down to the ferry to cross the Willamette River, which 
 lies at the edge of the town and between our hotel and 
 Mount Hood. 
 
 As the boat pushed off, the little cripple s frolicsome 
 dog, Vixey, leaped in with us from the shore, barking 
 and bounding with delight, to think he was to escape 
 being nursed and was to make one of the expedition. 
 
 We rode hard through the tangled woods, with rank 
 ferns and brier bushes and thimbleberry bushes in our 
 faces. We climbed up almost entirely unfrequented 
 roads and trails for half a day. Then we dismounted by 
 a dark, treacherous, sandy stream, and lunched. 
 
 Mounting again, we pushed on in single file, follow 
 ing our guides as fast as we could up steep banks, over 
 stones and fallen logs, and through almost impenetrable 
 tangles of fern and vine-maple. There were three 
 guides. One, an Indian, kept far ahead on foot, blazing 
 out the way with a tomahawk, and shouting back and 
 
IX THE LAXD OF CLOUDS. 99 
 
 yelling to the other guides till he made the solemn forest 
 ring. 
 
 The two ladies kept the saddle and clung to the 
 horses manes. But the men often dismounted and led 
 their tired horses by the bridle. 
 
 The yelping dog had gone astray a dozen times, chas 
 ing squirrels, deer, and even birds, and I heartily hoped 
 he would get lost entirely, for I abhor poodles. But 
 the parents of the little cripple, when he would get lost, 
 would not go on without him. So this kept us back, and 
 we did not reach the snow-line till dusk. 
 
 The guides had shot a deer, two grouse, and many 
 gray squirrels ; so that, when we had made a roaring fire 
 of pine knots, and had fed and rubbed down our worn- 
 out horses, we sat there in the light of our great fire by 
 the snow border, and feasted famously. For oh, we 
 were hungry ! 
 
 Then we laid down. But it seemed to me we were 
 hardly well asleep before the guides were again boiling 
 coffee, and shouting to each other about the work of the 
 new day. How tired we all were still ! All but that 
 dog. That noisy and nervous little poodle seemed to be 
 as eager as the guides to get us up and on before the 
 sun had softened the snow. 
 
 ^ In the gray dawn, after a solid breakfast, each with a 
 pike in hand and hobnailed shoes on the feet, we were 
 in line, lifting our faces in the sharp, frosty air for the 
 summit of Mount Hood. 
 
 The snow was full of holes. Now and then a man 
 would sink to his waist. We strangers would laugh at 
 this. But observing that the guides took such mishaps 
 seriously, we inquired the reason. When they told us 
 that some of these holes were bottomless, we too became 
 serious, and took hold of the long rope which they car- 
 
100 MEMORIE A:N T D RIME. 
 
 Tied, and never let go. The ladies brought up the rear, 
 and, like all English ladies, endured the fatigue wonder 
 fully. That tireless little dog yelped and bounded, now 
 in the face of this man, now in the face of that, and 
 seemed by his omnipresence to belong to flank and rear 
 and van. 
 
 Before noon we came to a great crack, or chasm, or 
 cleft, in the mountain side, for which the guides could 
 give no reason. Their only idea of it appeared to be one 
 of terror their only object to escape it." They all fas 
 tened the rope to their belts, so that, in the event of one 
 falling in, the others could draw him back. 
 
 As we advanced we found the mountain precipitous, 
 but in nowise perilous, if we except these treacherous 
 cracks and holes referred to. 
 
 NOW T and then we would lean on our pikes and turn 
 our heads to the world below. Beautiful ! Beautiful ! 
 Eivers of silver ! Cities, like birds nests, dotted down 
 in the wilderness beneath. But no one spoke, when 
 speaking could be avoided. The air was so rare that we 
 were all the time out of breath. 
 
 As we neared the summit, one of the guides fell 
 down, bleeding at the mouth and senseless. One of the 
 gentlemen forced some brandy down his throat, when he 
 sat up and feebly beckoned us to go on. 
 
 Ten minutes more of hard climbing and five Saxons 
 stuck their pikes in the summit and stood there 
 together, five or six feet higher than the highest moun 
 tain in all that mountainous region of North America. 
 
 The wind blew hard, and the little woolly dog lay 
 down and curled up in a knot, for fear lest he should be 
 blown away. He did not bark or take any kind of de 
 light now. The fact is, he did not like it at all, and 
 was pretty badly frightened. It is safe to say that he 
 
IN THE LAND OF CLOUDS. 101 
 
 was quietly making up his mind that, if lie ever got 
 back to that little basket with its blue ribbons about the 
 borders and the cosey little bed inside, he would be willing 
 to take a nap and stay with the lonesome little cripple. 
 
 The ladies lips and noses were blue with the cold, and 
 their hair was making all kinds of banners and streamers 
 in the biting wind. The guides seemed dull and indif 
 ferent to everything. They lay flat down a few feet from 
 the summit, pointing out the highest place to us, and took 
 no interest in any thing further, not even in their compan 
 ion, whom we could see doubled up a little way below 
 on the steep side of the snow. 
 
 We men moved on down over the summit on the Co 
 lumbia side a few yards, in the hope of getting a glimpse 
 of the great river which we knew rolled almost under 
 us. But the whole world seemed to be one mass of 
 clouds on that side ; and we hastened back to the ladies, 
 resolved to now descend as soon as possible. 
 
 One of the ladies, meantime, had gone down to the 
 guides and got a little bundle, consisting of a British and 
 an American flag and a Bible, with all our names in it. 
 And the two were now trying to fasten the flags on a 
 small iron pipe. But the wind, which had been getting 
 stronger every minute since we came, was now so furious 
 that we felt it was perilous to keep the ladies longer on 
 the summit. So one of our party started with them 
 down the mountain, while we other two took charge of 
 the tokens of our achievement, which we hoped to leave 
 here to tell others who might come that we had been 
 before them. 
 
 Flutter ! flutter ! flap ! snap ! phew ! Away went 
 the British and American flags together. And before 
 we knew it, the Bible, now lying on the snow, blew open 
 and started after them. The gallant Briton at my side 
 
102 MKMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 threw out his long leg and tried to stop its flight with 
 his foot. But it bounded over the snow like a rabbit, 
 and was gone. 
 
 The little dog lying there on his breast was terribly 
 tempted to start after it, and if he had, there would have 
 been no further interest in this sketch. But he seemed 
 to have lots of sense, and lay perfectly still till the last 
 one of us started down the mountain. Then he bounded 
 up and on down after us, and his joy seemed without 
 limit. 
 
 As we hastily descended, we found the stricken guide 
 already on his feet and ready to lead in the descent. 
 The ladies, too, had thawed out a little, and did not 
 look so blue. 
 
 We began to talk too, now, and to congratulate our 
 selves and each other on the success of our enterprise. 
 We were in splendid spirits, and the matchless scenery 
 before us filled us with exultation. 
 
 The guides, however, cautioned us at every step as we 
 neared the holes, and all held stoutly on to the rope. 
 The little clog leaped ahead over the hard snow, and 
 seemed the happiest of all the happy party. He ad 
 vanced down the mountain backward. That is, he 
 would somehow leap downward tail first, looking all the 
 time in our faces looking up with his red mouth open, 
 and his white, fat little body bounding like a rubber ball 
 over the snow. Suddenly the head guide cried out in 
 terror. The dog had disappeared ! 
 
 . We all looked at each other, horror on every face. 
 We were on the edge of a fissure, and the dog had been 
 swallowed up. Whose turn next ? 
 
 The wind did not blow here, for we had descended 
 very fast and were now not far from the timber line. 
 We had all driven our pikes hard in the snow and fallen 
 
IN THE LAND OF CLOUDS. 103 
 
 on our knees, so as to be more certain of our hold, and 
 were silent as the dead. Hark ! 
 
 Away down, deep in the chasm, almost under us some 
 where, we heard the poor dog calling for help. After a 
 while, one of the guides answered him. The dog called 
 back, so far off, so pitiful ! This was repeated two or 
 three times. But as the little brute seemed swallowed up 
 forever, and as we lay there shivering on the brink and 
 could not help him out, we obeyed the first law of na 
 ture, and cautiously crept back and around the ugly 
 gorge. Soon we were once more safe with our horses, 
 and drinking coffee by the warm fire as before. 
 
 We reached the city without further accident. But 
 the very first thing the little cripple did on our return 
 was to lift her pale face from her crutch and eagerly in 
 quire for her dog. No one could answer. The parents 
 exchanged glances. Then, for the first time, as the 
 child still entreated for her pet, they seemed to realize 
 their loss. They refused to tell her what had become of 
 the dog at first. But, little by little, as we sat at dinner 
 together, she got the whole truth. Then she left the 
 table, crying as though her heart would break. 
 
 There was no dinner that day for any of us, after that. 
 The father had strong, fresh horses brought, and on the 
 next day we men, with the guides, set out to find the 
 dog. At the last moment, as we mounted and were rid 
 ing away, the child brought her little dog s basket, with 
 its blue ribbons and its soft bed. For, as we assured 
 her the dog would be found, she said he would be cold 
 and sleepy, and so we should take his bed along. 
 
 On the first day we came to the chasm in the snow 
 from the lower side. But had the dog not been drown 
 ed ? Had he not perished from cold and hunger ? We 
 had brought a sort of trap in fact, it was a large kind 
 
104 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 of rat-trap. This we baited with a piece of roasted meat 
 on the trigger. Would not the hungry little fellow 
 enter the trap, tug at the bait, throw the trap, get 
 caught and so be drawn up to the light, if still alive ? 
 We all heartily hoped so, at least. 
 
 Some of the shelving snow broke off and fell as we let 
 the rope slide down with the trap. Then for the first 
 time we heard the little rascal yelp. 
 
 I never saw a man so delighted as was that usually 
 stolid and impassive Englishman. He could not stand 
 still, but, handing the rope to his friend, he danced 
 about, and shouted, and whistled, and sang to the dog 
 away down there in his dark, ugly pit. 
 
 The dog answered back feebly. It was evident he 
 was not in the best of spirits. Perhaps he was too feeble 
 to even enter the trap. Anyway, he did not enter it. 
 
 We drew it up time and again, but no sign of the 
 dog. The stout Englishman prepared himself to de 
 scend the pit. But when the guide explained the dan 
 ger of the whole side shelving off, and imperilling the 
 lives of others, as well as his own life, that last hope w r as 
 abandoned. 
 
 The father of the little cripple, after all was packed up 
 and ready for the return, picked up the basket with the 
 blue ribbons and soft bed inside. He looked at it sadly. 
 Tears were in his eyes. Should he take the basket back ? 
 The sight of it would only make the little cripple more 
 sad. I could read all this in his face as he stood there 
 irresolute, with the basket in his hand and tears stream 
 ing down his face. lie at length made a motion as if 
 to throw the little basket, with its blue ribbons and soft 
 bed inside, down into the pit with the dog. 
 
 " No, we will let him have his little bed to die in 
 in good shape. Here, fasten this on a rope, and lower it 
 
IN THE LAND OF CLOUDS. 105 
 
 down there where you last heard him cry," said the 
 kind-hearted Englishman. 
 
 In a few moments one of the guides had unloosened a 
 rope which he had packed up to take back ; and the 
 basket was soon being lowered into the dark pit, over 
 the hanging wall of snow. 
 
 The dog began to whimper, to whine, then to bark as 
 he had not barked that day. 
 
 As the basket struck the bottom it was caught as a 
 fish-line is caught, and the rope almost jerked out of the 
 hands of the guide. 
 
 The father of the little cripple clutched the rope from 
 the guide, and drew it up hand over hand as fast as possi 
 ble. Then the bright black eyes of the dog danced and 
 laughed at him as he jerked the basket up over the 
 treacherous wall of snow. 
 
 The poor shivering little fellow would not leave the 
 basket. There he lay all the time as we hurried on 
 down and mounted horse. The happy Englishman car 
 ried it back to the city on his arm. And he carried it 
 carefully, too, as if it had been a basket of eggs and he 
 on his way to market. 
 
 And the little girl ? Well, now, it was worth all the 
 work and bother we had to see her happy face as she 
 came hobbling out on her crutch to take the little basket, 
 with its blue border and the dog curled up in his bed in 
 side. 
 
MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 ir. 
 
 AN OLD OREGONIAN IN THE SNOW. 
 
 The high-born snow is on the hills ; 
 
 The snow is on the level lands ; 
 The snow arrests the hast ning rills : 
 
 The snow enshrouds their icy hands. 
 And east or west, or high or low, 
 There gleams one shining sheen of snow. 
 
 I WAS once, when riding express, " snowed under" with 
 a famous old pioneer in the great canon that splits Cainas 
 Prairie in two and breaks the monotony of its vast levels. 
 
 A wild, unpeopled and unknown land it was then, but 
 it has since been made immortal by the unavailing bat 
 tles of Chief Joseph for the graves of his fathers. 
 
 Joe Meek ! The many books about him tell you he 
 \vas a savage, buckskinned delegate to Congress from 
 the unorganized territory of Oregon, who lived with the 
 Indians. These statements are almost all untrue. His 
 was a plain, pastoral nature, and he shunned strife and 
 notoriety. He had none of Kit Carson s dash about 
 him, none of Davy Crockett s daring, nor had he Fre 
 mont s culture and capacity for putting himself well be 
 fore the world ; yet he ranked all these men both in 
 the priority and the peril of his enterprises. 
 
 Indeed, before the chiefest of them was really heard 
 of, he had called the people of the far Northwest 
 together under the great pines by the sounding Oregon, 
 and made solemn protest against the pretensions of 
 England to that region. These settlers sent this man 
 over the plains alone, a journey of more than half a 
 year, to beg the President that they might be made or 
 
AX OLD OREGON! AX IX THE SXOW. 107 
 
 remain a portion of the United States while most of the 
 now famous mountaineers were yet at their mothers 
 knee. I know no figure in our history that approaches 
 his in grandeur except that of President Houston, of the 
 Lone Star Republic. And yet you search in vain for 
 his name among those who sat in our Capitol in those 
 early days. Some say he arrived at Washington when 
 Congress was not in session, and so did not present his 
 credentials. Others say that he lost his papers on the 
 way in one of his perilous passages of a stream. And 
 then again I am told that he never had any credentials 
 to present ; that the territory had no official existence at 
 that time, and as Congress had not then become an 
 adept in coining States and Territories, the pioneers of the 
 Oregon River gave him no authority to appear in Con 
 gress, but that his mission was entirely with the Presi 
 dent. 
 
 But the spectacle of this man setting out in mid-win 
 ter to ride alone over an untracked distance of three 
 thousand miles, the loyalty of this people, their peril 
 from savages, as well as the cupidity of Great Britain, I 
 count one of the finest on the page of pioneer history. 
 
 I suspect that his mission was fruitful of little, for he 
 was, as new people came pouring in, quietly relegated 
 to the background, and never afterward came conspicu 
 ously forward, save as an occasional leader in the wars 
 against the Indians. But the undertaking and the ac 
 complishment of this terrible journey alone oui^ht To 
 keep his memory green forever. And, indeed, had fate 
 placed him in any other spot than isolated Oregon, he 
 surely now would not be so nearly forgotten. 
 
 When gold was discovered in Idaho or Idahlio, an In 
 dian word meaning, in a broad sense, mountain of light 
 Joe Meek, now an old man, could not resist the tempta- 
 
108 MEMORIE AND KIME. 
 
 tion to leave his home in the woods of Oregon and again 
 brave the plains. 
 
 But he was no longer in any great sense a conspicuous 
 figure. He, so far from being a leader, was even 
 laughed at by his own people, the Oregomans, the new, 
 young people who had journeyed into the country after 
 his work had been done the old story of the ingratitude 
 of republics. And if he was laughed at by the long 
 haired, lank and blanketed Oregonian, he was despised 
 by the quick, trim, sharp and energetic Californian who 
 had now overrun Oregon on his way to the new Eldorado. 
 
 I wonder if the world vvould believe the half that 
 could be written of the coarseness, the lawlessness of 
 these unorganized armies that surged up and down the 
 Pacific coast in search of gold a quarter of a century 
 ago ? I know of nothing like these invasions in history 
 since the days of the Goths and Vandals. 
 
 Two wild and strong streams of humanity, one from 
 Oregon and the other from California, had flowed on in- 
 harmoniously, tuinultuously, together on their way to 
 the mines. On Camas Prairie winter swept suddenly 
 over them, and there, down in the deep cafion that deft 
 the wide and wintry valley through the middle, this 
 stream of life stopped, as a river that is frozen. 
 
 A hundred men, trying to escape the " blizzard," 
 tumbled headlong into the canon together, and took shel 
 ter there as best they could beside the great basalt that 
 had tumbled from the high, steep cliffs of the cafion. 
 They crept under the crags, anywhere to escape the 
 bitter cold. 
 
 And how the Californian did despise the Oregonian ! 
 He named him the "webfoof because his feet were 
 moccasined and he came from the land of clouds and 
 rain. The bitter enmity and the bad blood of Germany 
 
AN OLD OREOOXIAX IN THE SNO\V. 109 
 
 and France were here displayed in epitome and in the 
 worst form. A wonder, indeed, if there would not he 
 some sort of tragedy played here before the storm was 
 over. 
 
 The Oregonians wore long hair at that date. A pair 
 of leggings and a blanket, with his head thrust through a 
 hole in the centre, made his chief raiment. A tall, 
 peaked hat, with a band about it something like the 
 brigand of the stage, crowned his long, straight, and 
 stringy hair. Sometimes he wore an old slouch hat ; he 
 was rarely without the blanket ; he was never without 
 the leggings. 
 
 The Calif ornian wore the traditional red shirt in that 
 day, with rarely an exception. He always wore a pistol, 
 often two pistols, in the great leather belt, and a bowie- 
 knife. He generally wore duck pantaloons, tucked in 
 side of his great long-legged leather boots. If he was 
 " on the shoot," or " come from the shoulder," a little 
 investigation would in many cases disclose an extra pis 
 tol or two tucked down deep in these boots. And even 
 whiskey bottles have been known to nestle there. He 
 rarely wore a coat. The coat interfered with his locomo 
 tion, and he despised it. If he was cold he put on another 
 shirt. And how he would howl at the long, lean, and 
 silent Oregonian as he moved about in his moccasins and 
 leggings, with his blanket tight about him and his hands 
 quite hidden. 
 
 " Hello, webfoot," cried the Calif ornian leader to old 
 Joe Meek one day, tc where s your hands ? Come, show 
 us your hands ! Are you heeled ? 
 
 " Try me and see !" 
 
 The blanket flew back, two hands shot forward, and 
 the garrulous and meddlesome Calif ornian let the " web- 
 foot" go, for he was " heeled." 
 
110 MEMOKIE AKD RIME. 
 
 We had but little wood liere, and that was of the 
 worst quality willow green and frozen. The little 
 river gurgled and called plaintively for the first day or 
 two as it struggled on and ground against its icy banks. 
 But soon its lips were sealed, and the snow came down 
 and covered the silent and dead waters as with a shroud. 
 
 The day after the little tilt between the California!! 
 leader and quiet old Joe Meek, the Calif ornians took 
 occasion to walk up and down before his camp, and talk 
 very loud and behave in a very insulting manner. The 
 canon was all on tiptoe. The men began to forget for a 
 moment their miseries in the all-absorbing topic, the 
 corning fight. 
 
 The blizzard only increased in terror. The mules and 
 horses were freezing to death in their tracks on the 
 snowy plateau above. 
 
 It was terrible, pitiful. Death was imminent for both 
 man and beast. The Californians outnumbered the Ore- 
 gonians ten to one. They had secured the only real 
 shelter from the storm, a sort of cavern under the over 
 hanging basaltic rocks, over which the snowy cyclone 
 swept and left hanging huge masses of snow. The Cali 
 fornians were packed away like sardines, talking of the 
 coming battle and firing the heart of their leader with 
 hatred of the quiet old Oregonian, who, with his Indian 
 sons, swung their half frozen arms or walked up and 
 down in the vain effort to keep warm. 
 
 Suddenly the California!! came up to one of the 
 Indian boys and slapped him in his face. There was a 
 shout from the cave. The old man only turned, threw 
 back his blanket, tapped a pistol, pointed up to the pla 
 teau, and said : 
 
 "Them! Sunrise! Thar!" 
 
 The Califoniian was startled. He could not say a 
 
AN OLD OREGOXIAX IX THE SXOW. Ill 
 
 single word. He only nodded assent, and went back to 
 bis cave and bis crowd. Never bad duel been arranged 
 so suddenly. He told bis men, and they were wild, 
 furious. A general battle was imminent. 
 
 Let us look at tbese silent, lean and despised Oregon- 
 iansin their blankets. Comely they w r ere not, nor grace 
 ful. They were not well read, nor bad the eyes of the 
 world been upon them, as on the Californians. But be 
 it remembered that away back before California was at 
 all known these Oregonians had met under the pines, and 
 most emphatically, as well as ungrammatically, proclaimed 
 that they were a part of the United States, and not of 
 England. They had declared war against aggressive 
 tribes, had raised an army, maintained it in the field, 
 and finally had coined their own money out of their own 
 gold, paid off that army, and proclaimed peace, all on 
 their own account. Their coin was pure gold not a 
 particle of alloy. The beaver on the one side of their 
 crude coin showed the quiet industry of her pastoral 
 people. The sheaf of wheat on the other side showed 
 that plenty should reward the husbandman. People like 
 that are not to be despised. 
 
 Against this record the Californian had little to ex 
 hibit, lie had washed down hills and led rivers over the 
 mountains ; he had contributed much to the metallic 
 currency of the world, but he bad clone little else. 
 
 The storm went down with the sun, and now bow 
 bitter cold ! The moon hung high and clear right over 
 head. The stars stood out and sparkled in the frost-like 
 fire. The keen, cold wind swept the plain above and 
 threatened to fill the canon with snow. Wolves, that 
 had eaten only the dead horses up to this time, now 
 began to devour the weak and dying ones. There were 
 enough wolves gathering about us, howling, fighting, 
 
112 MEMORIE AXD RIME. 
 
 devouring our horses, to attack and eat us where we 
 stood. But still the fight must go on. The deadly 
 hatred must find some expression. Fortunate if it 
 should end with this deadly duel just before us. 
 
 Clouds began to drive over the moon at midnight and 
 stream away over toward Idaho to the east. The stars 
 went out, as if the fierce wind had blown out the myriad 
 lights of heaven. Then the snow began to fall again, 
 thick and fast, massive, as the sombre Oregonians sat 
 about their fire and talked of the coming duel. The 
 group grew white as huddled flocks of sheep. Now and 
 then a man would get up and shake himself, and the 
 snow would slide off his shoulders in great avalanches. 
 The fire began to perish under this incessant, unceasing 
 dropping of snow. The snow simply possessed the 
 world. The fire died out. It was dark, with a wild, a 
 deadly darkness. They could not see each other s faces. 
 When a man spoke it was as if some one called from deep 
 down in a w r ell. They groped about, feeling for each 
 other. The Californians slept tranquilly and selfishly 
 on in their cavern. 
 
 Snow above and snow below ! The wolves howling 
 from the hill. Snow that buried you, that lay on your 
 shoulders like a burden, that loaded you down, that 
 fastened upon you as if it had life and sense, and like a 
 ghost that would never go away. 
 
 With the coming morning there came a sense of 
 change. It was warm, warmer, sultry. The Chinook 
 wind ! But it was not light. There was only a dim, 
 ghastly something in the air the ghost of a dead day, 
 and snow and snow and snow. Nothing but silence and 
 snow ! 
 
 I stop here as I write, and wonder if any one east of 
 the Eocky Mountains knows what the " Chinook 1 wind 
 
AX OLD OREGONIAN IN THE SNO\V. 113 
 
 is ? One writes at a disad vantage Jiere. But the world is 
 learning. Ten years ago it would not have known what 
 a " blizzard" or a " cyclone" meant. It knows now. 
 
 Well, this Chinook wind is a hot cyclone that leaps up 
 from the Gnlf of California, caroms from mountain- top 
 to mountain-top toward the north, till it suddenly and 
 savagely takes possession of the coldest and bleakest 
 spot on the continent. It comes when the cold reaches 
 a climax. This hot Chinook wind is born of the freez 
 ing blizzard. It is the one thing that makes this vast 
 Korth-west habitable. Stick a pin here and remember. 
 This Chinook wind is the most remarkable and phenom 
 enal thing in nature. 
 
 The Oregonians threw back their blankets, stood erect, 
 and breathed free for the first time in all these deadly 
 days. Puddles of water began to form at their feet. 
 Little rivulets began to seek the frozen river in the 
 canon. The snow began to slip and slump in avalanches 
 down the steep sides of the mountains. The Indian 
 boys tightened their moccasins, and with the first sign of 
 breaking day hurried away over the hill, pistols in hand, 
 to look after their horses. The old pioneer calmly wait 
 ed for sunrise. lie stood alone by the dead firebrands. 
 
 Suddenly there was a great, dull shock. Thud ! An 
 avalanche ! The whole mountain side of snow had slid 
 into the canon and carried with it the overhanging 
 masses above the cavern. 
 
 The swelling river, thus suddenly brought to a stand 
 still, began to plunge and fret and foam at his very feet. 
 The Indian boys returned, and began to move their 
 effects out of the canon. They dropped their loads at 
 the sound of a second avalanche which seemed to close 
 the cavern, and looked at each other in the gray dawn. 
 They were glad ; wild with delight. They chuckled at 
 
114 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 first ; and then a yell such a yell of pure satisfaction 
 was never heard before. 
 
 Their father lifted his head, looked at them hard, and 
 then plucking me after him, hurried clown to the cav 
 ern s mouth. 
 
 The Calif ornians were on their feet, falling over each 
 other, dazed, confused, cursing, howling. The mouth 
 of the cave was so closed by the snow that one had to 
 stoop to enter. 
 
 They had thrown some pitch on the embers, and as it 
 blazed up they stared at the apparition of the old man, 
 who stood there in their midst, in their power, and almost 
 alone. A little white rabbit, driven in by the swelling 
 water, came huddling at his feet. " What have you 
 come in here for ?" cried the leader, clutching a pistol. 
 
 " To save you." 
 
 " "What !" And the pistol was raised to a level. 
 
 The old man did not heed or answer. He stooped and 
 picked up the terrified little white rabbit and held it 
 kindly, as you would hold a kitten. The men looked at 
 each other and then out at the booming flood, foaming 
 at the door of the cavern, and dashing in the new dawn. 
 
 I turned and ran away and up toward our camp, for 
 there was a cry of terror on every lip. The old man led 
 them at a run, their guns in their hands, their blankets 
 on their shoulders. 
 
 We reached the safe eminence where the Indian boys 
 had made our new camp, and then old Colonel Joe 
 Meek, turning to the California!! leader and pointing to 
 the plateau beyond, said : 
 
 " Cap n, it s sunrise." 
 
 " Colonel Joe Meek, I begs your parding. I m 
 licked!" cried the Calif ornian, as he reached his hand 
 in token of submission and peace. 
 
AT HOME. 115 
 
 III. 
 
 AT HOME. 
 
 My snow-topped towers crush the clouds 
 
 And break the still abode of stars, 
 Like sudden ghosts in snowy shrouds, 
 
 New broken through their earthly bars. 
 
 Sunny Riclye, Oregon, November 11. You who, hav 
 ing travelled far and in strange seas, come suddenly upon 
 the flag of your country, may know something of the 
 feeling that possesses the mountaineer as he nears home 
 and gets the first sight of the snow-peaks which stand 
 like mighty gates around it. 
 
 But I did not hasten home. No sister any more for 
 ever on the earth. No elder and abler brother to greet 
 and to guide me. Yet I came home at last. 
 
 Home ! A little white house on a long, grassy ridge, 
 crowned with trees that I had helped plant ; an Indian 
 here and there, galloping across the broad, wild lands ; 
 cattle lazily feeding along the bottoms, and a cloud of 
 snowy lambs frisking about the farther hill-top. Then 
 a tall young man comes out, and, with hand lifted to 
 shade his eyes, looks down the lane ; for the coming of 
 a stranger is an event here ; then he turns inside. 
 Then a bowed, gentle old man, with a newspaper in his 
 hand, only a little thinner than ten years ago ; then an 
 old lady, wiping her glasses on her apron, only a little 
 stouter than ten years ago. I leap from my horse, rush 
 up the rose-bordered walk, and home again. But we 
 do not talk of the absent, nor seem to see the empty 
 chairs at the table. , I must not talk of them here. 
 
116 MEMORIE AND KIME. 
 
 . . . We had built this little house together, with our 
 own hands, years and years ago. Out yonder where the 
 orchard is now, more than a quarter of a century ago we 
 set the first ploughshare in the land so new from God s 
 hand, that it seemed as hardly yet completed. 
 
 Up on yonder mountain, away up the steep Oregon 
 Sierras, we cut down logs and rolled them for miles down 
 the grassy slope, and made the first rails that ever crossed 
 the old Indian trail running through this dooryard, 
 that had held untroubled possession here for centuries. 
 
 We my brother and I were the first white persons, I 
 think, that ever climbed these great mountain peaks up 
 yonder in the Sierras to the east, and toward the vast 
 unpeopled plains and wilderness. Between this little 
 house here and these great mountains, there is no man s 
 habitation till you journey East a thousand miles or two. 
 Down these great steep mountains, the grizzly bear 
 has come many a night and left his mighty footprint 
 on the doorsill and all around the house while we slept. 
 Brother and I named some of these peaks, and we have 
 followed every little laughing mountain stream from its 
 source of snow to the lakes and rivers beyond. We once 
 cut our names on little trim-limbed saplings together, 
 away out in the untrodden woods, and talked of the time 
 when we should go out into the great world, win fortune 
 and fame, and come back, and together seek out the sap 
 lings that were broadening into trees. We trapped the 
 quail in the Indian trails together, and lay in ambush for 
 the deer many a twilight night after the hard day s labor 
 was done. All is over. The grass grows in the trail 
 now. The quail pipes on untroubled. 
 
AT HOME. 117 
 
 FAKEWELL. 
 
 WHAT climbing plans of name, 
 Shining, battle-conquered fame, 
 In that first-felt sense of pride 
 When he gloried by my side 
 
 In the West-world, long ago 
 Even so. 
 
 All is won. Yet what is won ? 
 All we dared to dream is done. 
 Yet I had rather rest to-day 
 Where the wide-eyed rabbits play 
 Rest as he rests, lone and low 
 Even so. 
 
 Rather walk that grass-grown trail, 
 Peopled by the piping quail, 
 Leading to that lonely grave 
 Where forgotten grasses wave, 
 To mine own grave, than this show- 
 Even so. 
 
 Soft and low, soft and low 
 Let Sierras sad winds blow ; 
 
 1 am sad ; a strange bird blown 
 By the four winds from mine own ; 
 Blown and beaten to and fro 
 Even so. 
 
118 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE NEW AND THE OLD. 
 
 THE careless and happy Indians who used to ride in a. 
 long bright line up and down the land and past the door, 
 laughing at our little fence as they leaped their ponies 
 over the few rails that cost us so much labor, now ride 
 only on the ghostly clouds. There is not one left now 
 in all the land. 
 
 The vast level valley before us at the base of this long 
 and lonely ridge of flowers and fruit and sunny water, 
 is a waving wheatfield now, and houses, little palaces of 
 peace and refinement, even of splendor, dot the land as 
 thick as stars in heaven at night under the strangely 
 perfect skies. And the thousand square miles of 
 hyacinth blossoms that made blue like the skies this 
 whole valley for months together, have given place to 
 a shield of gold on our mother s breast. 
 
 And so the world goes on. The wheels of progress 
 have rolled over the graves of the pioneers and they are 
 level as the fields of golden grain. And it is well. 
 Even the marble tombs of the strange and strong new 
 people paving their way with gold where we came long 
 ago with toil and peril even these will be levelled, as 
 our graves are levelled, and give place to others. The 
 world is round. Let us look forward. Yet what is 
 there that is lovely, what is there to love in this new tide 
 of people pouring in upon us with their airs and their 
 arrogance ? They despise us and our primitive ways. 
 Yet their hard examples give us little encouragement to 
 abandon our ways and accept theirs. 
 
THE NEW AND THE OLD. 119 
 
 Nothing ever happened so disastrous to the Pacific 
 States as the building of the Pacific Kailroad. It 
 became at once a sort of syphon, which let in a stream 
 of weak and worthless people, and gave the brave young 
 States here all the vanities and vices of the East, with 
 none of the virtues. 
 
 The isolation of this country, the valor, the virtues, 
 and the unusual wealth of the people all these gave it 
 an elevation and splendor that no land in so short a time 
 ever attained. Even the literature began to have a 
 flavor and individuality all its own. But all this became 
 neutralized, passed away and perished, when men came 
 and went so easily to and from the Pacific States. 
 
 Monopolists came and laid hands on the lands, the 
 mines, the cattle indeed, all things ; and made, or at 
 tempted to make the men, gray and grizzled old pio 
 neers, hewers of wood and drawers of water. 
 
 Even our seaport, wliicli ought to be a great commer 
 cial city, is sick and gloomy and sad. She looks like a 
 ship at half-mast. 
 
 It is not the immigration of Chinamen ; for the 
 Chinaman is not in any sense of the word an immigrant. 
 lie does not come to stay. I think it would be much 
 better for the country if he did. If the Chinese could 
 be treated so that their better class would come, and 
 bring money, and remain, instead of having their laborers 
 only come, to get hold of a few dollars and then return, 
 I think the Chinese question would be satisfactorily 
 solved. 
 
 But the real trouble began in gambling. When the 
 railroad brought Wall Street it brought that which was 
 tenfold more fatal than any plague ever brought us from 
 an infected port. This spirit of speculation led honest 
 men from their work in the mines to the cities. Nine 
 
120 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 men out of ten of them perished either financially, 
 morally, or physically. Perhaps the tenth man the 
 coarsest, the grossest, and hardest held out, got hold of 
 millions, and became a king. 
 
 But Oregon proper is a sort of nut a nut with a 
 sweet, rich kernel, but also with a bitter bark and rind 
 through which you have to gnaw in order to reach the 
 kernel. Portland is the bark or rind. The rich heart 
 of the richest young State in the Union lies nearly two 
 hundred miles in the interior. Portland sits at the sea- 
 door the very gates of the State taking toll of him 
 that comes and him that goes. The Orient has met the 
 Occident here in this west most town. One of these new 
 men, a speculator in town lots and land, who was clad in 
 a slouch hat and enormous mud-boots-reaching almost to 
 the knees, approached me in Portland. He carried an 
 umbrella thrust up under his arm, while his two fore 
 fingers hooked and wrestled resolutely together as he 
 stood before me. He chewed tobacco violently, and 
 now and then fired a brown stream far up and down the 
 new pine sidewalk. 
 
 " Can t you put this city into poetry ? Yes, you kin. 
 "What s poetry good for, if it can t rize the price of 
 land ? Jist tell em we never had a shake. Yes, an 
 tell em that the old men never die ; but jist git kivered 
 with moss and blow away. An tell em yes, tell em 
 that the timber grows so tall that it takes a man an two 
 small boys to see to the top of a tree ! Yes, an. tell em 
 tha,t we have to tie poles to the cows horns, to let the 
 wrinkles run out on. Yes, biggest country, richest coun 
 try an dogondest healthiest country this side of Jericho ! 
 Yes, it is." 
 
 Drip ! drip ! drip ! The rain put a stop to the man s 
 speech. But he shall not be forgotten, for I had 
 
THE NEW AXD THE OLD. 1:21 
 
 sketched him, from his prodigious boots to the very 
 tobacco-stained beard, long before he gave his last testi 
 mony of the health and wealth of his chosen home. 
 
 Drip ! drip ! drip ! Slop ! slop ! slop ! incessantly 
 and all the time, for an uninterrupted half a year, here 
 in this mossy, mouldy town of Portland. Rain ! rain ! 
 rain ! until the trees grow out of the cracks and roofs of 
 the houses, and until, tradition says, Mother Nature 
 comes to the aid of the inhabitants and makes them 
 web -footed, like the water-fowl. And even then, and 
 in the face of all this, this man stood up before me with 
 the water fairly bending his umbrella from the weight 
 of the rain the rain running down his nose, his head, 
 his hair and there he smilingly bowed and protested 
 that it did not really rain much in Portland ; but that 
 down about the mouth of the Columbia, at Astoria, it 
 did " sometimes rain a-right smart." 
 
 No, I don t like the new money-getting strangers. 
 But the pioneers here were giants. Look at a piece of 
 their gold ! These men fashioned their own coin, as no 
 other part of this Republic ever did. They coined it 
 out of pure gold, without alloy, and stamped on its face 
 the figure of a beaver and sheaves of wheat, the signs of 
 industry and plenty. Its device of toil and harvest 
 heralded it. Its intrinsic worth and solid value placed it 
 above the need of any other indorsement. The wars, 
 the trials, and the achievements of these men mark a 
 shining bit of history. There is nothing nobler in the 
 annals of the bravest and oldest States in the llnion than 
 the achievements of this Stale of Oregon. 
 
MEM OKIE AND RIME. 
 
 Y. 
 
 FISHING IN OREGON WATERS. 
 
 An Indian summer-time it was, long past, 
 
 We lay on this Columbia, far below 
 
 The stormy waterfalls, and God had cast 
 
 Us heaven s stillness. Dreamily and slow 
 
 We drifted as the light bark chose to go. 
 
 An Indian girl with ornaments of shell 
 
 Began to sing .... The stars may hold such flow 
 
 Of hair, such eyes, but rarely earth. There fell 
 
 A sweet enchantment that possess d me as a spell. 
 
 OREGON is the fisliing man s paradise. But, like all 
 other places that are so desirable, even like the real 
 Paradise, the places for trout-fishing are far away and 
 hard to reach. But I want you to go up into the Ore 
 gon Sierras with me, after we have looked in npon the 
 fisheries, or rather " butcheries," down about the sea. 
 
 Fishing is carried on at Astoria and above there, near 
 the mouth of this noble river, to an extent that is alarm 
 ing, not to say revolting. Hundreds of tons are shipped 
 to the four parts of the world from here every year. 
 And still the dreadful butchery goes on, without any 
 comment or interference from either State or Federal 
 authorities. 
 
 A walk through one of the twenty or more canneries 
 here is anything but desirable. It looks too much like a 
 slaughter-yard. Great shining fish are piled up like 
 cord-wood right and left, waiting the Chinamen and 
 other fish-choppers to cut them up for the cans. Indians 
 are coming in and up the ladders from out the water, 
 like old Neptune climbing the side of the ship as it 
 
FISHING IN" OREGON WATERS. 123 
 
 crosses the line. They are loaded down with fish, \vliicli 
 they have taken with the spear. This spear is entirely 
 of Indian workmanship and invention. The shaft or 
 beam is at least twenty feet in length, yet scarcely thick 
 er than a man s finger. It is made of fir-wood, and is 
 very tough and durable. It has a forked or double 
 point. These points are made of bone. The bone has 
 a hole in the middle. In this hole a string is fastened at 
 one end ; the other end of the string is attached to the 
 shaft or beam of the spear. The several loose inches of 
 the string are wound tightly about the shaft. The bone 
 point of the spear is hollowed out at the heel and fitted 
 in and over the dull wooden point of the spear, so that 
 when this is driven through the fish the little bone point 
 loosens, comes off, turns crosswise on the farther side of 
 the fish, and leaves the poor salmon floundering in the 
 water, with a string through his body. And, pierced in 
 this way, they never escape. The Indian s simple de 
 vice never breaks or fails him in any way. When he 
 has pierced his fish, you may see his bright black eyes 
 glow just a little brighter, and his hands may tighten a 
 little on the spear ; but he does not move or show the 
 least concern. The salmon bleeds profusely from the 
 spear- wounds through his body, and also from the mouth ; 
 but his struggles are short and few. Soon he is pulled 
 to the shore, where the squaw, who is all the time 
 crouched down by the side of her spouse, dispatches him 
 promptly with a club, by blows on the head. Not a 
 word is spoken all this time by either party. She now 
 takes the dead salmon from off the points of the spear, 
 adjusts and arranges the bones and string, that form the 
 head of the spear, and again it is buried in the deep, 
 clear water, by the cunning hand of her husband, to wait 
 the approach of another bright and unsuspecting salmon. 
 
124 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 When they have taken a load, which does not require 
 long, they step into their canoe, and either dart away for 
 their lodge up the river, where the salmon are artisti 
 cally unrolled, as it were by a knife, almost as you would 
 unroll a blanket, and so dried for the winter, or they 
 glide across the river, and sell their " take" of fish at 
 the cannery. 
 
 The Oregonian is not a fisherman. "Whether he is too 
 practical, too serious, indeed, too tender-hearted, or too 
 indolent, I do not know. I am firmly persuaded, how 
 ever, that it is not because he is too- industrious to fish. 
 I should rather say it is because he is surfeited with the 
 very abundance of fish and the facility with which fish 
 are taken in that country. For the seine competes with 
 the spear. " You jist have to stop your steamboats, as I 
 did about twenty years ago for a whole half a day, to let 
 the salmon pass ! Fact, sir ! Swear to it, sir ! 
 Couldn t work the paddles, sir, for half a day at a time 
 fish so thick in the river." 
 
 The old steamboat captain measured the widfch of the 
 pine-board sidewalk over his right shoulder with a 
 stream of tobacco juice, as he finished saying this, and 
 looked at me as if he dared me to doubt him. But I 
 did not doubt him. Whatever others may say or do, I 
 believe he was telling the cold, frozen truth. 
 
 " Go a-fishing ! I git enough of fish, I do, in that ere 
 steamboat. Why, when salmon time comes, and from 
 that time on till frost comes, I ve got to keep rny 
 steamboat right square in the middle of the river and a 
 half a mile from the bank, or the stench of the dead 
 salmon will drive every passenger off the boat. Fact, 
 sir ! Swear to it ! Go a-fishin ! Phew ! 
 
 The grizzled old captain s mustache went up under 
 Ills nose and his nose went up into the air, as he jerked 
 
FISHING IX OREGON WATERS. l\>f) 
 
 his cap on to his great big bald bead and hurried oil 
 down the street to his steamboat. 
 
 And now we will go to Summit Lake ; a pleasant 
 memory I have of the summer there, for we of Sunny 
 Ridge were all together there, a happy, unbroken 
 family. This Jake lies immediately on the summit of 
 the mountains that divide Eastern from Western Oregon, 
 and is for the most part of the year buried in ice and 
 snow. It is as wild and fresh as an undiscovered 
 country, for rarely either white or red men disturb the 
 stillness of its densely wooded shores. This lake was 
 formed ages ago by a mountain sliding down and dam 
 ming up the headwaters of the Willamette River. This 
 formed a lake several miles in length, nearly a mile in 
 width, and of fearful depth. The great forest growing 
 at the time of the avalanche or slide w r as buried in the 
 new lake, and by some remarkable chemical action of the 
 water the trees were petrified ; so that, as you row your 
 boat about the lake, you look down into the singularly 
 clear waters and behold a forest beneath you. Indeed, 
 your boat sometimes scrapes the tops of great trees that 
 have been turned to stone, yet stand erect and almost 
 perfect in bough and branch. By the side of this beau 
 tiful lake, after two days hard ride from Salem, the 
 capital of Oregon, we pitched tent. The horses were 
 turned out to graze in the low r grass-bottoms that border 
 the lake, and weary as they were, had no disposition to 
 return to the great fertile valley that flashed its yellow 
 fields of grain far, far below. Snow-peaks rose before 
 us and to the right and left out of the black forests, and, 
 shining in the sunset, they seemed to be almost within 
 reach. As the sun went down, we drew on our over 
 coats and drew closer to the great roaring and crackling 
 fir-wood fire. One of our party had thrown in a line 
 
12G MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 from the shore, and another had taken an ineffectual shot 
 at a big buck, that sniffed the smoke of our camp fire 
 and carne poking his brown nose through the brush to 
 see, but for all that we ate our supper without either 
 meat or fish. 
 
 Early next morning, even before the musical mos 
 quito was abroad, our camp-iire blazed brightly up and 
 the flames reached for the fragrant fir-boughs above. 
 
 O O 
 
 The horses had retreated to a dense wood hard by to 
 escape the mosquitoes, and were drowsily dropping their 
 heads in their morning nap as the day dawned. 
 
 Leaving one of our party up to his elbows in the 
 dough, we were determined to have fish, fowl, or meat 
 for breakfast, and we equipped accordingly. 
 
 We were soon wet to the waist, for everything was 
 dripping with dew. We threw a line from the shore 
 now and then ; but not so much as a minnow deigned to 
 notice our worms, flies, spoons, or any of the many kinds 
 of enticing bait we had to offer. 
 
 We found where the beaver had cut down some small 
 trees with their teeth, and at last came upon some fresh 
 signs of an Indian tomahawk. Then we found a deserted 
 Indian camp, the first signs of man we had seen. Leav 
 ing this and hugging a curve in the lake, we found in 
 the tall reeds and tules, just around the curve of the lake, 
 a fine Indian canoe, in an excellent state of preservation. 
 Taking possession of this, we pushed out into the middle 
 of the lake and near to a little group of islands. As the 
 sun came pointing his bright, rosy fingers at us through 
 the pines that hang over the eastern bank of the lake, we 
 dropped our lines over the side. 
 
 Splash ! Clash ! Snap ! The fish almost leaped into 
 the boat. Never were men more startled or more nearly 
 thrown from a canoe. And the fish were game to the 
 
FISHING IN OREGON WATERS. 127 
 
 last, and we landed them only after an awkward strug 
 gle ; for a canoe is not exactly the best footing for zeal 
 ous fishermen to stand upon. 
 
 You may go to the girdle of the earth, and you will 
 find no fish equal to these here in this head-lake of the 
 "Willamette Hiver, in Oregon, either in beauty or flavor. 
 They are the color of old gold, spotted, and, indeed, 
 shaped like brook trout, and are from fifteen to twenty- 
 four inches long. The meat is red. 
 
 We now drove our canoe between two jutting rocks of 
 the island, where we were in no danger of upsetting, and 
 fell to fishing in earnest. The great trouble we found 
 to be in taking the fish from the hook. At length one 
 party laid down his line and devoted himself entirely to 
 taking the fish from my hook as the other drew them 
 up. This kept us both busy. 
 
 Leaning over from the canoe and letting my line fall, 
 I could see the petrified forest beneath me. We were 
 literally fishing in the tree-tops. 
 
 We were drawing in fish there in the flashing morning 
 sunlight, on the rosy summit of the Oregon Sierras, that 
 looked like bars of gold ! 
 
 In less than an hour the bottom of our canoe beo-an to 
 
 & 
 
 be inconveniently slippery, from the great number of 
 fish taken ; and we pulled in for camp. 
 
 We feasted like giants. The long walk, labor, and 
 the clear, cold mountain air gave us license for that ; 
 and then the flavor of these golden trout, drawn from 
 the cold snow water it was beyond any kind of compari 
 son. We cooked them in all ways known to cook-books. 
 We baked them on the hot rocks of our camp-fire ; we 
 buried them in the hot embers, enveloped in grass 
 and tule, and found them in any waythe most excellent 
 fish in the world. 
 
128 MEMORIE AND HIME. 
 
 Nor is this the only- kind of fish to be taken from this 
 lake. There is also another, what may be called a new 
 species. It is a larger and still stronger fish, which keeps 
 deep down in the water. It is spotted also, but is not so 
 golden, and one not familiar with the ways of fish would 
 call it a trout. I do not know what name learned men 
 have given it. Indeed, I doubt if science knows any 
 thing about it as yet. It is found in the McCloud 
 River, Northern California, and the men in charge of 
 the United States fishery there have now a few speci 
 mens, taken at great cost and labor. But the name and 
 nature of the first -mentioned fish I feel sure is not at all 
 known to the world. In fact, the second-named species 
 can only be found in few places, for it dies if taken 
 from the ice-cold water and placed where the sun falls 
 on the surface of the stream. At least, this is the ex 
 perience of those connected with the fishery above- 
 named, where neither money nor pains have been spared 
 to preserve this fish. The only name I know for it is 
 the Indian name, " Wy-li-di-ket," and the common 
 name of " Doll Yarden," given it by the employes of 
 the Government at the fishery. 
 
 We found the brook trout here, also, in the bright 
 little streams that brawled and tumbled into the singular 
 lake. 
 
THE NORTH PACIFIC OCEAN. 129 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE NORTH PACIFIC OCEAN. 
 
 You hear the Pacific Ocean thundering away yonder 
 across the Coast Range to the west ? It is the wildest sea 
 in the world, and is never still. 
 
 " On seas full of wonder and peril, 
 Blown white round the capes of the North." 
 
 All the time these melodious lines ring and rhyme on 
 in the ear as yon climb up the north seas, toward 
 Alaska, from the Bay of San Francisco, under the snow- 
 peaks of Oregon. There is a line of great white foam 
 tossed up against the rocky shore to the right, even on 
 the stillest day, and you hear the eternal thunder of 
 these stormiest of seas breaking on the beach all the 
 time, though your ship may be many miles away from 
 the wild and savage shore. 
 
 The clearest and brightest water in the world ! It is 
 blue almost to blackness. The albatross, found all the 
 way on the voyage to China, droops lazily about the 
 ship, while the porpoise tumbles in the water every 
 where. The seas are not populous with sail, and you 
 may voyage up the coast all day and not sight a single 
 vessel. But the waters are strangely full of life, and 
 some days you will see a hundred \vhales making foun 
 tains in this great untraversed sea. 
 
 Pacific Ocean ! Yes, perhaps it is, where Balboa 
 sighted it, from the peaks of Darien, a thousand or two 
 miles away down the southern coast. But here, on the 
 coast of Oregon, it is simply terrible. Xoship dares ap- 
 
130 MEMORIE AND KIME. 
 
 proacli the shore, for the land, like the sea here, is sav 
 
 age too. 
 
 The skeletons of many ships lie along this Oregon 
 coast, and many dead men are in these seas. 
 
 Sea-bathing is not to be thought of ; the waters are 
 too cold for that ; but even were they of a tolerable 
 temperature, a man would enter them from the shore at 
 the risk of his life. 
 
 Many years ago a party of young men, intent partly 
 on pleasure and partly on making discoveries on the then 
 almost unknown sea-shore, crossed the Coast Range on 
 horseback, and, emerging from the steep, deep woods, 
 they found themselves for the first time by the waters of 
 the great Pacific Ocean. In a spirit of banter and mer 
 riment they urged their horses into the breakers. A 
 moment later a great wave struck them, overthrew them, 
 ground them against the rocky shore, and they perished. 
 
 "Not very long since a lady walked down to the sea 
 shore near Cape Blanco, with some friends. While 
 standing on a ]og of drift-wood, watching the waves, a 
 breaker overthrew the party and the lady was drowned. 
 
 The high, white headland of Cape Blanco, lifting a 
 wooded front boldly toward China, is the westmost in 
 habited limit of the Great Republic. No other point of 
 land in the Union, boasting flocks and cottages, reaches 
 so far west as Cape Blanco in Oregon. 
 
 For hundreds of miles here you sail along under one 
 great black range of snow-tipped mountains, that sit 
 with their feet in the sea and their faces in the clouds. 
 So that Oregon, while she has a broad sea-border, is 
 almost as effectually shut out from the sea as if she lay a 
 thousand miles inland. This great black wall stretches 
 the whole length of Oregon. It is crossed, with two or 
 three exceptions, only by dim and difficult trails. The 
 
THE XORTII PACIFIC OCEAX. 131 
 
 splendid fertile valleys of Oregon, capable of feeding 
 the world, lie many miles from the sea, and the farmer, 
 as he swings his scythe at harvest, may hear the thunder 
 of the sea, and feel its breezes in his face ; but he can 
 reach it, as a rule, only by way of Portland and the Co 
 lumbia River, hundreds of miles away. 
 
 True, a thin line of settlements hug the coast, cling to 
 the rocks and steep hillsides that slope into the sea, and 
 the men dig gold, cut timber, and keep up a war with 
 the wild beasts that dispute possession with them ; but 
 they make up but a small portion of the State s popula 
 tion. 
 
 And yet these hardy settlers deserve something better 
 said of them than this. Splendid old sea-dogs they are, 
 most of them, ^sot slip-shod Missourians, with" dogs 
 and deer-skins under their feet as they enter ; but old 
 fellows from Maine, from Massachusetts, who, weary of 
 the sea, yet not having heart to leave their first love, 
 and, finding homes to be had for the taking, have settled 
 here to end their days in solitude and, let us hope, in 
 plenty and in peace. It is pleasant to pick out their 
 scattered cottages from the ship, with a glass, as you 
 pass on under the Oregon snow-peaks ; to see their few 
 flocks on the steep mountain-sides above, the dense black 
 timber still above, then rocky limits of the cloud and 
 snow-crowned summits. 
 
 Bachelors they are chiefly, or, at least, the old fellows 
 live without the presence of women, as a rule, and keep 
 all their secrets to themselves. When we landed to take 
 coal, I ventured to ask one, Captain Jimmy Wilson (they 
 are all captains) if he had never been married. He took 
 his short-stemmed pipe from between his teeth ; rocked 
 himself forward till his crossed arms lay across his knees; 
 and then, grinning broadly and almost shutting his eyes, 
 
MEMORIE AND KIM PL 
 
 and shutting his mouth very firmly, as if he was afraid 
 he might say one little word, he only grinned at me. 
 Then he passed his broad and brawny left hand over his 
 great shock of gray hair, and then down over his stout 
 shaven chin ; but never a word said Captain Jimmy 
 Wilson on this subject. Soon he remarked, as he jerked 
 his head toward the ship, that he thought it was u going 
 to blow," and he arose and, hitching up his pants, 
 sauntered away, with a great, deep sigh. Then I knew 
 perfectly well that this old son of Neptune had a three- 
 volumed novel stored away in that hairy, half-opened 
 breast of his. 
 
 VII. 
 
 THE name of the great north western gold-fields, 
 comprising Montana and Idaho, was originally spelled 
 I-dtth-lio, with the accent thrown heavily on the second 
 syllable. The word is perhaps of Shoshonee derivation, 
 but it is found in some similar form, and with the same 
 significance, among all Indians west of the Kocky Moun 
 tains. The Nez Perce Indians, in whose country the 
 great black and white mountain lies which first induced 
 the white man to the use of this name, are responsible 
 for its application to the region of the far North-West. 
 
 The literal meaning is, " sunrise mountains." Indian 
 children among all tribes west of the Eocky Mountains, 
 
"IDAHHO." 133 
 
 BO far as I can learn, use the word to signify the place 
 where the sun comes from. AT here these tawny people 
 live out of doors, go to bed at dusk, and rise with the 
 first break of day, sunrise is much to them. The place 
 where the sun comes from is a place of marvel to the 
 children ; and, indeed, it is a sort of dial-plate to every 
 village or ranchrea, and of consequence to all. The 
 Shosiionee Indians, the true Bedouins of the American 
 desert, hold the mountain where the first burst of dawn 
 is discovered in peculiar reverence. 
 
 This roving and treacherous tribe of perfect savages, 
 stretching from the Eocky Mountains almost to the 
 Sierras, having no real habitation, or any regard for the 
 habitation of others, but often invading and overlapping 
 the lands of fellow-savages, had some gentle sentiments 
 about sunrise. " Idahho" with them was a sacred 
 place ; and they clothed the Eocky Mountains, where 
 the sun rose to them, with a mystic or rather a mytho 
 logical sanctity. 
 
 The Shasta Indians, with whom 1 spent the best years 
 of my youth, and whose language and traditions I know 
 entirely, as well as those of their neighbors to the north 
 of them, the Modocs, always, whether in camp or in 
 winter quarters, had an " Idahho," or place for the sun 
 to rise. This was a sort of Mecca in the skies, to which 
 every Indian lifted his face involuntarily on rising from 
 his rest. 1 am not prepared to say that the act had any 
 special religion in it. I only assert that it was always 
 done, and done silently, and almost, if not entirely, 
 reverently. 
 
 Yet it must be remembered that this was a very prac 
 tical affair nearly always and with all Indians. The war 
 path, the hunt, the journey all these pursuits entered 
 almost daily into the Indian s life, and of course the first 
 
134 MEMOEIE AXD RIME. 
 
 thing to be thought of in the morning was " Idahho." 
 Was the day to open propitiously ? Was it to be fair or 
 stormy weather for the work in hand ? 
 
 But I despair of impressing the importance of sunrise 
 on those who rarely witness it, although to the Indian 
 it is everything. And that is why every tribe in the 
 mountains, wherever it was, and whatever its object in 
 hand, had a Mount "Idahho." This word, notwith 
 standing its beauty and pictorial significance, found no 
 place in our books till some twenty-one years ago, and 
 then only in an abbreviated and unmeaning form. 
 
 Indeed, all Indian dialects, except the " Chinook," a 
 conglomerate published by the Hudson Bay Company 
 for their own purposes, and adopted by the missionaries, 
 seem to have always been entirely ignored and unknown 
 throughout the North Pacific territory. This " Chinook" 
 answered all purposes. It was a sort of universal jargon, 
 was the only dialect in which the Bible was printed, or 
 that had a dictionary, and no one seemed to care to dig 
 beyond it. 
 
 And so it was that this worthless and unmeaning 
 " Chinook" jargon overlaid and buried our beautiful 
 names and traditions. They were left to perish with the 
 perishing people ; so that now, instead of soft and allit 
 erative names, with pretty meanings and traditions, we 
 have for the most sublime mountains to be seen on earth 
 (those of the Oregon Sierras, miscalled the Cascade 
 Mountains) such outlandish and senseless and inappropri 
 ate appellations as Mount Hood, Mount Jefferson, Mount 
 Washington, and Mount Eaineer. Changing the name 
 of the Oregon Kiver, however, to that of the Columbia, 
 is an impertinence that can plead no excuse but the bad 
 taste of those perpetrating the folly. The mighty 
 Shoshonee Kiver, with its thousand miles of sand and 
 
"IDAHHO. 135 
 
 lava beds, is being changed by these same map-makers 
 to that of Lewis and Clarke River. 
 
 When we consider the lawless character of the roving 
 Bedouins who once peopled this region, how snake-like 
 and treacherous they were as they stole through the 
 grasses and left no sign, surely we should allow this sinu 
 ous, impetuous, and savage river to bear the name which 
 it would almost seem nature gave it, for Shoshonee is 
 the Indian name for serpent. How appropriate for this 
 river and its once dreaded people ! 
 
 The dominion of this tribe departed with the discovery 
 of gold on a tributary of the Shoshonee River in 1860. 
 The thousands who poured over this vast country on 
 their way to the new gold-fields of the north swept them 
 away almost entirely. Up to this time they had only the 
 almost helpless and wholly exhausted immigrant to 
 encounter, with now and then a brush with soldiers sent 
 out to avenge some massacre. But this tribe perished, 
 as I have said, before the Californians, and to-day it is 
 not ; except as one of the broken and dispirited remnants 
 familiar to the wretched reservations scattered over the 
 vast far West. 
 
 Captain Pierce, the discoverer of gold in the north, 
 located " Pierce City" on the site of his discovery, in 
 the dense wood away up in the wild spurs of the Bitter 
 Root Mountains, about fifty miles from the Shoshonee 
 River. Then " Orofino City" sprang up. Then " Elk 
 City" was laid out. But the " cities" did not flourish. 
 Indeed, all these " cities" were only laid out to be 
 buried. The gold was scarce and hard to get at, and the 
 mighty flood of miners that had overrun everything to 
 reach the new mines began to set back in a refluent tide. 
 
 On the site of the earthworks thrown up by Lewis and 
 Clarke, who wintered on the banks of the Shoshonee 
 
136 MEMORIE AND JUME. 
 
 River in 1803-04, the adventurous miners had founded 
 a fourth and more imposing city, as they passed on their 
 way to the mines. This they called Lewiston. It was 
 at the head of steamboat navigation on the Shoshonee, 
 and promised well. I remember it as an array of miles 
 and miles of tents in the spring. In the fall, as the tide 
 went out, there were left only a few strips of tattered 
 canvas flapping in the wind. Here and there stood a 
 few " shake shanties," against which little pebbles rat 
 tled in a perpetual fusillade as they were driven by the 
 winds that howled down the swift and barren Shoshonee. 
 
 " It oughter be a gold-bearin country," said a ragged 
 miner, as he stood with hands in pockets shivering on 
 the banks of the desolate river, looking wistfully away 
 toward California ; "it oughter be a gold-bearin coun 
 try, cause it s fit for nothin else ; wouldn t even grow 
 grasshoppers." 
 
 I had left California before this rush, settled down, 
 and been admitted to the bar by ex-Attorney-General 
 George H. Williams, then Judge, of Oregon, and had 
 now come, with one law T -book and two six-shooters, to 
 offer my services in the capacity of advocate to the 
 miners. Law not being in demand, I threw aw r ay my 
 book, bought a horse, and rode express. But even this 
 had to be abandoned, and I, too, was being borne out 
 with the receding; tide. 
 
 O 
 
 Suddenly it began to be rumored that farther up the 
 Shoshonee, and beyond a great black-white mountain, a 
 party of miners who had attempted to cross this ugly 
 range, and got lost, had found gold in deposits that even 
 exceeded the palmy days of u 49." 
 
 Colonel Craig, an old pioneer, who had married an 
 Indian woman and raised a family here, proposed to set 
 out for the new mine. The old man had long since, 
 
137 
 
 through bis Indians, heard of gold in this black moun 
 tain, and he was ready to believe this rumor in all its 
 extravagance. lie was rich in horses, a good man a 
 great-brained man, in fact who always had his pockets 
 full of papers, reminding one of Kit Carson in this re 
 spect ; and, indeed, it was his constant thirst for news 
 that drew him toward the " expressman," and made him 
 his friend. 
 
 I gladly accepted his offer of a fresh horse, and the 
 privilege of making one of his party. For reasons suffi 
 cient to the old mountaineer, we set out at night, and 
 climbed and crossed Craig s Mountain, sparsely set with 
 pines and covered with rich brown grass, by moonlight. 
 As we approached the edge of Camas Prairie, then a 
 land almost unknown, but now made famous by the 
 battle-fields of Chief Joseph, we could see through the 
 open pines a faint far light on the great black and white 
 mountain beyond the valley. " Idahho !" shouted our 
 Indian guide in the lead, as he looked back and pointed 
 to the break of dawn on the mountain before us. " That 
 shall be the name of the new mines/ said Colonel Craig 
 quietly, as he rode by his side. 
 
 The exclamation, its significance, the occasion, and all, 
 conspired to excite deep pleasure, for I had already 
 written something on this name and its poetical import, 
 and made a sort of glossary embracing eleven dialects. 
 
 Looking over this little glossary now, I note that the 
 root of the exclamation is dah ! The Shasta word is 
 Pou-dah-ho! The Klamath is Num-dah-Jio ! The 
 Modoc is Lo-dah ! and so on. Strangely like " Look 
 there !" or " Lo, light !" is this exclamation, and with 
 precisely that meaning. 
 
 I do not know \vhether this Indian guide was Nez 
 
138 MEMORIE AND KIME. 
 
 Perce, Shoshonee, Cay use, or from one of the many 
 other tribes that had met and melted into this half -civil 
 ized people first named. Neither can I say certainly at 
 this remote day whether he applied the word " Idahho" 
 to the mountain as a permanent and established name, or 
 used the word to point the approach of dawn. But I do 
 know that this mountain that had become famous in a 
 night, and was now the objective point of ten thousand 
 pilgrims, became at once known to the world as Idahho. 
 
 Passing by the Indians corn-fields and herds of cattle 
 and horses, we soon crossed the Camas Valley. Here, 
 hugging the ragged base of the mountain, we struck the 
 stormy and craggy Salmon River, a tributary of the 
 Shoshonee, and found ourselves in the heart of the civil 
 ized and prosperous Nez PerceV habitations. Ten miles 
 of this tortuous and ragged stream and our guide led up 
 the steep and stupendous mountain toward which all the 
 prospectors were now journeying. At first it was open 
 pines and grass, then stunted fir and tamarack, then 
 broken lava and manzanita, then the summit and snow. 
 
 A slight descent into a broad flat basin", dark with a 
 dense growth of spruce, with here and there a beautiful 
 little meadow of tall marsh grass, and we were in the 
 mines- -the first really rich gold-mines that had as yet 
 ever been found outside of California. 
 
 " Surely there is a vein for the silver, and a place for 
 gold where they fine it," says the Bible meaning that the 
 only certain place to look for gold is where they refine 
 it. Certainly the text never had a more apt illustration 
 than here ; for of all places for gold in the wide world 
 this seemed the most unlikely. The old Calif ornian 
 miners who came pouring in after us, almost before 
 we had pitched tent, were disgusted. " Nobody but a 
 
"IDAHHO. 139 
 
 parcel of fools would ever have found gold here," 
 said one, with a sneer at the long-haired Oregonian 
 who had got lost and found the new mines. But the 
 wheat-like grains of gold were there, and in such heaps 
 as had never been found even in California ; and 
 so accessible only a few inches under the turf or peat 
 in the little meadows and little blind gulches here and 
 there in this great black, bleak, and wintry basin that had 
 never yet been peopled since it came fresh from the 
 Creator s hand. 
 
 In less than a week the black basin was white with 
 tents. Our party located a " city" where we first 
 pitched tent, with the express office for a nucleus. Look 
 at your map, tracing up from Lewiston over Craig s 
 Mountain and Camas Prairie, and you will find " Millers- 
 burg," looking as big on the map as any town in the 
 West. Yet it did not live even the winter through. A 
 man soon came with a family of daughters, Dr. Furber, 
 an author of some note at the time, and settled a half 
 mile farther on. My " city" went with and clustered 
 about the ladies. The doctor named the rival "city" 
 after his eldest daughter, Florence. It flourished in the 
 now falling snow like a bay, and was at one time the 
 capital of the Territory. There is little of it left now, 
 however, but the populous graveyard. 
 
 And alas for the soft Indian name ! The bluff miner, 
 with his swift speech and love of brevity, soon cut the 
 name of the new mines down to " Idao." And so 
 when the new gold-fields widened out during a winter of 
 unexampled hardship and endurance into " Warren s 
 Biggin s," " Boise City," " Bannock City," and so on, 
 and the new Territory took upon itself a name and had a 
 place on the map of the Republic, that name was plain, 
 
J40 MEMORIE AKD RIME. 
 
 simple, ana senseless Idaho. Should any one concerned 
 in the preservation of our native and beautiful names 
 care to know more particularly the facts here sketched, 
 let him address Colonel Craig, of Craig s Mountain, 
 Idaho, a well-read and the best- informed man on the 
 subject to be found in the far West ; and he is the man 
 who found and named H.-dah-lio. 
 
She sits forever in the sun, 
 
 Her <jold-ribbed walls half gird her round , 
 About her feet her black herds run, 
 
 The taiony plains are her playground. 
 The air rings dear as clear church bell 
 That you may see her, see her well. 
 
 Before her silver gates in siege 
 
 An hundred thousand soldiers tents ! 
 
 What valiant loyalty and liege 
 To Fortune on her battlements ! 
 
 Oh, never was there siege of old 
 
 Like this against her walls of gold I 
 
 The Crusades knew not braver Knight 
 Than these brave men before her walls ; 
 
 The noblest in the old-time fight 
 Matched not the humblest here that falls. 
 
 And never were there worn such scars 
 
 As these won in these nobler wars. 
 
 TJiese bloodless wars, that bring not pain ; 
 
 These priceless victories of Peace, 
 Where Pride is slain, where Self is slain, 
 
 Wliere Patience hath her victories ; 
 Where, when at last the gates are down, 
 You have not burned, but built a town. 
 
IV. 
 IN COLORADO, 
 
 I. 
 
 THE COL. BILL WILLIAMS MINE. 
 
 THEY had struck it at Boulder. The "Col. Bill 
 Williams Mine" up Boulder Canon was raid to be richer 
 than the Comstock. Calif ornians forsook ranches, 
 mines, and vineyards, and poured like a torrent from 
 the West, into Denver. At Denver this tide met a like 
 stream from the East. These streams united and flowed 
 on together into Boulder Canon. 
 
 The writer was borne in on the crest of this flood 
 tide and reached the famous " Col. Bill Williams Mine" 
 at twilight, when the colonel had gone to his supper, 
 and his men were busy lighting the pine torches and 
 knots that hung about the mine, preparatory to setting 
 the miners at work in the shaft for the ni^ht. 
 
 O 
 
 The mine was situated on a little flat in the great 
 canon, just under the hotel and the few other houses 
 that made up the town on one side of the canon, and 
 the savage cliffs that looked down from the other. 
 
 An hour later, when the now famous mine was in 
 operation, there were to be seen a creaking derrick, with 
 ropes enough to rig a ship, a shaft, with men passing up 
 
144 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 and down, dripping and muddy, and talking myste 
 riously and wagging their heads at each other, as if clown 
 there they had come upon the hidden and awful secrets 
 of the earth ; while over all, the blazing pine knots shed 
 a wild and gorgeous ligh t 
 
 Close by the side of this shaft an enterprising red 
 headed man, called " Ginger," had established a bar for 
 the benefit of the dripping and mysterious men who 
 kept climbing up and down the shaft. An awning of 
 canvas covered the few bottles that stood on the rough 
 boards constituting this " bar ;" and behind the derrick, 
 which was kept busy hoisting rocks and buckets of earth 
 from out the shaft, there was piled up as high as a man s 
 head a ragged wall of quartz and granite. Through 
 this there was an open pass or gate-way, by which peo 
 ple entered who wished to see the new discovery", the 
 great " Col. Bill Williams Mine." 
 
 Standing there, and out a little from the light of the 
 flaming torches, a thousand camp-fires could be seen. 
 The whole face of the Rockies seemed to be illuminated. 
 The host that had poured in from the four parts of the 
 world were camped before the mighty citadel of Fortune 
 as in a siege. Looking up this canon and on and up the 
 mountains into heaven, it was difficult to say where the 
 camp-fires left off and the stars began. 
 
 The men kept coming up and going down this shaft 
 so busily that a stranger, or one not used to mines and 
 miners, would have said there were at least a thousand 
 brave and stalwart men down there. But an old Cali- 
 fornian would at once have detected that there was some 
 thing singularly superficial in this, and, indeed, in all 
 the appointments of the place. He would have noticed, 
 too, that the men saluted the barkeeper familiarly, and 
 drank with suspicious regularity. 
 
THE COL. BILL WILLIAMS MIXE. 145 
 
 From the rocky side of the cafion opposite the little 
 town you could sometimes hear the call of the coyote, 
 and the old trapper, " Rocky Mountain Kit," a wreck 
 and a relic who had been attracted to the new mine by 
 the thirst for whiskey rather than gold, straightened up, 
 and once or twice leaned with his hand to his ear to 
 listen. " It mout be wolves, and it mout be Injuns," 
 muttered the half-doubled old man as he hobbled away 
 from the bar, where he had sandwiched himself in 
 between two muddy miners, and so had succeeded in 
 including himself in the treat. 
 
 Suddenly there was a ripple of delight. The red 
 headed barkeeper ran his two hands up through his 
 flaming hair till it shot up like one of the pine-knots 
 blazing about him. The miners hastened down into the 
 mine. Old Rocky Mountain Kit undoubted himself, as 
 if he were a rusty old jack-knife, and smacked his 
 parched lips. The pine-torches and pine knots that 
 burned on every hand seemed to glow and burn with 
 brighter flame. Colonel Bill Williams had come boom 
 ing through the narrow rocky pass in the wall ! 
 
 A magnificent specimen of physical manhood he was. 
 Tall, strong, broad-breasted, bearded like a prophet, 
 black-eyed, and altogether impressive, he stood before 
 his followers there the acknowledged king of the new 
 mining camp. He had a small, feeble, and unpreten 
 tious partner with a stoop in his shoulder, a squint in his 
 eye, and a crack in his shrill, piping voice. This little 
 man s name was Doctor Baggs. The doctor seemed to 
 have been waiting for the coming of the colonel too, for 
 as soon as he made his appearance he ceased to seem 
 longer one of the shapeless and dirty rocks that had 
 made a part of the wall, and came briskly forward. 
 
 The great, strong arm of the colonel swooped out and 
 
140 MEMORIE AKD RIME. 
 
 took in the neck of the little doctor, as if it were by 
 chance, and with his broad hat pushed back from his 
 brow he strode, without a word, past the mouth of the 
 shaft to the bar. He leaned against the rough boards a 
 moment, and then releasing the neck from his elbow he 
 turned with his back to the wall. Still disdaining a 
 single word, he made another gesture with his arm and 
 swooped in every one, strangers and all, who stood 
 within the light of the pine knots and torches that flamed 
 behind, before, right and left, and above. 
 
 When all had drunk, and the crowd had melted away, 
 the doctor who was really a doctor, at least by prac 
 tice and profession handed his pill-bags to Ginger, and 
 stood looking up, respectful and expectant, at the face 
 of the bearded leader, from under his glasses, as the 
 giant still loafed against the bar. 
 
 A low chuckle of delight reached the ears of the doc 
 tor from the black beard, and then the satisfied face of 
 Colonel Bill Williams beamed above him, like the sun 
 through a rift of clouds, as a broad hand descended and 
 covered the narrow shoulders of the doctor with a force 
 that knocked a cloud of Colorado dust from his old 
 threadbare broadcloth. 
 
 " Well, Dock, old pard, he s a-comin . Yes, he is, 
 a-comin to buy our mine. And if I don t sell out to 
 that old duffer this time and see Maine and Maria again, 
 and with a boot-leg full o gold-dust too, I m a Dutch 
 man !" 
 
 " You seed him, Colonel Bill ? Seed the old English 
 lord?" 
 
 " No, no, no ; I didn t see him, Dock. I never seed 
 a real live English lord in my hull life. No, but Snagly 
 went into the hotel up thar, and seed him for me. 
 Snagly, the Injun agent ; Ginger, you know him ; pard 
 
THE COL. BILL WILLIAMS MINE, 147 
 
 of yours, eli ? Well, lie s smart. Gosh, all over. But 
 can t he talk ! You can t get a word in edgeways 
 where Snagly is. And can t he lie, though ; been a 
 member of Congress ; oh, can t he lie, though !" 
 
 Hereupon " Rocky .Mountain Kit" creaked out : 
 
 " And how do you know the old English lord has 
 come to Colorado to buy a mine ?" 
 
 " How do I know he s come to Colorado to buy a 
 mine ? What else do these big bugs come to Colorado 
 for? You don t s pose a feller comes to Colorado for 
 fun, do you ?" 
 
 " Come to Colorado to buy a mine, or else to be doc 
 tored. Every human bein that comes to Colorado 
 comes to buy a mine or comes to be doctored for his 
 health, don t he ?" spoke up the little doctor sharply. 
 
 There was a pause here, and the great leader looked 
 first at the steady stream of men pouring up and clown 
 the shaft with the regularity of little meal-buckets in a 
 great mill, and then at the doorway in the wall of rocks, 
 as if expecting some one. At length Ginger said : 
 
 " Got her salted, Colonel Bill ?" 
 
 Gayly lifting his glass and waltzing forward, and look 
 ing down into the shaft, and then prancing back, the 
 colonel answered : 
 
 " Salted ? I salted her and then, for fear I d forgot 
 it, I salted her ag in !" 
 
 Here a low chuckle of delight came from the region 
 of the great black beard, and the admiring miners 
 nudged each other with their elbows. The colonel con 
 tinued : " Why, I ve put in more honest labor a-saltin 
 of this mine than I ever done in my life afore. Salted ? 
 Well, I should illuminate !" The honest miner grew 
 thoughtful for a moment ; and then, setting down his 
 glass, said slowly : " I tried first, you know, boys, to 
 
148 MKMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 catch a syndercate a syndercate of lambs from New 
 York. Well, they sent out an expert. You all remem 
 ber him, boys. An expert ! And an expert from a 
 college ! Never seed a mine in his life afore. Well, 
 this expert, he wanted half to report favor bly. Half ! 
 Think of it, boys ! Wanted half of an honest miner s 
 money. I wouldn t give it. I ve got principle, I have. 
 You all know me." 
 
 " Yes, oh, yes ! We all know you." 
 
 There was a chorus of vociferous answers and another 
 drink ; then the colonel continued : 
 
 " Yes, I ve got principle. That was the trouble. I 
 wouldn t give him half, on a p int of principle, p int of 
 honor. It was too much. I offered him a third." 
 
 " And he wouldn t take it !" ejaculated the doctor, 
 as the honest miner mournfully shook his head. 
 
 " No ! No ! Then them fellows up the canon yon 
 der offered him two-thirds of all they got, and he took 
 it. No principle in them miners up thar at all." 
 
 " Ah, principle don t pay in Colorado, Colonel Bill," 
 sighed the doctor. 
 
 " Pay ! I lost a fortune right thar, gentlemen, on a 
 p int of principle, a p int of honor. But I ll catch em 
 this time, boys. Come up and drink again, every one of 
 you." Again the great swooping arm brought the boys 
 together in a knot at the rickety bar. " And you ll all 
 stand by me ?" cried the colonel, as he shot his glass in 
 the air. They all nodded assent. " I ll tell a thing, 
 and you swear to it. Oh, I m all here !" he added in a 
 vociferous tone. 
 
 Again all assented boisterously, as the colonel struck 
 his broad breast and ended his speech. Setting down his 
 glass and unloosening his back from the bar, with the 
 eye of a brave, battle-loving captain, he looked to see 
 
Till: COL. BILL WILLIAMS MIXE. 149 
 
 that everything was ready for action. lie glanced at the 
 creaking derrick, at the perpetual stream of men passing 
 up and down the shaft, pushed his hat a little farther 
 back from his brow, turned the quid of tobacco in his 
 cheek, and then tranquilly waited, certain of victory, 
 certain that at last he was to sell his mine, pocket the 
 money, and again see old Maine, Maria, and the little 
 ones. 
 
 " Shoo ! I thought I heard some one a-comin ," said 
 the doctor, as he lifted a linger and leaned forward, 
 looking toward the doorway. For a moment the miners 
 all craned their necks and looked ; but, as the expected 
 visitor did not appear, Old Kit creaked out : 
 
 " And how will you know him, Colonel Bill, when he 
 comes ? A live lord ! A real live English lord ! Hie 
 all gold lace down here, eh ? Jist that way in picter- 
 books, Colonel Bill. But will you know him without a 
 introduction, Colonel Bill ?" 
 
 " Know him ? Why, I d know a lord as far as I 
 could see him. Don t I know the stocracy ? Hain t 
 1 be n to Boston ? Oh, I ll know him. Why, I could 
 tell a lord by the noble look of his brow !" 
 
 The rickety, drunken old trapper seemed satisfied, and 
 tottered away, chuckling to himself as he jostled through 
 the crowd. 
 
 " A real live English lord ! All lace and gold, gold 
 and lace all up and down before." 
 
 " Yes, and he ll be here in a minute, too !" cried the 
 colonel. " Listen ! There he comes ! Pose, boys, 
 pose ! Look dignified ! Look your best ! Look your 
 darned level best !" 
 
 The miners all struck imposing attitudes, and the col 
 onel shouted out to old Kit, in a voice of thunder : 
 u Pose, I tell you !" 
 
150 MEMOJUE AND KIME. 
 
 But the old trapper only paused a moment in his 
 meanderings, and then, tottering helplessly back to the 
 colonel, fell laughing, maudlin-like, in his arms. It 
 looked as if he were going to be troublesome. The col 
 onel spun him about and again shouted as he pushed, 
 wrestled, and dragged him to the other side of the shaft : 
 
 " Now you stand in your place, you old juniper 
 stump, and pose !" He planted him hard, and again 
 shouted, as a stout, dumpy figure darkened the narrow 
 pass in the stone wall : " Pose, I tell you ! Hang you, 
 pose !" 
 
 Poor Kit tried to pose, but could not stand still. 
 61 Stand still and pose ! And don t you dare to move 
 till that old duffer comes !" cried the excited colonel. 
 Then, leaving the limp man with his knees smiting 
 together, he stepped back and mounted a pile of rocks 
 by the bar. " Now, boys, yank out your specimens and 
 be lookin at em and a-talkin about em, and a-talkin 
 about my mine. Say that the Col. P>ill Williams Mine 
 is the biggest thing in all Colorado. Say that the Col. 
 Bill Williams Mine is a bigger bonanza than the Com- 
 
 OO 
 
 stock !" 
 
 There was a flourish of rocks and a chorus of approv 
 ing voices. The colonel was hardly in a more exalted 
 state of mind than his men. The prospect of selling a 
 mine for half a million, together with the flood of Col 
 orado whiskey, had lifted them far above the plane of or 
 dinary expectation. u The Col. Bill Williams Mine is 
 a bigger bonanza than the Comstock," roared the miners, 
 as they rallied around their chief, and flourished their 
 long, ragged arms in the air. 
 
 As this proceeding was at its height, the stout, dumpy 
 figure at the gateway, clad in a very rough, soiled suit 
 of gray, advanced down the narrow stone pass to the 
 
THE COL. BILL WILLIAMS MINE. 151 
 
 inner edge of the wall, and looked on in mute amaze 
 ment. 
 
 The colonel was delighted with the enthusiastic be- 
 
 O 
 
 havior of his boys, and, with head high in the air, 
 shouted : 
 
 " That s splendid ! That s glorious ! Keep it up ! 
 Keep it up ! Keep it Observing something un 
 usual in the look of the crowd, the colonel turned, saw 
 the figure in the narrow passage, and pausing and lower- 
 injj his voice, queried : " Xo\v, who in the name of Old 
 Kick is that ? Get out of the way thai* ! Thar s a lord 
 a-coming ; do you hear ?" roared the disgusted colonel. 
 " Get out or come in, you bloated old loafer. Who is 
 he, Ginger, anyhow ?" 
 
 ".Oh he s a tender-foot, I guess. Get out of the way 
 thar*!" 
 
 " Oh, get out or come in !" shouted the colonel. 
 " Do you hear ? We are lookin for a gentleman." 
 
 The double chin of the stout, dumpy figure dropped 
 an inch or two. perhaps, but the man himself did not 
 move back, forward, or aside one single inch to make 
 way for the distinguished nobleman who had come to 
 Colorado to buy a mine. 
 
 The enraged colonel leaped clown from the rocks at 
 last in a fit of desperation, and, rushing forward, took 
 the stranger by the collar. 
 
 " If you won t go out, come in and clear the pass, I 
 say." And with one jerk he brought him half way 
 across to the bar. "There is a lord a-comin here, all 
 lace and gold and ruffles. Do you hear?" And then 
 he shook him till his teeth chattered. " Do you hear, I 
 say ; or are you deaf ? Or are you dumb ? Or what s 
 the matter with you ? Hain t you got no manners ?" 
 Again he shook him till the breath was out of him, and 
 
153 MEMORIE AXD RIME. 
 
 the stranger attempted in vain to speak. " 2s o ! Don t 
 you speak ! Don t you dare to speak to me ! If thar s 
 any speakin to be done, I ll do it myself. And don t 
 you dare to speak to that lord when he comes ; for I 
 know your grammar s bad. Now you stand thar and 
 pose !" and here, being quite out of breath, he planted 
 the half -strangled man by the shaft as if he were a post, 
 and belonged there as a part of the machinery of the mine. 
 
 " Pose, I tell you, and make an impression. And 
 when that old Lord Howard comes " 
 
 "Why, why, bless me soul, I I I m Lord 
 Howard !" at last gasped the honest Englishman. 
 
 "Eh? Eh? Bo you the lord?" 
 
 "I lam." 
 
 The colonel fell back against the bar. He did not cry 
 out. He did not curse. He did not even ask for any 
 thing to drink. 
 
 "Beaten ag in, boys," at last murmured the colonel 
 meekly, aside to the miners. " Another fortune slipped 
 through my honest grasp. Ah, Colorado s a hard 
 country to make a-livin in." 
 
 One miner, a green one, who had not been there long, 
 swore furiously for a moment, but, seeing he was alone, 
 and feeling how inadequate were even the most massive 
 oaths, he suddenly stopped, and then the silence that 
 followed was painful. They could hear the wicked little 
 coyote calling from the hills above, but that was all. At 
 last the two men began to gasp and gaze at each other 
 as they got their respective breaths. The Englishman, 
 who had been rubbing his throat, saw the bar, and, as if 
 resolved to see if he could still swallow, called up the 
 crowd with a jerk of his thumb, and treated promiscu 
 ously. This broke the ice ; for he swore lustily as he 
 drank, with the very first breath he had to spare. 
 
THE COL. BILL WILLIAMS MINE. 153 
 
 " lie s a gentleman," squeaked the doctor aside to 
 the colonel, as he wiped his mouth on his sleeve. 
 
 " Swears like a gentleman," answered the colonel. 
 
 " Treats like a gentleman," creaked Kit. 
 
 (( And pays like a gentleman," said Ginger, as he 
 raked in and clinked two sovereigns. 
 
 "Well, who cares for a live English lord, anyhow," 
 half sneered the doctor, taking heart again from his full 
 tumbler of Colorado lightning. 
 
 " We licked em at Bunker Hill, didn t we ?" cour 
 ageously responded the colonel, aside to his piping little 
 partner, and then, with the new inspiration upon him, 
 he advanced and, bowing profoundly to Lord Howard as 
 he reached his hand, he exclaimed with a flourish of the 
 arm that took in the whole Rocky Mountains : " You 
 are welcome, sir. Welcome to the balmy breezes, the 
 lofty altitudes, and the aurif rous regions of Colorado." 
 He broke down, struck an attitude again, and went on : 
 " The British Lion, sir and the American Eagle, sir. 
 The American Eagle, sir sir the British Lion and the 
 American Eagle sir sir sir I I I d like to sell 
 you a mine, sir. Xo no not this one. Another one. 
 Got another up canon. Can have it in full operation in 
 two hours, sir." 
 
 My lord seemed a bit dazed and did not respond. 
 
 " Come to Colorado for your health, I s pose, my 
 lord ?" piped in the doctor edgewise. 
 
 " Ho ! ho ! bless me soul, no !" pulled the old noble 
 man at last, with his glass to his eye, and a hand still to 
 his throat. 
 
 " Well, that s queer. Everybody comes to Colorado 
 for their health," answered the doctor. 
 
 " Of course, then, you came to Colorado, my lord, to 
 
154 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 * 
 
 buy a mine?" cried Colonel Bill. u Got the biggest 
 thing in America, sir !" 
 
 " Why, bless me soul, no ! I want no mine. I want 
 neither mine nor medicine. I I will you drink, gen 
 tlemen ?" He had learned a Colorado trick or two. 
 " The bloody alkali dust of Colorado makes me throat 
 hurt ; or was it the w iskey ? Hot ! bless me soul, that 
 was hot !" 
 
 The old nobleman wrestled bravely with the burning 
 liquid, and Colonel Bill, who now stuck like a burr to 
 his elbow, continued : 
 
 " Climate ! Climate, my lord ! Colorado s a hot 
 country. But I d like to sell you a mine up the canon, 
 sir ; or down the canon, or anywhere you please, my 
 lord ; forty foot vein, dips, spurs, and angles, all solid 
 silver, cept the gold in it. Spect to find it in a liquid 
 state on next cross-cut and intersection level. Like to 
 sell you that mine, my lord. Buy a silver mine, sir ? 
 I ll sell you a gold mine ; sell you a diamond mine !" 
 
 " Why, bless me soul, do you Colorado men think of 
 nothing but selling a mine? blustered the old noble 
 man, finally, after he had screwed his eye-glass in its 
 place and had looked long and curiously at the giant 
 before him. " Why, at Denver, a dozen men wanted to 
 sell me a mine before I got the dust out of me eyes ; 
 and here you all seem to think, talk, dream of nothing 
 else." 
 
 He went over to the bar and reached his hand to Gin 
 ger for his change. He had heard enough, and wanted 
 to go away. 
 
 " Oh, that s all right. That s all paid," answered 
 Ginger. 
 
 " I want me change. I gave you two sovereigns, me 
 man. I gave you two sovereigns." 
 
THE COL. BILL WILLIAMS MINE. 155 
 
 " Yes, yes, I know. That s all right. You see, sov 
 ereigns are at a discount in Colorado." 
 
 " Bless me soul ! Then I d better go at once, and 
 get on into Canada." 
 
 And he walked aside, and, big with unborn English 
 oaths, looked down into the now empty shaft. 
 
 " Don t want any mine," said the colonel mourn 
 fully, to the doctor. 
 
 " Nor don t want any medicine," gloomily answered 
 the doctor. " He s a sort of ole margarine lord, any 
 how, he is. Let s go for him !" 
 
 " Says he wants to git into Canada," chuckled the 
 colonel. 
 
 The big-hearted Colonel Bill "Williams was reckless 
 now. He had met with many failures in his stormy life 
 on the border, but none so inglorious as this he had just 
 encountered. He was in disgrace before all his men, 
 who had been appalled at the audacity of the stranger, 
 and were correspondingly losing confidence in Colonel 
 Bill. Now they stood about, gloomy, helpless, almost 
 penniless. If he could not sell the mine, he thought to 
 himself, he would at least sell the very green old English 
 man. Assuming a gay air of banter, he began : 
 
 " Didn t you say you wanted to git to Canada, my 
 lord ? I say, you ain t got far to go if you want to go to 
 Canada. The line runs right through my silver-mine 
 here," and he winked at the crowd back over his 
 shoulder, as he advanced toward my lord and drew a 
 line with his foot. " That s Canada, and that s the 
 United States. You pays your money and you takes 
 your choice." 
 
 The nobleman looked at him a moment in admiration of 
 this unexampled impudence. Then, as if believing all, 
 and quietly accepting the situation of things, he stepped 
 
15G MKMORIE AXD KIME. 
 
 forward and said : " Why, bless mo soul ! Is that 
 Canada ?" and this seemingly simple old man looked at 
 the spot with his glass. " English soil ! God bless old 
 England ! I love her ! I love every foot of her !" and 
 the honest old Briton crossed over and set down his foot 
 firmly. " And this is Canada, hey ? Bloody glad to be 
 again on honest English soil." Then, winking an eye, 
 not to that crowd, but to the north star that just grazed 
 the brow of the steep bluff above him, he pompously 
 pretended to take possession. His face was toward the 
 narrow pass in the great stone wall by which he had en 
 tered, and taking three or four duck-like strides forward, 
 he passed out, and they never saw him more. 
 
 The miners melted away in the darkness, one by one, 
 as the lights grew lower, and as the last torch flickered 
 out, the great speculator, whose feeble imitators have 
 since overrun the world, rolled himself in a blanket by 
 the side of his prospect hole, and left Colorado to the 
 wonderful stars and the coyote howling from the hill. 
 
 II. 
 
 THE COW WIDOW OF COLORADO. 
 
 RARE Colorado ! Yonder she rests, her head of gold 
 pillowed on the Rocky Mountains, her breast a shield of 
 silver, her feet in the brown grass. She is set on a hill 
 before all the world. She is naked as one new born ; 
 naked, but not ashamed. 
 
TIIE COW WIDOW OF COLORADO. 157 
 
 Thrown together in the barroom of the only hotel, tlic 
 miners of Leadville gathered about their great leader, and 
 looked up to him on this evening as to an Alexander. 
 
 The cow widow had returned from Paris. She would 
 come down from her rooms to see the boys. They knew 
 it well, for had not the local papers said that she had 
 returned, dressed fresh from the hands of Worth ? 
 
 The great broad-shouldered, tall, and altogether mag- 
 nificent Colonel Bill Williams, the leader of all Leadville, 
 loved the cow widow. And, indeed, who of us all did 
 not love her ? 
 
 With her cattle on a thousand hills, her bellowing 
 herds of sleek brown steers, her lowing, spotted cows by 
 every roadside, in every gulch and canon, branded with 
 a cross 6n the flank and this is why we came to call this 
 wealthiest and best of all the brave good women of 
 Colorado the cow widow. 
 
 Perish the man who would speak of her with dis 
 respect, or dream that aught but compliment is meant by 
 this sketch. I, who have eaten her bread and drank 
 milk many a time as I rode up the Rocky Mountains at 
 her ranch, am the last man, now that she has returned 
 again to Paris and assumed the reins of social leadership 
 for the fair of our land, to do aught but honor her. 
 And should this sketch be translated arid published in 
 the Revue des Deux Mondes, as others of my sketches 
 have been, I must beg monsieur to translate it with all 
 consideration and respect for this truly good lady, who 
 really was not to blame that we all loved her well and 
 wooed her ardently. 
 
 How jealous Colonel Bill Williams was of her ! He 
 devoutly hoped and he honestly believed that his suit 
 would be successful. And, indeed, each man of us there 
 hoped, in case he did not get her himself, that the 
 
158 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 colonel would come in on the homestretch the winner of 
 the race. In fact, it w r as really necessary that some like 
 good fortune should overtake him soon. He had mines, 
 it is true. He had a thousand mines, rich mines, exten 
 sive mines, marvellously rich mines, according to his own 
 account of them ; but somehow he was in debt head and 
 ears, and could not sell even his richest mine for a change 
 of raiment. 
 
 What Colorado miner cannot testify to the absolute and 
 most deplorable poverty of a gentleman who has nothing 
 in the world ]but a mine of solid gold and silver ? 
 
 The noble colonel had a partner in all his enterprises, 
 a little, pinched, squeaky, half-starved doctor, who had 
 a pair of greasy pill bags on his arm and enormous 
 spectacles over his nose. The nervous and anxious little 
 doctor was perhaps the only one of us there who w r as not 
 wooing the widow on his own account. But this gave 
 him a double force to work for his partner. These two 
 men, outside of wooing the widow, had each a purpose 
 in life. The colonel s other sole aim in life was to sell 
 somebody a mine make him swallow his accounts of its 
 marvellous worth. The doctor s purpose was to make 
 men swallow his medicine. 
 
 The colonel was not over well dressed. And who of 
 us was at that early day ? Perhaps it was this want of 
 the wedding garment that made him so madly jealous of 
 every strange or well-arrayed gentleman who chanced to 
 approach the presence of the coveted cow widow. 
 
 On this memorable night, as we waited for her to 
 descend to where we were all gathered to receive her in 
 what served as barroom, parlor, and hall, the moon hung 
 high and bright, and horses w r ere champing their bits at 
 the rack outside as if somebody w r as contemplating a long, 
 hard drive. 
 
THE COW WIDOW OF COLORADO. 159 
 
 Suddenly the door opened, and there timidly entered 
 the most perfectly well-dressed young man that had ever 
 as yet set foot in Leadville. 
 
 But as the cow widow was expected to descend from 
 the stairs, no one was looking in the direction of the 
 door, and the tall, well-dressed, but pale and anxious 
 young man stood there timidly soliloquizing to himself : 
 
 " Go West and grow up withthe country ! I ve come 
 West, and, instead of growing up, if I don t get a job 
 or strike something soon, Fll starve, grow down with 
 the country. But I won t be bad. Xo ! Why, before 
 I d lie like a Colorado miner, I d die. In Xew York I 
 had no money, but I had pride, the real old Livingston 
 pride ; landed in Colorado last week, and have been 
 hungry ever since. Pride, yes, I have pride ! I ll not 
 sink down to rags and revolvers, a nickname and a slouch 
 hat. Xo ! I, Richard Percival Livingston, of the city of 
 Xew York, was born a gentleman, bred a gentleman, and 
 I believe a gentleman can be a gentleman in Colorado as 
 well as in Xew York. Xo ! I ll hold my own in Colo 
 rado. 
 
 The doctor looked over his shoulder and, winking to 
 
 / o 
 
 the boys, merely said : 
 
 "A tenderfoot." 
 
 The colonel at the first glimpse was furiously jealous, 
 but, concealing his displeasure, said : 
 
 " So it is. I ll sell him a mine!" Then approach 
 ing, he continued to the stranger: " Want to buy a 
 mine, stranger T 
 
 " They all want to sell me a mine," mused the tall, cler 
 ical young man to himself; then, turning to the colonel, he 
 said timidly but earnestly : " Sir, should you miners of 
 Colorado see the Angel Gabriel descending von shin- 
 
ICO MEMOHIE AND KIME. 
 
 ing summits to sound the last trump, what would be your 
 first impulse ?" 
 
 The glorious colonel was not at all abashed or discom 
 fited, but in a sweep of his arm, like a cyclone, he cried : 
 " Sell him a mine ! By goll, sell him a mine !" Then, 
 approaching a little closer and lowering the cyclonic 
 arm, and softening his voice, he said, as he looked the 
 meek and modest new-comer in the face, " Buy a mine, 
 stranger ? Sell you a mine, whole mountain of solid gold 
 in it ! Buy a mine, Stranger ?" 
 
 The sublime audacity of the big Colonel Bill Williams 
 was conviction itself, and the pale, hesitating, hand 
 some young man modestly answered : ^ 
 
 " Yes, I I that is, supposing the transaction be one 
 of commercial amity in deference to to financial embar 
 rassments, sir."" 
 
 "Hey? 1 
 
 " I mean if you will sell me the mine on time." 
 
 " Time ! Boys, he wants time. Time ! Why, we ve 
 got time enough for the whole universe in Colorado ! 
 Bout the only thing we have got, eh, boys ? No, sir, 
 we want the pepper sauce right down, and don t you 
 fail to record it.". 
 
 "Well, no harm done, I hope. You offer to sell a 
 mine. I offer my terms. You decline. No harm, sir !" 
 
 " Not a bit, stranger, and there s my hand. I m Col 
 onel Bill Williams, the strangers friend," and here he 
 raised a hand to the side of his mouth, and said aside, " if I 
 can sell him a mine. This is Mr. Ginger, the friend of 
 the Indian agent, the Hon. Mr. Snagly. This is Dr. 
 Bags, my pard, and the friend of the cow widder, the 
 richest woman in Colorado. He ll doctor you, or get 
 you a job to herd sheep. He s got a powerful influence 
 with the widder." 
 
THE COW WIDOW OF COLORADO. 10.1. 
 
 The tall, timid stranger stood full an inch taller as he 
 walked aside and said to himself, " The richest woman in 
 Colorado ! And a widow. Widows will many. Now, 
 here is a wealthy widow. This wealthy widow must and 
 will marry. She will choose among those who surround 
 her. "Well, as between these men and myself," and 
 here he looked at his clothes, " the chances are for yon, 
 Mr. Richard Percival Livingston. For, whatever hap 
 pens, I ll be a gentleman. Xo ragged clothes, no re 
 volver, no slouch hat, no nickname for Richard Percival 
 Livingston." Getting confidential, he turned to the 
 doctor and said, k Yes, I should like to know the widow. " 
 
 4 You shall, you shall." 
 
 The colonel looked dark for a second, then shouted as 
 he slapped him on the shoulder : " You shall ! What s 
 your name ?" 
 
 The deep disgust of the tall young man at this famil 
 iarity was only half concealed as he answered: " My 
 name is Richard Percival Livingston, of Xew York City. " 
 
 The house nearly exploded with suppressed laughter, 
 and the colonel again brought his broad hand down on 
 the man s shoulder, and shouted : 
 
 " All right, Dick ; you shall know her. All right, 
 Slim Dick," and again he slapped the breath out of him. 
 While the tall, pale, and thoroughly disgusted young 
 man was pulling himself together, the thin, hatchet-faced 
 little doctor squeaked in his ear as he dangled the pill 
 bags on his arm : 
 
 "You look square, young man. Nothing triangular 
 or three-cornered ? You ll do, Slim Dick. Bu^if you 
 didn t come to Colorado to buy a mine, you came to Col 
 orado for your health, didn t you ?" 
 
 " Yes I I yes, I came to Colorado for my health, 
 I suppose." 
 
162 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 66 Well, if you came to Colorado for your health, you 
 of course need a doctor." 
 
 The tall, pale young man shrugged his aching shoulders 
 and muttered aside to himself: "Why, what does he 
 mean ? But I see I ve got to humor him in order to get 
 acquainted with the widow." Then, turning to the 
 doctor, he said : " Well, yes, doctor, of course, and if I 
 need medical advice, I 
 
 " Need it ? You need it the moment you arrive here. 
 It s while getting climated you need a doctor. Once 
 climated you live forever. Now, I m the doctor and 
 the bosom friend of the cow widow. And, by the way, 
 I ll introduce you, Dick;" and here the little squeaky 
 doctor poked him familiarly in the ribs with his thumb. 
 
 " Yes, and you take my advice, Slim Dick, employ 
 the doctor, build yourself up, get biceps like that and 
 go for the widder ;" and here the giant brought down 
 the big right hand with a force that almost extinguished 
 the slim stranger. 
 
 "Let me see your tongue," squeaked the doctor. 
 The tongue came timidly forth. " Just as I expected. 
 High living ! Coated ! Livin too high. Been eatin 
 too much. That s the way with you young bloods. 
 Kill yourselves eatin when you first come here." And 
 without another word the hatchet-faced little doctor 
 goes to the bar and Ginger hands him his other bags, 
 from which he takes a small paper of powders and hands 
 it to Livingston, saying : 
 
 " Now, you take this at once." 
 
 The tall, pale gentleman started back and trembled 
 where he stood : c But but you you may be mistaken 
 in the case, and, and 
 
 " Mistaken in the case ? I mistaken ? You insult me, 
 sir ! Take it ! Take it at once ! Perfectly harmless." 
 
THE COW WIDOW OF COLORADO. 163 
 
 u Well, if it is perfectly harmless, I suppose it will do 
 no harm ;" and the tall, pale gentleman shut his eyes 
 and meekly swallowed it. 
 
 " Good !" ejaculates the little doctor. " Now. a little 
 somethin to work it off, and I will have you sound as a 
 rock. Ah ! this high livin is a very dangerous thing. 
 Ginger, hand me out my biggest saddle-bags." He 
 took the bags, put on another pair of glasses, unbuckled 
 and took out a bottle. 
 
 The colonel and the doctor conferred for a moment 
 as the former unbuckled the enormous saddle-bags and 
 set down the bottle, and then the former came gayly for 
 ward and, again slapping the shoulder, cried: "Yes, 
 Dick, you must see that widder ride. Why, she s a 
 comet ! Twenty miles at a dash, and don t turn a hair. 
 Her ranch is twenty miles up the mountains. Been to 
 Paris ! Ah, she s no slouch ! Dresses ! "Well, she s 
 the only real copper bottom that ever I seed in Colorado, 
 and" here he leaned and spoke close and confidentially 
 " if I don t get her I d as soon you d have her as any 
 man I know, Slim Dick." 
 
 The tall, pale gentleman was nearly knocked out of 
 his boots this time, and as he turned away he mut 
 tered : 
 
 " Ah ! these vulgar fellows, with their nicknames 
 and rude familiarity. But I won t have it. I m going 
 to hold my own in Colorado." 
 
 " I say, Dick, can you ride ?" gaYly cried the colonel, 
 following him up. 
 
 " Ride ? Yes ; all gentlemen can ride." 
 
 " Bully ! Now, I sort of suspect she ll ask you to go 
 up to her ranch. She s powerful kind. And since she s 
 been to Paris she kind o takes a shine to clothes, ye 
 know. And now if she does ask you to go, you go. 
 
164 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 And if you do go for to take that twenty-mile ride, you 
 keep up with her. " 
 
 " I say, Ginger, you got a tablespoon ?" calls the doc 
 tor to the red-headed man at the bar. 
 
 " No, but I ve got a soup ladle somewhere." 
 " Good ! It will take about four doses. He s been 
 livin so hi<j;h. ; And here the doctor takes and ex- 
 
 O 
 
 amines the enormous ladle and pours out something from 
 the bottle, saying to himself : " Jest the thing I wanted. " 
 
 " Yes, sir," continues the colonel gayly, " she shook 
 a fellow here last year, a banker at that, because he 
 couldn t keep up with her. If she asks you for to go 
 with her, just you go, and you keep up with her if it 
 kills every lioss she s got on the ranch." 
 
 Again hope blossoms in the heart of the tall, pale gen 
 tleman, and while he disdains to respond to the vulgar 
 colonel, he says cheerily to himself : " I ll go with her, 
 I will woo her, win her." Then, feeling better, he 
 turned to the colonel and reached his hand, saying : I 
 thank you, sir ; I thank you with all my heart. You are 
 a little rough ; but you seem a frank, good fellow, and I 
 hope we shall be friends. I am a stranger, and don t 
 quite fit in in Colorado yet. And, to tell you the truth, 
 I don t intend to fit in altogether. No, sir, I don t like 
 nicknames, and I don t intend to have one. I am going 
 to hold my own in Colorado." 
 
 The doctor had put the cork in the big bottle and put 
 the big bottle in the tig saddle-bags, and, with his glasses 
 low down on his nose, was now coming slowly forward 
 from behind with a big ladle full to the brim. 
 
 u ]STow, Mr. Slim Dick, if you ll jest take this ere oil 
 to work off 
 
 " Oil ! Oil ! Good heavens ! But I I m not going 
 to take that. I I" 
 
THE COW WIDOW OF COLORADO. 1C5 
 
 " Oh, but yon are going to take it, Slim Dick ! You 
 see, your tongue s coated ; too Ligli livin . I had to 
 give you that ere powder to cut off that coatin . Of 
 course 1 had to give you sometliin pretty strong. For 
 you ve been a livin awful high. Yon know yon have. 
 So, yon see, I put in a good deal of ass-senic ! This has 
 got for to work it off." 
 
 " But I protest ! I won t take it !" and the tall, pale 
 gentleman starts for the door. 
 
 3 The doctor s left hand is clutched in the tail of his 
 broadcloth coat, and he turns him round and squeaks in 
 his ear : " Well, now, look here, Dick, yon will take it ! 
 Don t you attempt for to leave with that ass-senic in you. 
 I ve got my perfessional repertation to keep up. I don t 
 want no corpse on my hands. I ve got my repertation 
 to look after. Take it." 
 
 "Oil, oil! Oh, if there is anything I hate ! Xo, 
 never !" The doctor pecks with his sharp nose to the 
 grinning row of miners that lean against the wall, and 
 two come forward and clutch his shoulders from behind. 
 
 "Good! Hold his hands ! Til hold his nose." .The 
 doctor tiptoes up, seizes the nose, the ladle goes up, the 
 head goes back, bah! "There! You ll be climated 
 now in in well, very soon." 
 
 "I I I ought to murder yon, gasps and gags the 
 stranger. " Keep it down, keep it down," kindly insists 
 the doctor. The colonel comes forward and, again 
 slapping the shoulders, shouts out gayly : " Yon said you 
 were going to hold your own in Colorado. Do it, Slim 
 Dick. Do it or bust ! Hello ! here s the widder now." 
 
 Extravagantly dressed and followed by a Chinese maid 
 in native costume, the gorgeous widow descends the 
 narrow stairs. The queer little maid is loaded down with 
 enormous fans in each hand and bundles under her arms, 
 
166 HEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 wliicli slie is constantly dropping, and which the widow 
 is constantly picking up, while the helpless little heathen 
 closes her eyes and rocks to and fro on her wooden shoes, 
 with her little feet set wide apart. 
 
 The tall, pale man suppresses a rebellion in his stomach 
 at sight of this rich and beautiful widow, and each man 
 against the wall assumes his most imposing attitude as 
 Colonel Bill Williams delivers the address of welcome : 
 
 " Welcome back from Paris ! Welcome back to the 
 sublime and auriferous regions of Colorado. Welcome 
 back to your cattle on a thousand hills. Welcome to 
 this, the club rooms of the honest miners, of which I 
 am the honored President. Widow, you are welcome ! 
 Gentlemen, this is the rose of the mountain and the lily 
 of the valley. She shall never die, nor wither, nor grow 
 flat or stale or unprofitable or But the shouts of 
 welcome drown the eloquent address as the miners crowd 
 around. 
 
 " But, I say, widder," squeaks the doctor, as he leads 
 forward Livingston, who has crossed his hands low down, 
 " I want to present my very dear young friend, Mr. Liv 
 ingston, patient of mine, come to Colorado for his health. 
 Patient of mine, widder ; a gentleman and a patient of 
 mine." The widow answers merrily : 
 
 "Mr. Livingston, 1 am glad to see you; glad to 
 know you ; hope you re well." And here the gorgeous 
 widow shook his feeble hand so heartily that it was with 
 the utmost effort he kept down the rebellion in his 
 stomach . 
 
 " I set out to-night for a long, lively moonlight ride to 
 my ranch. Colonel Bill Williams here goes with me. It 
 is one unbroken gradual slope in the Rocky Mountains," 
 cried the spirited widow ; " not a tree, not a stone, not a 
 stump ; all as level as this floor, and in this full yellow 
 
THE COW WIDOW OF COLORADO. 1C? 
 
 harvest moon as light and as lovely as Paradise." She 
 pauses, approaches, lays a hand on his arm, and says, 
 " You will go ?" 
 
 "She is beautiful," whispers the ravished youth to 
 himself ; " and my fortune is made. Oh, thank you, 
 madam! Thank you with all my heart." He grasps 
 her hand, he gags a little, but recovers with effort, and 
 cries, fondly : "With all my heart. I love the saddle." 
 
 " Then you shall have a bold and spirited horse ;" and 
 again laying her hand on his arm, and looking in his face, 
 she says close and fondly : " And if I don t find you at 
 my side always, to the end of the clash, even to my gates, 
 good-by. But if you are there ! If you are at my side 
 to the end ha ! ha ! ha !" and her sweet low laugh was 
 more than mortal could resist. 
 
 "Madam, I thank you for this opportunity to show 
 how devoted I can be to you. At your side always ! 
 Madam, I will be at your side to the last leap over the 
 plains of Colorado, even to your gates." Then, while 
 the jealous colonel glared with rage, he leaned his pale 
 face forward and whispered, "And, madam, I would 
 that I could remain forever at your side, even down to 
 the gates of death." 
 
 i; AVe will know each other better by the time we reach 
 my ranch, through twenty miles of moonlight," mur 
 murs the widow, while the colonel glares and confers 
 hastily aside with his partner. 
 
 Then the little doctor comes lip and pulls at the sleeve 
 of his patient, who is whispering sweet compliments to 
 the widow. 
 
 " My fortune is made in Colorado, after all," says the 
 tall, pale gentleman to himself. 
 
 " How he loves me at first sight," murmurs the widow, 
 as she turns to hide her blushes. 
 
168 MKMORIE AND KTME. 
 
 And still the colonel glares and the little doctor tugs 
 at the sleeve of the hated rival. 
 
 " All ready!" roars a rough voice through the lialf- 
 opened door, through which three splendid and restless 
 horses are seen champing their bits and stamping fret 
 fully as the man at the door holds stoutly to the reins. 
 
 A moment more and the three are mounted, the horses 
 heads are turned to the Rocky Mountains, and they bound 
 away with the wind. The air is sweet and strong, full 
 of life, like wine. The moon has sown the road with sil 
 ver. Not a word for the first five miles. Oh, the glory 
 of a ride like that ! Speech at such a time is profanity. 
 
 At last, after nearly ten miles, the horses began to 
 slacken pace from exhaustion. Colonel Bill had just set 
 the rowels of his great Spanish spurs in the broad cinch in 
 order to push his horse and his fortunes, too, with the 
 widow, when a low, deep, rumbling sound was heard 
 directly ahead, and the colonel stood up in his stirrups. 
 The plain was black before a moving, billowy, bellow 
 ing mass, that was rolling directly upon the doomed riders. 
 He alone saw and understood the terrible doom that was 
 theirs. To the right ? To the left ? Fly before this 
 billowy sea of buffalo ? You might as well attempt to 
 flank or fly before the Atlantic. He laid his hand on the 
 widow s reins, checked her horse, and pointed to the peril 
 ahead. There was at first a pang of bitterness, then a 
 sense of grandeur, as he reined Livingston s horse at her 
 side. As the living sea rolled down to engulf them, he 
 bade them stand close and still together. Then drawing 
 a pistol he spurred on in front, and, springing to the 
 ground, waited there to die for. her he loved. 
 
 He did not have to wait long. The earth trembled. 
 A moaning sound came with tlie surging mass. He could 
 hear them breathe. An unpractised man would have 
 
THE COW WIDOW OF COLORADO. 109 
 
 said lie could see their black eyes shine as they rolled 
 down upon him. But that which glistened in the vast 
 tranquil moon was the bright crooked little horns of the 
 hairy monsters ; their eyes were closed utterly, else 
 they had been blinded by the dust. The horses stood 
 trembling, paralyzed with terror at the awful sight and 
 sense of death. The man dropped to his knee and 
 brought his heavy pistol to rest on his right arm as he 
 felt their breath in his face. A flash ! another ! and 
 another ! and then horse, man, monster, the three 
 rolled in the dust together, an indistinguishable mass. 
 But the herd divided as against a rock and rolled away 
 to the right and left, not even touching the two that still 
 sat their trembling horses. 
 
 The officers and soldiers in chase came up soon after, 
 and compelling the widow and her companion to dash 
 ahead at once to the ranch, lest a like calamity might 
 overtake them, drew the bleeding and broken and sense 
 less man from out the dust, where he lay wedged in be 
 tween the two dead animals. They bore him to the 
 military camp on the plain below. 
 
 How things whirl around in Colorado ! It is a windy 
 land. Livingston, too, became a great miner of Col 
 orado. He borrowed two six-shooters, and ascending to 
 the summit of a mountain, located a, mine. Before he had 
 been three months in Colorado he was heard boasting in 
 a barroom that he had discovered that mine by seeing 
 the solid silver flashing in the morning sun and knocking 
 its silver helmet against the morning star, as he tended 
 the cow widow s cattle ten thousand feet below ! 
 
 It was late in the summer before poor, brave old Colonel 
 Bill came forth, crawling and dragging on his crutches. 
 
 His squeaking little partner had been all the time at 
 
170 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 his side, and every morning at his bedside a great heap 
 of flowers and Colorado roses was to be found. But no 
 woman s face had beamed in upon him as he lay there in 
 the gloomy barrack save only that of Madge, the half 
 Indian girl, a strange, wild creature belonging to neither 
 race, and shuttlecocked to and fro between them, now a 
 nurse, now a guide, but always a friend to the suffering. 
 
 The brokeri-up old colonel had never spoken of the 
 widow. Thought of her ? What else had he to think 
 of? 
 
 " Pard, where do you get em ?" 
 
 "Get what?" 
 
 66 Them roses that s been a comin all summer, as 
 regular as the sun ?" 
 
 "Get em? I don t get em. Got somethin better 
 than posies to tend to ; got ruy doctorin to do ; guess 
 it s Madge." 
 
 " Ah, guess it is," sighed Colonel Bill, as he shuffled his 
 crutches together and again fell to thinking how Living 
 ston was having it all his own way with the cow widow. 
 
 Suddenly one morning the whole country round came 
 pouring into the post. The Indians, it was reported, 
 had broken out, and settlers and miners were fleeing for 
 their lives. 
 
 Livingston was among the first to fly from his mountain 
 of silver for protection. He entered the stockade puffing 
 and blowing, loaded down with pistols, overshadowed 
 by an immense slouch hat, without band or crown, and 
 the raggedest man in the mines. 
 
 "Indian war !" he said to himself. " Driven at last 
 from my mine of immense wealth. Everybody rushing 
 into the stockade to escape the Indians. Why, hello, 
 Madge ! Glad to see you ! Going back to the Keser- 
 vation, I hear. I hope you ll try and fit in to the Res- 
 
THE COW WIDOW OF COLORADO. 171 
 
 ervation. That s best, you see. ^so use a bucking 
 against it. See what 1 was when I came to Colorado. 
 I ve melted down ; fitted in like a square peg in a round 
 hole. Ah, if my Jerusha in Xew York could see me 
 now ! I am rich now, Madge. 1 try to conceal it, so 
 that I might not be robbed. But I am rich immensely 
 rich !" and he spread his hands over his patches. 
 
 " Why, Mr. Livingston !" cried the merry widow, en 
 tering the stockade as Madge left it. "I thought you 
 were up in the mountains at work in your great mine." 
 
 " Widow, you may well say great mine. For great 
 mine it is. And I am rich, very very very rich." 
 
 " Oh, I m so glad of it. You will be so happy now. 
 I congratulate you with all my heart. With youth and 
 health and wealth, how can you help but be happy ?" 
 
 "Happy? !Xo, I will never be happy again, never, 
 never be happy again, unless unless " 
 
 " Why, Mr. Livingston, unless what ?" 
 
 " Ah, madam, while toiling away up there in my 
 great mine, there in my mountain of wealth, that flashes 
 its silver sheen in the shining moon, that knocks its 
 helmet against the morning star 
 
 "Ah, Mr. Livingston." 
 
 "Yes, madam, while toiling up there my heart was 
 here. At last I could endure it no longer, and to-day I 
 dropped my pick while prying off a brick of silver, and 
 came to throw myself at your feet. I offer you all that 
 wealth. All ! The whole mountain ! I don t want it." 
 
 "OMr. Livingston!" 
 
 "Be mine !" And, holding his patches, he fell upon 
 his knees. " This is my first love." Then he moaned 
 aside: " What a liar I ve got to be in Colorado! If 
 Jerusha could see me now ! This is my first, my last, 
 my only love. Be mine !" 
 
172 MEMORIE AXD RIME. 
 
 Merrily the little woman laughed as the ragged man 
 arose from before her and a boy entered with a message. 
 
 " From her ! From the one woman I love ; and I 
 ought to have received it weeks ago !" and Livingston 
 read eagerly : 
 
 DEAR RICHARD : Come back at once. Father is in Eu 
 rope and mother is willing. Money no object. Come. 
 
 Yours, 
 
 JERUSIIA. 
 
 " Struck it at last in Colorado ! Stop, boy ! There 
 must be an answer. Got any paper, boy ? Well, lend 
 me your pencil, then. " And, tearing oif a paper cuff, he 
 read very rapidly : 
 
 MY DEAR, DEAR JERUSIIA : Yours finds me deep in 
 my silver mine, " The Jerusha." Am running a cross 
 tunnel to tap the silver level, where we hope to tind the 
 silver in a liquid state flowing through all its dips and 
 spurs and angles. At present we are in solid silver, and 
 find it hard to work. My dear, dear Jerusha, how con 
 stant I have been to you, heaven and the shining stars of 
 Colorado only know. 
 
 " Take that, boy. Take it and % ! Stop ! I must 
 add a postscript. " And again he wrote : 
 
 MY DEAR, DEAR JERUSHA : Telegraph me $500 to 
 the City Bank of Denver. This solid silver is so hard to 
 cut oif that I may be delayed an hour or two, and I would 
 not spare one sweet moment from you. 
 
 " Go ! Pay at other end. I follow with the next 
 soldiers for Denver." 
 
 The doctor came forth from the barracks, polishing 
 his specs on a corner of his coat-tail, and cordially wel 
 comed the widow. 
 
 " But Colonel Bill ; how is he ?" 
 
 " Better, better. All the time better. But broken 
 up. Why, he s got more joints in his legs than a lobster. 
 
THE CO\V WIDOW OF COLORADO. 173 
 
 " And does he tell me does he ever speak of me ?" 
 
 u Speak of you ? Why, when we first brought him. in 
 nere well, he didn t speak of anything else. But he 
 was out of his head then ; didn t know what he was 
 about, you see." 
 
 " But now ? Don t he speak of me now ?" 
 
 "Not now, widder. You sec, when he got up on his 
 crutches and got a good look at himself, and seed how he 
 was smashed up well, after that he didn t never speak 
 of you any more." 
 
 " Didn t speak of me any more after he saw how he 
 was broken up ?" 
 
 " Never any more." 
 
 " He ought to know that I want him to to know 
 that I am grateful, grateful. That I I I w r ant him 
 to come to the ranch and look after my cows." 
 
 The doctor stopped polishing the glasses with the cor 
 ner of his coat and gave a long, low whistle to himself. 
 Then he turned straight about, went into the barracks, 
 and brought out his partner on his crutches, muttering to 
 him as they came: "Now, old pard, don t put it that 
 way. If she loves you if she loves you why, why, she 
 loves you, smashed up or no smashed up." 
 
 " But I I m all gone to pieces, and in this little time 
 my head s got as white as the snow up yonder." 
 
 "Well, what of that ?" 
 
 " What of that ? Why, I won t blight her sunny life 
 with the few chilly days that I ve got left. No, I won t 
 tell her I love her." 
 
 " And why won t you tell her you love her ?" 
 
 u Because because I do love her so !" 
 
 " You saved my life !" cried the widow, eagerly greet 
 ing him. 
 
 " Widder, there is a mistake. I don t like to lie to you, 
 
174 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 or let yon believe a He. You know von was blinded by 
 the dnst and couldn t quite see." 
 
 " Yes, but I saw enough to know that it was you who 
 saved my life." 
 
 "Widder, I I it was not I that saved you. You 
 was blinded and couldn t see. It was not I, not I." 
 
 "Not yon I" 
 
 i No. It was the soldiers. Ha, ha ! It was that hand 
 some officer, wiclder. But, widder, it s good in you, but 
 there s some mistake. I I was sick a long time, widder. 
 I lay on my back there bandaged like a mummy, a long 
 time." 
 
 " And I from my ranch sent every day to ask how you 
 were. And every day with my own hand I gathered 
 flowers for your bedside and sent them ten miles to you 
 every morning." 
 
 " Oh, I thought it was Madge. Well. Madge, she came 
 and sat by my bedside, anyhow." 
 
 " And it was good in her." 
 
 Yes, that s it. It was good in her. And I 1 
 liked her for it." 
 
 You you liked her for it ? Why, yes, of course you 
 did." 
 
 " Yes. I I loved to have her, and I learned to love 
 her, and I love her now." 
 
 " You love her now ? You love her now ? Why, then, 
 I wish you well. I hope she will love you as as I love 
 you." 
 
 There was a gleam of delight in his eye not seen there 
 since the night of the dreadful ride. He let go his crutch 
 es, and the great hands rested on the little woman s shoul 
 der, as he said softly : 
 
 " Widder, not that. I don t ask you to love me, A 
 man who truly loves a woman don t never ask to be 
 
175 
 
 loved. He only asks of heaven and of her, permission 
 to love." 
 
 " And I give you permission," answered the brave little 
 lady, and the grizzled old miner knew his fortune and 
 his happiness were secure. 
 
 III. 
 
 THE sharp silver horn of the clear curled moon hang 
 ing so low in the marvellous sky of Colorado it seemed 
 you might tiptoe up and touch it from the hill-top slid 
 hastily down behind Pike s Peak on this evening, as if 
 it did not like to see what was about to happen. 
 
 This was in the earlier days of Colorado, when miners 
 slept on their newly discovered claims. A wall of rock 
 and debris from the mine made a sort of fortress against 
 the savage and the storm. 
 
 This mine here at Boulder Canon was a new discovery 
 the richest, the most marvellously rich that ever yet 
 had been found. But as all this has been said of nearly 
 every discovery, these glaring adjectives add but little 
 to the outline of this crude little sketch. This claim, 
 like all other fearfully rich ones, was also for sale. That 
 was why it was so rich. That was why all sorts of peo 
 ple from all sorts of places came straggling in through 
 the narrow passes left in the walls to where Colonel Bill 
 
176 MEMO III E AND RIME. 
 
 Williams and his friends grouped about their pine-knot 
 fire under the stars of Colorado. 
 
 Old Kit, the last of the trappers, a withered, dried-up 
 old man ready to blow away like a leaf into the river of 
 death a man who had held possession of all this land of 
 gold long years before sat moodily aside smoking his 
 last pipe of tobacco. Suddenly he started up, or rather 
 half undoubted, with his hand to his ear. 
 
 " What s that?" 
 
 " Guess you ve got -em agin, Kit." 
 
 " Got em agin ? It was a woman, I tell you. But I 
 forgot, you new fellers can t hear like old Mountain Kit. 
 Yes, thar it is agin ? Injin women up yonder ! Injin 
 women in trouble. Somebody s after em, 5 muttered 
 the old man, as he again doubled up and silently sucked 
 his pipe-stem. 
 
 " Shouldn t wonder. Snagly, the agent, is red-hot 
 after Madge, you know," squeaked out the little doctor. 
 
 " Yes, Madge and her old mother have got away from 
 the Reservation again," growled Ginger. 
 
 " And is he goin to take Madge back ?" queried Kit, 
 sympathetically, as he again half undoubted and shuffled 
 forward. 
 
 "Take her back, if it takes the whole United States 
 Army," said Ginger, savagely. 
 
 " Poor gal, poor gal !" mused the old trapper. " Why, 
 her father, boys, was white. Yes, white as as well 
 now, he was white as the whitest. And as for Madge, 
 why, she s whiter herself than that agent is." 
 
 The old man was full of rage, and stood almost erect. 
 
 " Now, you look here," and Ginger, like the bully that 
 he was, came close up to the old trapper, " Snagly the 
 Indian agent, is a pard of mine in a tradin post. And 
 you just go slow. If he wants that gal he ll have her." 
 
"COLORADO MADGE." 177 
 
 " Have her, will lie? "Well, not while old Mountain 
 Kit can lift a fist, he won t. Now, do you just stick a 
 pin there." 
 
 But, from the manner of the miners, it was clear 
 enough that neither Madge nor any of her unhappy race 
 had friends in that camp other than the old trapper. 
 
 Suddenly Madge stood, or rather crouched, as a hunted 
 wild beast might crouch, right there in their midst. Of 
 course she had come in through the narrow pass in the 
 stone wall that had been thrown up there by the long 
 strong arm of the now resting derrick ; but no one had 
 seen her enter. She had come as silent and sudden as 
 the moon had gone. Her limbs were as supple as the 
 panther s her footfall as light. She looked to be only 
 a waif a hungry, tired beggar. She had a spotted skin 
 over her shoulder, a short, tattered petticoat hung from 
 her waist ; her feet were naked ; her breast was almost 
 bare, save the storm of hair that hung and blew about 
 her shoulders as she crouched there looking back, as if 
 she feared she was followed, trembling, starting, quiver 
 ing, scarcely daring to breathe. 
 
 " Hello, Madge, what s the row now ?" 
 
 The girl did not answer. The stern and unfriendly 
 voice of Colonel Bill Williams and the half sneer on the 
 faces of all showed her at a glance that she had not fallen 
 among friends. 
 
 "Madge, why don t you claim to be white and stay 
 with the whites ? You have a right to do that, and then 
 they can t take you to the Reservation at all," added the 
 colonel, more kindly. 
 
 Should she open her proud lips to utter the scorn she 
 felt for a race who could treat her and her people as they 
 were treated I Should she stoop to say, My mother is 
 starving up yonder on the rocks only a stone s throw 
 
178 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 away, where she is hiding from the man- hunters ? Did 
 it need any words to tell these men that she would live 
 or die with her mother and her mother s people ? 
 
 " Say, Madge, you could get a job down at the Hurdy 
 Gurdy House to sing and dance if you d claim to be 
 white ; then you could get some clothes," urged the 
 colonel, as he looked at her thin, bare arms, while she 
 still stood trembling, looking back listening, her nostrils 
 extended, her pale lips set in silence. 
 
 Ginger, meantime, had risen and moved cautiously 
 around toward the door or entrance through the great 
 high stone wall, and, before she could guess what it 
 meant, he stood between her arid her beloved mountains. 
 She was a prisoner. The hard, merciless man laughed 
 wickedly as he threw his strong arm before her when 
 she was about to spring past him and escape. 
 
 She had not spoken yet. But now she turned about, 
 half threw up her hands in sign of submission, and for 
 the first time stood erect. 
 
 She was tall, and, had she not been starving, she would 
 have been strangely, savagely, fearfully beautiful. Had 
 she been well clad and cared for, she would at that 
 moment have looked the royal princess in body that she 
 was in soul. But this wild rose, set thick with thorns, 
 was only a bud that perhaps would never blossom. 
 
 These men all had seen her before. This canon, this 
 land, these mountains were her home, her inheritance. 
 She had played when a child with the shiny bits of gold 
 and silver that these strong men were going mad over 
 now. Her people had galloped their horses over all this 
 gold for a thousand years. But now the white man 
 had come and was digging, digging, digging everywhere 
 digging graves for body and for soul. 
 
 Yes, all these men knew Madge very well her pride 
 
"COLORADO MADGE." 179 
 
 and her recklessness. Not a man there that did not know 
 how impregnable was this girl s virtue, how she scorned 
 and despised them every one, too. 
 
 Ginger sat himself down on a rock near by the pass 
 in the wall and waited for Snagly, the agent, whom he 
 knew was after her and would soon be there. The girl 
 moved about the inclosure dimly lighted by the flaring 
 pine knots, but did not speak. This was a wild beast 
 that had been caught in a cage. She was gliding about 
 as if to try the bars, to see how to escape from the cage. 
 At last her eyes fell on a little uncovered tin bucket back 
 among the buffalo robes and blankets. She leaned over 
 cautiously and looked at its contents. It was full of 
 provisions sandwiches and a roast fowl for somebody s 
 supper. The girl glanced up toward the rugged moun 
 tain above her. Then she measured the height of the 
 stone wall before her. Her black eyes gleamed with a 
 terrible purpose. Her mother was starving up there. 
 She was going to steal this, leap up and over that wall 
 like a starving wolf and save her mother, who would die 
 rather than surrender and go back to the Keservation. 
 
 Old Kit, bent, broken, helpless, had sat all this time 
 back obscurely in the corner ; but his eyes, his every 
 sense, had followed and understood her. He came out 
 from his place and sat between the flaring and fitful pine- 
 knot light and the little tin bucket. But how could he 
 help her, this man who could not even help himself? 
 The girl did not seem to notice him, or indeed to see any 
 one now. She stretched her long slender arms just once, 
 as if to make certain that they were free ; she drew the 
 thong that girdled her a little together, put the storm of 
 midnight hair back a little from about her piercing eyes, 
 and that was all. She had not spoken one word. She 
 had not even deigned to look at the man who sat keeping 
 
180 MEMORIE AXD RIME. 
 
 watch at the narrow little pass through the great ugly 
 wall. Only old Kit seemed to suspect her purpose. 
 
 The miners talked in little groups together about their 
 mines. They had forgotten the girl was there. At 
 length she seemed ready. She threw her hand up to her 
 ear as if listening, looked up the ugly cliff above her 
 where her mother was hiding and starving, looked hard 
 at the steep and savage stone wall before her, and then 
 darting down like a hawk, she caught up the little bucket 
 and leaped across the open space at a bound and on up 
 the stone wall. 
 
 Up, up ! She stops. It is too steep for her failing 
 strength. The jagged quartz cuts her feet and hands 
 till the white wall of rock is red. Her hands relax their 
 hold on the sharp rock, and she falls back bleeding and 
 bruised at the very feet of the man who had sprung for 
 ward from where he was keeping watch at the pass in 
 the wall. 
 
 "Now, what do you mean?" called out the colonel. 
 
 66 Told you so !" shouted Ginger, as he took her by 
 the hair and forced her to rise. 
 
 " Injins will be Injins, boys," said the doctor, and he 
 picked up and set aside the little bucket. 
 
 " Now, I guess you ll help me keep her here till 
 Snagly comes, won t you? I seed you fellers lookin 
 dark at me as I sat there, you in particular, colonel. 
 Well, now, don t you see I m right ? Injins is Injins. 
 It s the cussed bad blood that s in em. The Injin will 
 out every time." 
 
 " Yes, send the little cuss back to the Eeservation. 
 Let Snagly have her if you like," said the colonel, as he 
 brushed the dirt from a bruised knee and limped around 
 to the other side of the fire. For he, too, had sprung 
 up and tried to reach the girl when he saw her about to 
 
"COLORADO MADGE." 181 
 
 fall. But whether to help or harm was not certain to 
 any one. 
 
 At mention of the Reservation the girl became wild 
 and desperate. She threw herself imploringly before 
 the strong, bearded colonel, and lifted her face as in 
 piteous prayer. 
 
 kt Well, what did yon go and steal for?" 
 
 Still the girl did not speak. But now she could not 
 lift her face. Her eyes fell to the ground, and she stood 
 mute, motionless all bowed and broken before him as 
 he accused her. 
 
 " Madge, if yon hadn t stole my dinner ; if you hadn t 
 clone that, Madge, I d let you go. Yes, I would ; hang 
 it, gal, I m sorry for you ; yes, I am, and if you hadn t 
 stole that little bucket, my gal, I d a chucked that Gin 
 ger out of that door before two minutes more and let 
 you go ; yes I would, Madge. But you see now I can t, 
 for you ve stole." 
 
 The trembling old trapper staggered forward, and, 
 standing between, cried wildly : 
 
 "She didn t steal ! I stole it and I giv it to her." 
 
 " What, you you, old trapper Kit ?" 
 
 " Yes, I I, old trapper Kit. Xow let her go, won t 
 you?" 
 
 " Yes, I will. .Go, gal," and the man pointed to the 
 pass in the ugly wall. 
 
 Just as he spoke there was a rattle of boot-nails over 
 the boulders in the little narrow pass, and Snagly, the 
 Indian agent, followed by an officer of the United States 
 Army, and two men, with manacles at their wrists, en 
 tered the little enclosure. The Indian agent the man- 
 hunter, with the United States Army at his back- 
 stopped there and glared at her. The girl lifted her face 
 now in silent petition to every man there. One after one, 
 
182 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 as her eyes met theirs, they turned away without a word, 
 shaking their heads sullenly. Three centuries of hatred 
 toward the Indian was in their blood. 
 
 " Caught at last, eh ?" triumphantly chuckled the In 7 
 dian agent, as he at length came forward, followed by 
 the men with manacles at their waists. He stood before 
 her, gloating at her utter discomfiture and helplessness. 
 Now she should be his his at last, body and soul. 
 
 She stood up, tall no longer. Her eyes had lost their 
 lustre, her long, bony arms hung down, low down, tired, 
 so tired now. Her magnificence of hair mantled her. 
 Her breast lifted a little. That was all. What could 
 she have been thinking about ? 
 
 The fire burned low at her feet. The stars above her 
 every one came out, stealthily, as it were, on tiptoe, 
 and peeped through the key-holes of heaven to see what 
 the United States was doing there now under the vast 
 free skies of Colorado. 
 
 " Caught at last, eh ?" again ejaculated the brutal In 
 dian agent, as he took one step nearer to the trembling 
 child, as if about to lay hold of her. 
 
 " Caught, caught ! Why, mon, you speak of her as 
 if she were a dog for the pound." The brawny Scotch 
 man who said this had just unrolled himself from a pile 
 of blankets back under the other wall, where he had 
 taken shelter after a hard day s digging. He was a for 
 eigner, and of a race slow to comprehend. He was now, 
 for the first time since the fugitive entered the enclos 
 ure, getting pretty well awake. 
 
 The agent only looked at the stranger and then mo 
 tioned his men to approach. The officer, who evidently 
 did not like his work, was slow to obey his master, the 
 Indian agent. 
 
 " Oh, save me from that man from that man of all !" 
 
183 
 
 at last cried the girl, throwing herself before the kindly 
 officer. " I will die rather than be taken. Oh, you did 
 save me once, you did help me once to escape " 
 
 u Quiet ! You will betray me and ruin nil. I dare 
 not help you, Madge, where the agent is." 
 
 " But it is death to be taken. Oh, it is more than 
 death!" 
 
 " Well, now, it is not so bad as that, Madge ! If 
 Snagly wants you, you go back," said Ginger, familiar 
 ly coming forward. 
 
 "But see how she trembles. This will kill her," 
 protested the officer. 
 
 "Oh, she s just making out! Say, where did you 
 sleep last night ?" called out the red-headed ruffian. 
 
 The girl shrank from the monster and crouched before 
 the stranger, as if he could help her. Then, turning 
 to the ruffian, she cried, as she threw her long, bony 
 arms in the air, and pointed to the rocks above : 
 
 k Where was I last night ? Up yonder on the high, 
 rocky ledge, with my poor starving mother, hiding ! 
 hiding ! hiding from him and his men ! And there 
 were rattlesnakes there in the rocks, rattling and hissing 
 all night as we lay crouching, hiding, starving !" 
 
 " Poor, poor lass !" muttered the foreigner. 
 
 " Oh, why is this ? You all can come and go at will. 
 But I I am hunted down like a wolf. Why is this ?" 
 
 " Bah, you Injin, don t take on like that," sneered 
 the agent, as he again approached. " Come, your moth 
 er must go back to the Eeservation. Don t you want to 
 go back too ?" 
 
 " I d rather die !" and with an instinct that saw some 
 thing kindly in the face of this quiet but determined 
 foreigner, she turned to him again and pleaded, " Oh, sir, 
 long, long ago, my father lived and was rich in horses 
 
184 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 and gold in yonder mountains long, so long ago, it 
 seems, for I was happy then, and oh, so wretched now ! 
 Long, long ago, and he loved me, and called me Margie. 
 But now, down at that Reservation they mock at me 
 when I pass, and call me Madge, Colorado Madge, Injin 
 Madge. Oh, I could kill them kill them, every 
 
 one !" 
 
 The Indian agent in the name of the United States was 
 growing angry and impatient. He began to fear that pos 
 sibly this girl might move this man s pity, and some 
 how at last escape him. He advanced closer, and rough 
 ly laid hold of her shoulder. 
 
 t( Come, come now, I want to be gentle with you. 
 But, remember, 1 am your lawful guardian, and I must 
 take you back. Come, go back peacefully under my 
 protection." 
 
 The girl sprang from him and threw back her hair. 
 Her whole form shook, but it was not with fear now. 
 
 "Your protection! Your protection! What is it? 
 To see my mother s people sicken and perish on the 
 deadly Reservation, with only the Great Spirit to heed 
 or to pity them ? To see a race of warriors die in savage 
 silence, while your Great Father at Washington, and his 
 chiefs about him, hug themselves in happiness and 
 boast to the world of peace and prosperity in the land ? 
 Your protection ! What is it ? To see little children 
 starve that you may grow rich ? To see helpless women 
 debased ? To bear your insults, your persecutions ? 
 Yours, yes, yours ! No ! no ! I d rather live with the 
 rattlesnakes ! 
 
 " Now, look here, none of that ! Remember, I don t 
 take one more word of insult. So come. And come 
 right along now." 
 
 The brute clutched her thin shoulder angrily, and 
 
"COLORADO MADGE." 185 
 
 threw her toward the two men with the manacles as he 
 spoke. 
 
 But the girl sprang back to the side of the stranger, 
 and, half hiding there as the agent again attempted to 
 take her, cried out in her desperation : 
 
 " Don t you touch me ! Don t you dare to touch me, 
 or I will kill you !" 
 
 "!N"ae, don t you touch the lass ! Don t you dare to 
 touch her ! If you do, begad, sir, I ll The 
 mighty fist was in the air, but he was too angry to finish 
 the sentence. lie did not want to talk now. He 
 wanted to fight. 
 
 Snagly, the Indian agent in the name of the United 
 States, fell back before the lifted fist of this foreigner 
 and the gleaming eyes of the half-crazed girl, and 
 cried : 
 
 6t Captain, I call upon you to enforce my authority. 
 Arrest and deliver me that girl !" 
 
 " You wretch !" muttered the officer, between his 
 teeth, as he drew his sword ; then, hesitating, he let its 
 point fall to the ground. Whether he had drawn his 
 sword for the agent or the stranger was not certain. 
 
 u Oh, you will help me!" cried the girl to the 
 officer. 
 
 " Madge, Madge ! A soldier can only obey orders. 
 Alas ! the laws make this man my master. An Indian 
 agent commands the army !" 
 
 Once more Snagly attempted to lay hold of the 
 almost frenzied girl. But the man from under England s 
 nag threw him back and turned to the girl. 
 
 " Come here, me lass !" And throwing one arm 
 about her he shook his fist at Snagly. " You, stop 
 there. There s the line ! Xow you cross that, and if I 
 don t knock you down, blow me ! No true Briton 
 
186 MEMORIE AXD RIME. 
 
 allows any innocent lass to be put in chains, whether she 
 be red or black or white, and I am a son of bonnie 
 Briton !" 
 
 " Well, son of Briton you may be, but this ain t 
 British soil, 1 shouted Snagly. The stranger started 
 at this ; he held his head in thought, and Snagly con 
 tinued : " No, you ain t on British soil here !" 
 
 "Not on British soil. Not on brave old Britain s 
 soil." The man said this as to himself, arid then, 
 slowly, tenderly, pitifully, lifting up the now almost 
 prostrate child, he handed her toward the agent, saying : 
 "Well, then, me poor, poor lass, I ll have to giv^e ye 
 up. I can t save you, lass, I can t. Here, sir, take her. 
 But please, sir, treat her gently. She s only a poor, 
 friendless lass, sir. Treat her gently, I implore you !" 
 
 " Mind your own affairs, and keep your advice to 
 yourself," cried Snagly, as he again clutched the girl 
 and threw her toward the men. 4i There ! Iron her !" 
 
 The girl no longer resisted or remonstrated now. Her 
 head bent very low. Meekly and mechanically her two 
 bony little hands fell across each other to receive the 
 cold rattling shackles. Her hair hung down about her 
 bended face, as if to hide the blush of shame that mantled 
 it in her captivity. 
 
 The rnouth of Colonel Bill Williams had been working ; 
 had been watering to devour that monster, the agent of 
 these United States. His hands had clutched till his 
 h nger-nails nearly drew blood from his palms. But the 
 rattle of chains now seemed to awaken him to* a sense of 
 the awful insult that was being put upon his country, 
 his manhood, and his presence. He caught up the 
 nearest thing at hand a pick that leaned against the 
 wall ; he dashed forward, throwing the men with their 
 manacles to the ground, and roared with the voice of a 
 
COLORADO MADGE." 187 
 
 Numidian lion, as he cleared tlie way f or the girl through 
 the ugly wall. 
 
 " Well, if this ain t British soil it is God Almighty s 
 soil, and you can t iron her ! There, girl ! go, as free 
 as the winds of Colorado !" 
 
 The girl started up with all the grateful remembrance of 
 her race in the single glance she gave her deliverers, and 
 she passed out, with her face lifted to the cliff above. 
 And old Kit stood there as she passed, and adroitly 
 forced something into her brown hand for the hungry 
 mother on the rocky hill. Surely, with "the contents of 
 the little tin bucket went a God s blessing on her from 
 the heart of every man there, save and except the agent 
 of these United States and the cowering red-headed 
 deputy. 
 
The body is not much. Ticere best 
 Take up the soul and leave the rest. 
 It seems to me the man who leaves 
 The soul to perish, is as one 
 Who gathers up the empty sheaves 
 When all the golden grain is done. 
 
V. 
 RHYMES FOE THE EIGHT. 
 
 TO RUSSIA. 
 1 Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth 1" Bible. 
 
 WHO tamed your lawless Tartar blood ? 
 
 What David bearded in her den 
 
 The Russian bear in ages when 
 You strode your black, unbridled stud, 
 A skin-clad savage of the steppes ? 
 Why one who now sits low and weeps, 
 Why one who now wails out to you 
 The Jew, the homeless, hated Jew. 
 
 Who girt the thews of your young prime 
 And bound your fierce, divided force? 
 Why, who but Moses shaped your course 
 
 United down the grooves of time ? 
 
 Your mighty millions, all to-day 
 
 The hated, homeless Jews obey. 
 
 Who taught all histories to you ? 
 
 The Jew, the hated, homeless Jew. 
 
 Who taught yon tender "Bible tales 
 
 Of honey-lands, of milk and wine? 
 
 Of happy, peaceful Palestine ? 
 Of Jordan s holy harvest-vales ? 
 Who gave the patient Christ ? I say, 
 Who gave your Christian creed ? Yea, yea, 
 Who gave your very God to you ? 
 The Jew ! The Jew ! The hated Jew ! 
 
MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 MOTHER EGYPT. 
 
 DARK-BROWED she broods with weary lids 
 
 Beside her Sphynx and Pyramids, 
 
 With low and never-lifted head. 
 
 If she be dead, respect the dead ; 
 
 If she be weeping, let her weep ; 
 
 If she be sleeping, let her sleep ; 
 
 For lo, this woman named the stars ! 
 
 She suckled at her tawny dugs 
 Your Moses while you reeked in wars 
 
 And prowled your woods, nude, painted thugs. 
 
 Then back, brave England, back in peace 
 
 To Christian isles of fat increase ! 
 
 Go back ! Else bid your high priest take 
 
 Your great bronze Christs and cannon make ; 
 
 Take down their cross from proud St. Paul s 
 
 And coin it into cannon balls ! 
 
 You tent not far from Nazareth. 
 
 Your camp spreads where His child feet strayed. 
 If Christ had seen this work of death ! 
 
 If Christ had seen these ships invade ! 
 
 I think the patient Christ had said, 
 
 " Go back, brave men ! Take up your dead ; 
 
 Draw down your great ships to the seas : 
 
 Repass the gates of Hercules. 
 
 Go back to wife with babe at breast, 
 
 And leave lorn Egypt to her rest." 
 
 Is Christ then dead as Egypt is ? 
 
 Ah, Mother Egypt, torn in twain ! 
 There s something grimly wrong in this 
 
 So like some gray, sad woman slain. 
 
 What would you have your mother do ? 
 Hath she not done enough for you ? 
 Go back ! And when you learn to read, 
 Come read this obelisk. Her deed 
 Like yonder awful forehead is 
 Disdainful silence like to this. 
 
RHYMES FOR THE RIGHT. 191 
 
 What lessons have you raised in stone 
 
 To passing nations that shall stand ? 
 Like years to hers will leave you lone 
 
 And level us yon yellow sand. 
 
 St. George, your lions, whence are they ? 
 
 From awful, silent Africa. 
 
 This Egypt is the lion s lair ; 
 
 Beware, young Albion, beware ! 
 
 I know the very Nile shall rise 
 
 To drive you from this sacrifice. 
 
 And if the seven plagues should come, 
 
 The red seas swallow sword and steed. 
 Lo ! Christian lands stand mute and dumb 
 
 To see thy more than Moslem deed. 
 
 MIRIAM. 
 
 YEA, thou and I for wondrous seas, 
 
 Seas emptied wide of merchant sail, 
 With prows set seaward and a breeze 
 That breaks and gathers to a gale : 
 Sail on ! God with us, we will go, 
 
 With never shred of canvas furled, 
 To seek, where only God may know, 
 Some holy Isle of under-world ; 
 Thou and I, 
 Just thou and I. 
 
 What leaden shapes are these, that cling 
 
 And crowd our decks and load us down ? 
 Come ! cast in sea each sodden thing ; 
 Let these turn back or let them drown. 
 
 They would not know the wondrous sea, 
 They could not love the lonely Isles ; 
 Once rid of these, well rid of these, 
 We sail a million shining miles ; 
 Thou and I, 
 Sweet thou and I. 
 
MEMORIE AND 11IME. 
 
 Yea, haply now mid hush and peace, 
 
 Far, far as sea-lost star is seen, 
 God s hand is lifting from the seas 
 Some Isle of splendor for my queen. 
 
 Sing palm -set land in God s right hand. 
 
 "With opal sea and ardent sky, 
 Where only thou and I may land 
 May land and love for aye and aye ; 
 Thou and I, 
 Christ, thou and I. 
 
 JEWESS. 
 
 MY dark-browed daughter of the sun, 
 Bear Bedouin of the desert sands, 
 Sad daughter of the ravished lands, 
 Of savage Sinai, Babylon, 
 
 Egypt-eyed, thou art to me 
 A God-encompassed mystery ! 
 
 1 see sad Hagar in thine eyes ; 
 The obelisks, the pyramids, 
 
 Lie hid beneath thy drooping lids. 
 The tawny Nile of Moses lies 
 Portrayed in thine own people s force 
 And proudest mystery of source. 
 
 The black abundance of thy hair 
 
 Falls like some sad twilight of June 
 
 Above the dying afternoon, 
 
 And mourns thy people s mute despair. 
 
 The large solemnity of night, 
 
 O Israel, is in thy sight ! 
 
 Then come where stars of freedom spill 
 Their splendor, Jewess. In this land, 
 The same broad hollow of God s hand 
 That held you ever, outholds still. 
 And whether you be right or nay, 
 Tis God s, not Russia s, here to say. 
 
RHYMES FOR THE RIGHT. 193 
 
 ILLINOIS. 
 
 A PISTOL shot next my own garret nest, 
 
 And with face like a god he lies dead and alone : 
 
 Lies stark on his back ; a hand outthrown, 
 
 As disdaining rest, on the vanquished breast, 
 
 And a look of battle in his glorious eyes 
 
 As one struck dead by a cannon shot. . . . 
 
 Starved or dishonored ? It matters not ; 
 
 Nor whether betrayed or otherwise. 
 
 I only know that he fell last night ; 
 
 I only know that he fights no more ; 
 
 I only know that he fell in the fight, 
 
 Fighting as never fought man before. 
 
 Shot dead in the fight ! Not a syllable known 
 Of name or of place. But scratched on the wall 
 With a nail, " Illinois" and that is all. 
 Then deep in the window stands all alone 
 And tattered and torn, like a flag in war, 
 One starved stalk of corn in a broken jar. 
 O banner of corn, with sweet memories 
 Of mother, of fields, and of fruitful trees ! 
 O boy from the furrows of Illinois ! 
 
 boy with thy banner to the topmost wall, 
 
 1 will nourish this corn, poor, pitiful boy, 
 Till I, too, vanquished, shall fighting fall. 
 
 Good mother, that waits in the far corn-fields, 
 He will never come back to your arms any more, 
 Grow lilies for him ; his battles are o er. 
 He is borne to his rest on his battle-shield. . 
 Good mothers that wait, wherever you are, 
 Oh ! pity us, pray for us every one 
 That has left sweet fields for the smoke and dun 
 Of the City s walls in this ceaseless war. 
 How oft we have cried : O Christ for the fight 1 
 When soldiers in battle rode reckless down 
 And stormed in a day and so took the town, 
 Or, sword in hand, they were slain outright ! 
 
194 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 ye in the beautiful fields of corn, 
 Content and tranquil and far away, 
 Lift up your hearts and be glad all day ; 
 Lift up moist eyes like the dews of morn ; 
 For I tell you tis harder to win a town 
 And to hold it for even a year your own. 
 Than ever were gates when kings went down 
 With army and banners to win a throne. 
 Then a tear for the soldier who fell last night, 
 With banner of corn in a breach of the wall ; 
 For to every hundred that win this fight 
 
 1 tell you a hundred thousand fall. 
 
 WASHEE WASHEE. 
 
 BEOWN JOHN he bends above his tub ; 
 
 In cellar, alley, anywhere 
 
 Where dirt is found, why John is there ; 
 
 And rub and rub and rub and rub. 
 
 The hoodlum hisses in his ear : 
 
 " Git out of here, you yeller scrub !" 
 
 He is at work, he cannot hear ; 
 
 He smiles that smile that knows no fear ; 
 
 And rub and rub and rub and rub, 
 
 He calmly keeps on washing. - 
 
 Git out o here ! ye hay thin, git ! 
 Me Frinch ancisthors fought an blid 
 Fur this same fraadom, so they did, 
 An I ll presarve it, ye can bit ! 
 Phwat honest man can boss a town ? 
 Or burn anither Pittsburgh down ? 
 Or beg ? Or sthrike ? Or labor shirk 
 Phwile yez arc here an want ter work ? 
 Git out, I say ! ye hay thin, git ! " 
 And Silver Jimmy shied a brick 
 That should have made that heathen sick ; 
 But John, he kept on washing. 
 
RHYMES FOR THE RIGHT. 195 
 
 Then mighty Congress shook with fear 
 At this queer, silent little man, 
 And cried, as ou\y Congress ran : 
 " Stop washing and git out of here ! " 
 The small brown man, he ceased to rub, 
 And raised his little shaven head 
 Above the steaming, sudsy tub, 
 And unto this great Congress said, 
 Straightforward, business-like, and true : 
 "Two bittee dozen washee you ! " 
 Then calmly went on washing. 
 
 Oh ! honest, faithful little John, 
 If you will lay aside your duds, 
 And take a sea of soap and suds 
 And wash out dirt} Washington ; 
 If you will be the Hercules 
 To cleanse our Stables clean of these 
 That all such follies fatten on, 
 There s fifty million souls to-day 
 To bid you welcome, bid you stay 
 And calmly keep on washing. 
 
 TO EACH EL IX RUSSIA. 
 
 "To bring them unto a good laud and a large ; unto a land flowing with 
 milk and honey." 
 
 O THOU, whose patient, peaceful blood 
 Paints Sharon s roses on thy cheek, 
 And down thy breasts plays hide and seek, 
 Six thousand years a stainless flood, 
 Rise up and set thy sad face hence. 
 Eise up and come where Freedom waits 
 Within these white, wide ocean-gates 
 To give thee God s inheritance ; 
 To bind thy wounds in this despair ; 
 To braid thy long, strong, loosened hair. 
 
 O Rachel, weeping where the flood 
 Of icy Volga grinds and flows 
 
 Against his banks of blood-red snows 
 
 White banks made red with children s blood 
 
196 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 Lift up thy head, be comforted : 
 For, as thou didst on manna feed, 
 When Russia roamed a bear in deed, 
 And on her own foul essence fed, 
 So shalt thou nourish as a tree 
 When Rusk and Cossack shall not be. 
 
 Then come where yellow harvests swell ; 
 
 Forsake the savage land of snows ; 
 
 Forget the brutal Russian s blows ; 
 
 And come where Kings of Conscience dwell. 
 
 O come, Rebecca at the well ! 
 
 The voice of Rachel shall be sweet, 
 
 The Gleaner rest safe at the feet 
 
 Of one who loves her ; and the spell 
 
 Of Peace that blesses Paradise 
 
 Shall kiss thy large and lonely eyes. 
 
 WE SCRIBES. 
 
 THE builders of cities, of worlds, are we, 
 
 The unnamed scribes, and of unknown worth ; 
 For we are the kinsmen of Progress, and he 
 
 The one Prince we serve on the whole wide earth. 
 Nor gold, nor glory, nor name we claim 
 
 We ask but the right, unfettered to fight ; 
 To name a wrong by its shameless name ; 
 
 To slay the wrong for the love of the Right . 
 
 The sentries of cities, of worlds, are we, 
 
 Each standing alone on his high watchtower ; 
 We are looking away to the land, to the sea ; 
 
 We have only a lamp in the midnight hour. 
 Then leave us the right to fight or to fall, 
 
 As God may will, in the front of the fight, 
 Unchallenged, unquestioned for the good of all, 
 
 For the truth that lives, for the love of the Right. 
 
 The givers of glory to nations are we, 
 The builders of shafts and of monuments 
 
 To soldiers and daring great men of the sea ; 
 But we are the homeless, strange dwellers in tents, 
 
RHYMES FOR THE RIGHT. 197 
 
 With never a tablet or high-built stone. 
 
 Yet what care \ve who go down in Ihe fight, 
 Though we live unnamed, though we die unknown, 
 
 If only we live and we die for the Right ? 
 
 There are brighter things in this world than gold, 
 
 There are nobler things in this world than name 
 To silently do with yoiir deeds untold, 
 
 To silently die unnoised to fame. 
 Then forth to the fight, unnamed and alone, 
 
 Let us lead the world to its destined height : 
 Enough to know, if but this be known, 
 
 We live and die in the runks for the Eight ! 
 
 A FLOWER FROM A BATTLE-FIELD. 
 
 The cannon-shot ploughed these fields of ours long ago 
 deep and wide. Some flowers have grown up in the 
 furrows. And while I would celebrate no battle in 
 song, still I find some pitiful little incidents growing out 
 of our late dreadful war which go straight to the heart. 
 And these little deeds of simple and unnamed soldiers will 
 survive the brigadiers all. Here is a little incident sent 
 me from Indiana, which I have put in verse. I had 
 long ago heard of the old \V abash schoolmaster who 
 nailed up his cabin school-house and marched away with 
 his scholars to the war, but the heart of the story is new 
 to me. 
 
 "GOING rp HEAD: AN OLD SOLDIER S STORY. 
 
 THE low school-house stood in a green Wabash wood, 
 Lookin out on long levels of corn like a sea 
 A little log houSfe, hard benches and we, 
 
 Big barefooted boys, and rotigh uns, we stood 
 In line with the gals and tried to go head 
 At spellin each day when the lessons was said. 
 
198 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 But one, Bally Dean, tall, bony, and green 
 
 As green corn in the milk, stood fast at the foot 
 Stood day after day, as if he d been put 
 
 A soldier on guard there, did poor Bally Dean. 
 And stupid ; God made him so stupid, I doubt- 
 But I guess God who made us knows what He s about. 
 
 He d a long way to walk. But he wouldn t once talk 
 Of that, nor the chores for his mother, who lay 
 A-shakin at home. Still, de.y after day 
 
 He stood at the foot till the class gan to mock ! 
 
 Then to master he plead, " Oh, I d like to go head." 
 Now it wasn t so much, but the way it was said. 
 
 Then the war struck the land ! Why, that barefooted band 
 It just nailed up that door, and the very next day, 
 With master for Cap n, went marchin away ; 
 
 And Bally, the butt of the whole Wubash band ! 
 But he bore with it all, yet once firmly said, 
 "When I get back home, I m a-goin up head !" 
 
 Oh, that school-house that stood in the wild Wabash wood ! 
 The rank weeds were growin , white ghosts through the floor 
 The squirrels hulled nuts on the sill of the door, 
 
 And the gals stood in groups scrapin lint where they stood. 
 And we boys ! How we sighed ; how we sickened and died 
 For the days that had been, for a place at their side ! 
 
 Then one, fever-crazed, and his better sense dazed 
 And dulled with heart-sickness, all duty forgot : 
 Deserted, was taken, condemned to be shot ! 
 
 And Bally Dean, guardin his comrade half-crazed, 
 Slow paced up and down while he slept where he lay 
 In the tent waitin death at the first flush of day. 
 
 And Bally Dean thought of the boy to be shot, 
 Of the fair girl he loved in the woods far away ; 
 Of the true love that grew like a red rose of May ; 
 
 And he stopped where he stood, and he thought and he 
 
 thought. 
 
 Then a sudden star fell, shootin on overhead, 
 And he knew that his mother beckoned on to the dead. 
 
RHYMES FOR THE RIGHT. 199 
 
 And he said, " What have I? Though I live, though I die, 
 Who shall care for me now ?" Then the dull muffled drum 
 Struck his ear, and he knew that the master had come 
 
 With the squad. And he passed in the tent with a sigh. 
 
 Then the doomed lad crept forth, and the drowsy squad led, 
 With low-trailin guns to the march of the dead. 
 
 Then, with face turned away tow rd a dim streak of day, 
 And his voice full of tears, the poor bowed master said, 
 As he fell on his knees and uncovered his head, 
 
 "Come, boys, it is school-time, let us all pray." 
 And we prayed. And the lad by the coffin alone 
 Was tearless, was silent, was still as a stone. 
 
 "In line," master said, and he stood at the head ; 
 But he couldn t speak now. So he drew out his sword, 
 And dropped the point low for the last fatal word. 
 
 Then the rifles rang out, and a soldier fell dead ! 
 
 And the master sprang forward. " God help us," he said, 
 " It is Bally, poor Bally, and he s gone up head !" 
 
PETER COOPER. 
 DIED 1883. 
 
 Give honor and love forevermore 
 To this great man gone to rest ; 
 
 Peace on the dim Plutonian shore, 
 Rest in the land of the blest. 
 
 J reckon him greater than any man 
 
 That ever drew sword in war ; 
 I reckon him nobler than king or khan t 
 
 Braver and better by far. 
 
 And wisest he in this whole wide land 
 Of hoarding till bent and gray / 
 
 For all you can hold in your cold dead hand 
 Is what you have given away. 
 
 So, whether to wander the stars or to rest 
 
 Fbrever hushed and dumb, 
 He gave with a zest and he gave his best 
 
 And deserves the best to come. 
 
VI. 
 IN MEMOEIAM. 
 
 I. 
 
 JOSEPH LANE SENATOR. 
 
 Died 1880. 
 
 I DO not know where General Lane was born. I do 
 not care. This unimportant fact can be found in almost 
 any book of biographies, however. In truth, the place 
 of a man s birth or death, the date of these events, are 
 of the least consequence. The world is so full, the his 
 tories are so ill led with illustrious names, that one who 
 attempts to remember the dates of their birth, death, and 
 so on, is in danger of remembering little else. I doubt, 
 indeed, if it is important to remember a man s name ex 
 cept in so far as it stands out as an expression signifying 
 some great example of virtue or of valor. These exam 
 ples by the wayside of life as we walk on, lifting up like 
 a cross on an altar in a dark night with a lamp burning 
 these are what serve us, light us, do us good. "We need the 
 light. We do not really need to know even the name 
 of the saint, much less the date of his birth or death. 
 
 Lane first became known as a member of Congress, 
 
MEMO HI E AND RIME. 
 
 from Indiana. He next volunteered as a private soldier 
 in that most unnecessary war with our neighbor republic. 
 We soon hear of him as a general. He is named "the 
 Marion of the Mexican War" in the despatches of the 
 commander of the American armies. Of course this ap 
 pellation was a bit of affectation, if not downright 
 falsehood, on the part of those seeking to build a pedes 
 tal of glory for themselves on the inglorious battlefields 
 of Mexico. 1 only mention the circumstance as indicat 
 ing that this man from the Wabash wilds probably 
 did his bloody work well. 
 
 I would prefer, however, to -omit all this ugly busi 
 ness of unhappy Mexico from his life. It is some apolo 
 gy for the part he took in the conquest to say that he 
 was then young, unread, and had not at all attained to 
 that larger growth and development that widened, 
 refined, and made beautiful his life when I knew and 
 loved him in his maturity. Aye, small glory indeed for 
 any man who took part in the murder of those gallant 
 Mexicans who fell defending their capital. Smaller 
 glory, even shame and oblivion, for those who instituted 
 this brutal war of invasion. Let our historians make its 
 page as brief as possible, that our children may forget it. 
 
 Soon after returning from this war General Lane was 
 sent out to us in the territory of Oregon as its governor. 
 He located and settled on a ranch in the Umpqua Yalley, 
 in the central part of what is now the State of Oregon, 
 built a cabin, and with his own hands ploughed and plant 
 ed and reaped his new fields like any other farmer and 
 settler in the wild and remote West. Here it was, I 
 should say, his soul was born and began to grow. In this 
 vast solitude, this isolation and solemnity of his cabin 
 home, with wife and children only, for weeks and months 
 at a time, going to the little village called the capital 
 
JOSEPH LANE SENATOR. 203 
 
 only once about every two years, this germ of greatness, 
 the soul that was in him, began to grow and glow and to 
 be beautiful. And it grew from this date on steadily 
 and upward, as a growing flower, to the date of his death, 
 more than a quarter of a century later, near this same 
 isolated spot. In the great Indian war that swept the 
 land from Northern California to British America, this 
 man, who had come to abhor war, was compelled to leave 
 his little home and lead us in battle. 
 
 It was a desperate time. Even my Quaker, peace-lov 
 ing father, who had never fired a gun in his life, was 
 enrolled as a soldier and shouldered, not a gun, but an 
 ox-whip, and drove away for the war. I, a mere lad, lay 
 wounded under the trees, when an express rode by and 
 gave the glad news that General Lane was coming at the 
 head of all Oregon, in arms. I never saw such eiithu- 
 siam. lie was loved, adored, deified. Battle Rock, the 
 most magnificent natural fortress ever seen a natural 
 castle was another lava bed. But it was carried by 
 storm, and the Oregonians floated the Stars and Stripes 
 on the summit of this wonderful battlement, and General 
 Lane went back to his plough. But the mature and entire 
 ly thoughtful man had even more time to read, reflect, 
 and philosophize now than before. For besides other 
 wounds, his right arm had been badly shattered by a 
 shot, and for a long time he could neither swing his axe 
 nor follow the plough. 
 
 When Oregon became a State, Lane, as a matter of 
 course, was sent back to the Federal capital as Senator, 
 and right here, it seems to me, began that misunderstand 
 ing that followed him to the end and induced the writing 
 of this sketch. 
 
 Lane found, after long years of absence, the Southern 
 element dominant as before. He found it more than 
 
204 MEMORIE AND K1ME. 
 
 dominant ; he found it domineering, insolent. But lie 
 kept with the South, not for policy, but for peace. 
 
 Southern Senators, Southern ladies, flattered, petted 
 and praised this man from the far Oregon, called him 
 "the Marion of the Mexican War," than which nothing 
 could now be more distasteful, for his soul had grown to 
 despise all that, and they insisted in placing this peaceful 
 and peace-loving Oregon farmer a.t the head of affairs. 
 
 It is to be frankly admitted, however, he gradually, 
 and finally, gracefully yielded to this policy. And at 
 last, when he was named as the possible Democratic 
 nominee for President, I regret that he laid aside his 
 grandeur like a garment, and went down into the arena 
 a gladiator. 
 
 But his was no brutal fight or unfair one. I invite 
 attention to this fact, and if any man in this republic can 
 put his finger on an unclean spot of this man s Senatorial 
 robes from the day he put them on till his defeat as the 
 regular Democratic nominee for Yice-President, and his 
 final retirement, let it be done now. 
 
 It would open the flood-gates of contention too widely 
 to more than refer to Lane s position on the great issue 
 of his time. I can only insist that it was for peace, 
 peace, all the time peace, and yet all the time the bel 
 ligerent South kept posing him for a hero of war this 
 man, who all the time offered peace and love and amity 
 for all, who all the time wanted to get back to his plough 
 and his pine woods of Oregon. My letters from him at 
 this time breathe but this one thought. He wanted to 
 get back, get out of it all, and sit under the oaks and 
 read Plutarch and Marcus Aurelius. This was the am 
 bition, the desire of General Joseph Lane at the time he 
 was a candidate for Yice-President of the United States, 
 being deified by one party, and debased by the other. 
 
JOSEPH LAXE SENATOR. 205 
 
 I am compelled to speak of myself somewhat now, to 
 show my connection with this great man, and how I came 
 to know and love him well better than any other man 
 now living, outside of his family, perhaps. 
 
 I may almost say literally, this man taught me to read. 
 He certainly taught me to like to read the books 
 above named, along with perhaps a dozen well-thumbed 
 old masters, which he knew so well that if a single word 
 was misread as we lay under the oaks I reading, he 
 lying on his back and looking up at the birds he would 
 correct me. I know there is a vague impression that 
 General Lane was an ignorant man. Well, I am not 
 learned enough to be good authority, but I have mixed 
 with many educated men since, and I am bound to say, 
 so far as 1 can judge, he was the best-read man I have 
 ever yet known. His letters are the most perfect in 
 all respects I have ever received. He wrote in the old- 
 fashioned, full, round style, every letter like print, not 
 even a comma missing in letters of the greatest length. 
 Using the simplest Saxon, he always said much in little 
 a duty of every writer of everything. 
 
 General Lane, having been defeated, retiring from 
 politics, returned to Oregon, and, while crossing the 
 Calipooia mountains on his way home, was accidentally 
 shot through the breast. lie reached home, however, 
 and lay nearly a year on his back. The roar of war filled 
 the ears of the world at the time, and bigger events over 
 shadowed him and his troubles. But he did not care 
 greatly for himself at anytime. His letters of this period 
 are full of pity for the North and for the South ; large 
 and human pity, such as you find in Plutarch or Yirgil 
 when the} speak of another age than their own. 
 
 I visited him when again on his feet, and I recall with 
 pleasure the fact that the now old man was full of strength 
 
206 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 and content. On the day lie was sixty-five lie and hie 
 son, since a member of Congress, went out shooting, and 
 I saw the old Senator bring in a seven-pronged buck on 
 his shoulders. 
 
 Ten years later, on my return from Europe, I called 
 to see him. "lie lives three miles east and four miles 
 perpendicular now, said one of his sons, pointing up the 
 mountains. Poverty had driven him from his ranch in 
 the valley. 
 
 I found this old man now approaching eighty years, 
 felling a tree in front of his little log cabin. He came 
 forward, axe in hand, to meet me, his aged wife shading 
 her eyes with a lifted hand as she looked from the cabin- 
 door, wondering what stranger could possibly have 
 climbed the mountain to their humble hermitage. 
 
 And what a talk we had ; how he wanted to know all 
 about Europe, a world he had never seen, but which he 
 knew so well. How interested he was in my work, pat 
 ting me on the head and calling me his own boy, believing 
 in me entirely, bidding me to go with God s blessing ; to 
 be good, to be great if I could, but be good always. 
 
 And here on this mountain-top, with the companion of 
 his bosom for more than fifty years, the sun of this old 
 Roman senator s life went down. Nothing was said of 
 him at his death, for no one knew him in his life. I lay 
 this handful of leaves on my dear dead. It is all I have 
 to give ; I, a robin, bring leaves for one who was lost in 
 the woods, one who lay down alone and unknown and 
 died in the wilderness of this life. He lived frugally 
 and died poor, while others lived extravagantly and grew 
 rich. Not a dollar of this nation s money ever found its 
 way to this simple and sincere man s pocket. lie died 
 not in want, for his children are well to do, but poor ; 
 very poor : and very pure ; as he had lived. 
 
TOM HOOD. 07 
 
 II. 
 
 TOM HOOD. 
 
 London, JYov. 21, 187-i. Yesterday I came back to 
 London, after nearly two years wandering in the Old, 
 Old World, up the Kile, and in and about the tombs of 
 buried empires and forgotten kings. And all this must 
 be written up. ... I cannot finish a line. I sit here 
 alone, my work in heaps before me. I have sat here all 
 day, and have done nothing. 
 
 Tom Hood is dead. He was my first, my firmest friend 
 in London nay, in all Europe. I came back yester 
 day and missed my warmest welcome. 
 
 I called at his little sanctum before even driving to my 
 hotel. I rushed in, as I always did before, expecting to 
 find him there, to take him by his great black beard, to 
 bully him, to call him fellow-citizen this British subject, 
 this great, good man, always so kind to me ; but I found 
 the chair empty. I looked over my shoulder at a boy 
 who had followed me ; he said : 
 
 u Mr. Hood is dying, sir. lie is at his home in Peck- 
 ham Rye. They say he will not live till to-morrow." 
 
 Over London Bridge I drove, and on through the dull 
 gray fog as fast as the man would drive me ; and all the 
 time I kept savins? somehow to mvself : 
 
 I. / O J 
 
 " One more unfortunate, 
 Weary of breath." 
 
 And yet the lines had no suggestion of this man s life 
 or death. Perhaps it was the great river under me, 
 wrapped in fog, and flowing, scarcely visible, dark and 
 death-like, as I passed, that kept them in my mind. 
 On, on through London, five, six, seven miles, and we 
 
208 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 touched the high-tide mark of the great city. Here the 
 new structures, the new streets, progress, had struck the 
 old order of things old frame houses, old crazy inns 
 and knocked them about and tossed them out of place, as 
 if a great sea had rolled in, and, pushing wreck and cast 
 away high up on the strand, had left them tumbled there. 
 
 A little cottage, that looked like a farmer s home in the 
 "West, an humble and simple home indeed, looking out 
 over the open field where the soldiers sometimes drill and 
 men play all the time at merry games when they come, 
 weary of town, out to this green edge of it ; and there lay 
 Hood, dying indeed. 
 
 All day, all the year, whenever I had thought of 
 London, I had been seeing his good-natured face, hear 
 ing his hearty welcome back to town. I had not even 
 dreamed I should not find him in his office, as before. 
 
 These things change a man s thoughts. He feels no 
 more of much importance. Ambition passes on. He 
 sees but little use in working any more. He feels that 
 there is no good in it all no good except the little good 
 he may do to others. 
 
 His only sister, a great, strong woman, plain, almost 
 ugly from watching and weeping, met me at the door, 
 silent almost as a stone, and all the time tears kept well 
 ing up and breaking over and running down and dropping 
 from her face on to her clasped hands. I never saw such 
 sorrow. I wish she had not been so silent. I wish I 
 could forget her. 
 
 x- ***** 
 
 What a dark and foggy day it was yesterday. The 
 mist and the dark seemed to have life. I saw it move 
 along the streets as I returned to London. I saw it curl 
 like smoke about London Bridge and creep like winged 
 gray beasts in the air about the towers of Westminster. 
 
TOM HOOD. 209 
 
 Just four years ago this month, a day like this, I first 
 met Hood. How lonesome I was ! How discouraged ! 
 Three months I had been in this great town, sick, worn, 
 alone. I knew not a soul. 
 
 " Oh ! it was pitiful, 
 Near a whole city full, 
 Friend I had none." 
 
 Passing wearily down the Strand, I saw the sign of 
 Punch one day, and entered. 
 
 " Is the editor in?" 
 
 " Will you send your card ? v 
 
 How my heart beat again. How I did hope he was not 
 in, and how glad I was when that boy came back with his 
 laconic " Not in, sir," yet delivered in such a way that 
 I knew perfectly well he was in, but wouldn t see you. 
 
 I went on. A group of people stood on the sidewalk 
 looking at the comic pictures in a window. It was the 
 Fun office. I pushed my way boldly through the crowd, 
 and entered. 
 
 u Is the editor in ?" 
 
 " What name, sir T 
 
 "No name; he would not know me. Tell him a 
 man from America wishes to see him." 
 
 " Come this way, sir. Mr. Hood will see you. 1 
 
 As we went on through the shelves of books and pa 
 pers, I wondered if this Hood was any relative of the 
 great, the greatest, the saddest, brightest, best humorist 
 that has ever been, it was his only son. ]S T ow that he 
 is dead and leaves no children, the name is no more. . . . 
 "What in the world made this man so kind to me I never 
 could make out. But from that day till his death he 
 stood to me like a tower. The tall, manly fellow, the 
 handsomest man in London, cut down yesterday just on 
 the edge of forty ! It seems to me now I shall never 
 
210 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 want to work any more, for I shall miss his praise all the 
 time, whatever I may do. From the first 1 took him 
 everything. What a patient man he was ! I do not now 
 see, overworked as he was all the time, how he managed 
 to put up wjth all of my stupid plans and demands. 
 
 I took my first fruits to him. On his shelves are three 
 books from the last three years, and in them all, when I 
 gave them to him, I wrote : "To my first and best friend 
 in London." 
 
 He took me home with him. But for him I should 
 have been very ill that day, when I first met him. 
 
 I now begin to find out, however, that this strong, 
 handsome fellow, half lion, half lamb, was as kind to 
 hundreds, to all alike, as he was to me. Artemus Ward 
 died, one might almost say, in his arms. 
 
 " Don t tell my mother, Tom. Don t let them write 
 it to her. Keep it from her a year or two, and then she 
 will not know it till she sees me on the other side for 
 she is very old." And these Tom Hood told me were 
 the last words of Arternus Ward, whispered in his ear as 
 he lay dying in his arms at Southampton. 
 
 The very first evening I spent with Hood he brought 
 out a great big basket and emptied it on the table. This 
 was his father s scrap-basket, and contained all the papers, 
 manuscripts, and drawings that his son had got together 
 and kept. Of course, I wanted to see the " Bridge of 
 Sighs;" but there was not one line of it preserved. 
 There are a few lines, however, that were meant for this 
 poem perhaps they are the very first the great good 
 poet conceived when this poem was in his heart. And 
 here they are, just as I copied them that evening : 
 
 " Cover her, cover her, 
 Throw the sod over her, 
 Hide her from God." 
 
TOM HOOD. 211 
 
 And then, after that and farther down on the sheet, is a 
 comic picture. Then, still farther down, this : 
 " Hello ! Who comes there V 
 
 Was it some one knocked ? Perhaps it was a man 
 with a dun, and the poor man knew his step. 
 
 I sometimes wonder if the world the well-fed, fat, 
 fashionable world when it reads with intense pleasure 
 certain poems, ever reflects that the man possibly wrote 
 them without his dinner. 
 
 What curious pictures and drawings we came upon 
 such things as only could amuse little children, and they 
 were all patched up and fastened together here and there 
 with wafers. 
 
 Then the son told me that during the last few years of 
 his father s life he could not sleep for pain, and so sat up 
 and made these pictures for himself and sister ; and when 
 they would wake in the morning they would find these 
 things pinned and pasted all about the wall. 
 
 Tom Hood is dead. I sit alone before my task, and I 
 shall not go on with it for many days ; for what is the 
 use ? London is not the London it was. 
 
 Here lies a letter from those who watched with him to 
 the last. It says he spoke so often of me, and said I 
 would write a verse to his memory. 
 
 No, I cannot begin it. And what if I did ? What is 
 the use ? It seems to me to-day that there is no use 
 in doing anything, except to do good to others. 
 
 Death is in the world. 
 
 Pardon this rambling sketch. I know that it tells but 
 little of the story of his life or the good that was in his 
 heart. Yet why should it ? The first is known to the 
 world, the latter is known to God. And that is enough. 
 
 Put this handful of crumpled flowers on his grave 
 
212 MEMOIUE AND RIME. 
 
 leaf, and thorn, and blossom gathered to-day loosely 
 and sadly as I went back in memory alone over the path 
 we walked a time together. I have not heart to arrange 
 them better now. 
 
 Tom Hood was a toiler for his bread, a hard worker. 
 He needed rest, and I know he has it. He was poor, not 
 destitute ; but, like myself, he belonged to the great 
 majority was born poor, lived poor, and died poor. 
 
 Something is surely wrong. A man may edit a jour 
 nal, or write a thing that makes a million people happy, 
 and yet be left to go hungry ; while a man may fight a 
 battle that makes a thousand people miserable, and for 
 that get wealth and honors without end. 
 
 #:.-* _:....# 
 
 How blank and worthless all this reads as I turn back 
 and run it over. It is half about myself. But I have 
 noticed that in any great grief or any great joy our little 
 selves become the little centre and we can see no farther. 
 We stand alone in the little present. We stand on 
 " The Bridge of Sighs, that reaches from the bright land 
 of the past to the unbridged to-morrow, and see none of 
 the beings that tide, and toil, and battle, and bleed, and 
 die about us. Good, gentle, genial friend, farewell ! 
 
"MINNIE MYRTLE." 213 
 
 III. 
 
 Died in New York, May, 1883. 
 
 SHE seemed to see wreck and storm and separation for 
 us on the ocean of life long before it came, and even 
 while we were newly married, very hopeful, young, and 
 strong and happy. And so twenty years ago, while we 
 were living in San Francisco, with this singular and sad 
 notion in her head, she one evening half playfully said 
 that, whatever came to us, if I died first she would 
 write me well before the w r orld and let none do my 
 memory wrong. And she exacted the same promise of 
 me. And from that time, so far from forgetting the 
 foolish covenant, she reminded me of it often after. She 
 reminded me of it in this city, New York, only a few days 
 before her death. In the fulfilment of this promise I 
 now undertake this most delicate and most difficult task. 
 For it is on my conscience that the occasion is opportune, 
 and that I cannot well conclude this volume without 
 trying, after a year s delay, to keep this covenant and 
 solemn promise of twenty years ago. It was while I 
 was riding Mossman & Miller s pony express from 
 Walla Walla to Millersburg, in the mines of Idaho, in 
 the summer of 1861, that I first was attracted by her 
 writings in the newspapers. I wrote her, and had replies. 
 Then, when I came down from the mountains and 
 embarked in journalism, she wrote to me, and her letters 
 grew ardent and full of affection. Then I mounted my 
 horse and rode hundreds of miles through the valleys 
 and over the mountains, till 1 came to the sea, at Port 
 
214 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 Orford, then a flourishing mining town, and there first 
 saw " Minnie Myrtle." 
 
 Tall, dark, and striking in every respect, this first Saxon 
 woman I had ever addressed had it all her own way at 
 once. She knew nothing at all of my life, except that 
 I was an expressman and country editor. 1 knew 
 nothing at all of hers, but I found her with her kind, 
 good parents, surrounded by brothers and sisters, and 
 the pet and spoiled child of the mining and lumber 
 camp. In her woody little world there by the sea she 
 was literally worshipped by the rough miners and lumber 
 men, and the heart of the bright and merry girl was 
 brimming full of romance, hope, and happiness. I 
 arrived on Thursday. On Sunday next we were mar 
 ried ! Oh, to what else but ruin and regret could such 
 romantic folly lead ? Procuring a horse for her, we set 
 out at once to return to my post, far away over the 
 mountains. These mountains were then, as now, and 
 ever will be I reckon, crossed only by a dim, broken 
 trail, with houses twenty and thirty miles apart for the 
 few travellers. 
 
 The first day out, toward evening, we came upon a 
 great band of elk. 1 drew a revolver, and with wild 
 delight we dashed among the frightened beasts, and fol 
 lowing them quite a distance we lost our way. And so 
 we had to spend our first night together, tired, hungry, 
 thirsty, sitting under the pines on a hillside, holding on 
 to our impatient horses. We reached my home all 
 right, however, at length, after a week s ride, but only 
 to find that my paper had been suppressed by the Gov 
 ernment, and we resolved to seek our fortunes in San 
 Francisco. But we found neither fortune nor friends 
 in the great new city, and so, returning to Oregon, I 
 bought a band of cattle, and we set out with our baby 
 
"MINNIE MYRTLE." 215 
 
 and a party of friends and relatives to reach the new 
 mining camp, Canyon City, in Eastern Oregon. 
 
 And what a journey \\as this of ours over the Oregon 
 Sierras, driving the bellowing cattle in the narrow trail 
 through the dense woods, up the steep, snowy moun 
 tains, down through the roaring canons ! It was wild, 
 glorious, fresh, full of hazard and adventure ! Minnie 
 had made a willow basket and swung it to her saddle- 
 horn, with the crowding and good-natured baby inside, 
 looking up at her, laughing, as she leaped her horse over 
 the fallen logs or made a full hand with whip and lasso, 
 riding after the cattle. But when we descended the 
 wooded mountains to the open plain on the eastern side 
 of the Sierras the Indians were ready to receive us, and 
 we almost literally had to fight our way for the next 
 week s journey, every day and night. And this woman 
 was one of the bravest souls that ever saw battle. I think 
 she never, even in the hour of death, knew what fear 
 was. She was not only a wonderful horsewoman, but 
 very adroit in the use of arms. She was a much better 
 shot, indeed, than myself. In our first little skirmish 
 on this occasion I had taken position on a hill with a few 
 men, while the cattle and pack animals were corraled by 
 the others in a bight in the foothills below to prevent a 
 stampede. And thus intrenched we waited the attack 
 from the Indians, who held the farther point of the ridge 
 on which I had stationed my men. Suddenly Minnie, 
 baby in arms, stood at my side and began to calmly dis 
 cuss the situation, and to pass merry remarks about the 
 queer noises the bullets made as they flattened on the 
 rocks about us and glanced over our heads. I finally 
 got her to go down, or, rather, promise to go down to 
 camp, for the better safety of the baby. But in a mo 
 ment she was back. She had hidden the laughing little 
 
216 MEMOBIE AND RIME. 
 
 baby in the rocks, and now, gun in hand, kept at my 
 side till the brush was over and the Indians beaten ofL 
 
 Here is one leaf from her journal, or rather, I think, 
 her recollections of the journey, which she left me along 
 with her other papers when she died : 
 
 One night of that journey I shall not soon forget. 
 There had been some lighting ahead of us and we knew 
 the foe was lurking in ambush. They made a kind of 
 fort of the freight, and while we lay down in the canon, 
 baby and I, away up on the high, sharp butte, Joaquin 
 stood sentinel. And I say this to-night in his behalf and 
 in his praise, that he did bravely, and saved his loved 
 ones from peril that night. That he stood on that dreary 
 summit, a target for the foe, and no one but me to 
 take note of his valor stood till the morning shone 
 radiant, stood till the night was passed. There was no 
 world looking on to praise his courage and echo it over 
 the land ; only the frozen stars in mystic groups far 
 away, and the slender moon, like a sword drawn to hold 
 him at bay. 
 
 Reaching the mines in safety, I practised law, mined, 
 fought Indians, and indeed was the busiest of men in 
 trying all means to get on. I planted the iirst orchard 
 in all that land, pushed ahead as hard as I could, and 
 tried to be practical and steady and thoughtful. Yet I 
 was still but a lad in years. I forgot to mention that I 
 was meantime elected Judge of the county and had be 
 gun to write the " Songs of the Sierras." My life was 
 a sober and severe one. For without learning, I was 
 trying to administer the law ; without knowing how to 
 read, I was trying to write a book. I was walking a 
 new road of life now. All was strange. What availed 
 my knowledge of woodcraft in the courts of law ? The 
 mystery of making fire by the friction of two sticks of 
 wood, the secret of finding water in the desert by the 
 
"MINXIE MYRTLE." 217 
 
 flight of a bird, the cunning of foretelling the force of 
 the coming winter or the depth of the snow, all these 
 and the like were of no use now. 
 
 If the shrewd and sharp lawyers who bullied and de 
 feated me had come into my elements I had beaten them. 
 But I had chosen to enter theirs and must be equal to 
 the undertaking. And so it was I worked and studied 
 as never man worked and studied before. Often I never 
 left my office till the gray duwn, after a day of toil and 
 a night of study. My health gave way and 1 was indeed 
 old and thoughtful. Well, all this, you can see, did not 
 suit the merry-hearted and spoiled child of the mines at 
 all. Then she was not so ambitious as I was ; and she 
 had not such a strange, wild life behind to haunt her. 
 She became the spoiled child here that she had been at 
 her father s, and naturally grew impatient at my persist 
 ent toil and study. But she was good all the time ; good 
 and honest and true in all things and in all ways ; un 
 derstand that distinctly. And let me say here, once for 
 all, that no man or woman can put a finger on any stain 
 in this woman s whole record of life, so far as truth and 
 purity go. But she was not happy here. Impatient of 
 the dull monotony of the exhausted mining camp, and 
 longing for the sea and the old home that almost over 
 hung the sounding waters, she took her two children and 
 returned to her mother, while I sold the little home we 
 had built and kept together, the new orchard and the 
 lanes of roses we had planted together, and remained 
 there in the camp, promising to follow her, yet full of 
 ambition now to be elected to a place on the Supreme 
 Bench of the State, and I worked on to that end cease 
 lessly. 
 
 She had been absent from me quite a year, when the 
 convention was called, and I went to Portland, seeking 
 
218 MEM OKIE AND RIME. 
 
 the nomination for the place I desired. But the poor, 
 impatient lady, impulsive always, and angry that I should 
 Lave kept so long away, had forwarded papers from her 
 home, hundreds of miles remote, to a lawyer here, praying 
 for a divorce. This so put me to shame that I abandoned 
 my plans and resolved to hide my head in Europe. In my 
 rage and disappointment I arranged with her lawyer to 
 give her a pretence of that which she professed to desire. 
 Yet I knew quite well that this was only a romantic and 
 foolish freak that meant nothing ; that she did this only 
 in order to get me to come to her, and that she did not 
 dream she could be divorced unless I came to her when 
 the action was brought. Nor could she, in fact. But a 
 court was in session, and her lawyer, who looked to me 
 only for his fee, entered the case, and then wrote to her 
 and published it to the world that she was divorced, while 
 I was sailing away for other lands. 
 
 And it was perhaps quite ten years before she came to 
 me here in New York. 
 
 * * * * * * 
 
 Passing unmentioned the trials of all those terrible 
 years, we come to the closing chapter of this romantic life. 
 I followed the woman she sent to me one stormy night 
 in silence till we came at last to a little back room 
 in the top of a house, with a bed in the centre and a 
 doubtful fire struggling in the grate. The woman turned 
 away and left us in the room together. The place was 
 almost dark. She did not give me her hand, but stood 
 before me with one hand holding on the bedpost, a 
 long time silent. 
 
 "I have come back to you at last," she said after 
 a while. 
 
 " You have come 1o drive me from America again." 
 
 " I have come to you to die !" she said. And as she 
 
219 
 
 turned so that the light was on her face I saw that it was 
 so. And then we sat down and had a long talk. It was 
 our last long and serious talk. I was not very kind. I 
 am sorry now, but the bitterness of the ten years past 
 was still in my heart, and 1 could not forget. She want 
 ed most of all to see her little girl, whom I had taken 
 from her and placed in the convent school in Canada 
 three years before, and it seemed to break her heart when 
 I refused to send for her to come. By and by, however, 
 when I promised her that she should surely see her before 
 long, she became reconciled. She talked with calm 
 unconcern about her coming death, reminded me of my 
 promise, and told me she had brought me all her papers ; 
 some that we had written together before I had learned 
 to spell. There was a valor, a sweetness, too, and a dig 
 nity, a large charity in all she said and did now in the 
 twilight of life that won all hearts to her entirely. The 
 valor of her youth she kept till the grave closed over 
 her, and she never complained of anything or of any 
 one, but was patient, resigned, and perfectly fearless and 
 tranquil to the end. But the end was not so near after 
 all. When I went back to see her one day she had gone, 
 and had left no word where she could be found. Then I 
 began to fear and doubt her promise that she would not 
 molest me ; the winter wore away, and April came. 
 Again they came to tell me, from her, that she was dying, 
 and I must keep my promise. And so I arranged for 
 her child to come, and I went every day to assure her 
 that she was coming, and to take her some flowers and 
 whatever kind messages and encouragement I could. 
 
 Wearily the days went by till away on in May, the 
 month in which she was born. Then the child came, 
 and the good people, the gentle, loving people who kept 
 with her and cared for and loved and pitied her in these 
 
220 MKMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 last days, said it was like religion to see them together, 
 and that the dying woman in her last days was very 
 happy. And so Minnie Myrtle died last May, here in 
 New York. When I went up to look on her dead face 
 a strange fancy of hers she had set about the foot of 
 the bed, where she could see them, all the flowers I had 
 sent her, the withered ones and all. There was quite 
 half a trunk full of papers which she had brought and 
 intrusted to me, some of them suggesting wonderful 
 things, great thoughts and good and new ; for much 
 that she wrote and may be this is not great praise 
 was better than any writing of mine. But she lacked 
 care and toil and sustained thought. I bought a little 
 bit of ground in Evergreens Cemetery, and there the 
 hand that writes this laid the poor, tired lady to rest, for 
 giving, and begging God to be forgiven. 
 
 IY. 
 
 HULINGS MILLER. 
 
 Died in Oregon, March, 1873. 
 
 " Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war." 
 
 I ALWAYS liked the ancient Roman custom, where the 
 son said some last farewell words of love and sympathy 
 over his dead ; and I ask you to let me say a few words 
 in memory of my father, who died last year, on his 
 little farm in Oregon. For who are nearer to me than 
 
HfLIXGS MILLER. 221 
 
 those to whom I have given my best thong-lit, iho best 
 years of my life ? AVho can better sympathize with 
 me or will bear with me better than those who have been 
 witli me so long and borne with me in the battle of this 
 life through all these pages ? 
 
 My father s father lies in a forgotten grave at old Fort 
 Meigs, Ohio, where he fell, under Harrison, in the war 
 of 1812 ; and my father was born about that time, in 
 Cincinnati, where he received a good education for that 
 day, and where he afterward became a merchant. But 
 his singularly shy and sensitive nature quite unfitted him 
 for commercial intercourse with his fellows, and, giv 
 ing this up, he retired to the little village or settlement 
 called Liberty, Union County, Indiana, and began life in 
 the wilderness as a school-teacher. Here he married. 
 My mother s name was Witt. But my quiet, Quaker- 
 like father did not seem destined to prosper in this world s 
 ways, anywhere or in anything at all, and, after vibrat 
 ing between Cincinnati and theliftle village on the Ohio 
 and Indiana line for three or four years, during which I 
 and my two brothers were born, he set out, with his 
 wife and three infant children, to push his way still far 
 ther into the wilderness. 
 
 lie settled in a dense forest, in what was then called 
 the Miami Reserve, near the Mississinewa River, Marion, 
 Grant County, Indiana. Here, alone, and with his own 
 hands, quite unused then to such toil, he, with the help 
 of my mother, built a little log cabin and cleared off a 
 little patch of ground. The first recollection of my life 
 is that of waking up suddenly one night, and, looking 
 out of the little open window at the burning brush-heaps, 
 where my parents, side by side, were still toiling away, 
 while the world rested. And from that time forth I 
 search my memory in vain for one day of rest from hard 
 
222 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 manual toil for these two patient and uncomplaining 
 people, outside of the Sabbath, which, of course, was 
 always kept sacred. How snowy white was that cabin 
 floor, hewn out of the forest by my father s hand ; how 
 clean and bright the blazing hearth ; how cheery the 
 few flowers that struggled up out of the strange wild 
 soil about this lonely little cabin-door ! 
 
 But the fever and ague fell almost continually upon 
 us all, and we did not get on. My poor parents grad 
 ually became discouraged, and a gloom and sadness settled 
 down upon them forever ; but I never heard one word 
 of impatience or complaint. Ne^er was one unkind 
 word spoken in that little cabin. I never knew that 
 there was such a thing as tobacco, or whiskey, or oaths, or 
 cross words until years afterward, when we fell in with 
 the great caravans crossing the plains ; but 1 can see now 
 that my parents were sadly, hopelessly discouraged. 
 They never spoke of the past or their people at all ; and 
 as I grew older, seeing tears in their eyes as I one day 
 asked them about these things, I never asked them any 
 more, and to this day I do not even know the Christian 
 name of my father s father or my mother s. 
 
 As the country slowly settled up about us my father 
 again taught school ; but his three little boys he kept 
 quite exclusive and all to himself. Sometimes, it is 
 true, we were allowed to go with him to school, along 
 the path through the thick wood ; but it was a long 
 walk and we did not go often. He taught us to read by 
 our cabin fire, and he read to us all the spare time he 
 had. He never allowed us to mix with other children, 
 and, indeed, I think we did not care for other company 
 than ourselves. He put us to work as soon as we were 
 able, to pick brush or pull weeds, and we never knew 
 what it was to play. For my own part, I know I never 
 
HULINGS MILLER. 223 
 
 had a top, or marble, or toy of any kind in my life, and 
 never knew any of the games familiar to children. 
 
 My mother spun and wove our scant clothing out of 
 the flax which she grew in a corner of the little clearing, 
 and I remember it seemed to me the grandest day of my 
 life when the shoemaker came late one fall to measure 
 me for my first pair of shoes. 
 
 But all this time my poor father seemed to grow more 
 sad, silent, and thoughtful each year. By and by there 
 was talk of the land coming into market, and, as we had 
 no money yet to pay for it, he went out to work by the 
 day at a mill which was being built over on the river, 
 three miles away. It was a lonesome time through the 
 woods, and my father would have to set out before day 
 light and return from his work after dark. A day s 
 work then meant the whole day. One night, as he 
 neared home, the wolves chased him, and he had to take 
 shelter in a tree. Mother heard his cries for help, and 
 she took a hickory-bark torch and went out and fright 
 ened away the wolves and brought him safely to the 
 cabin. His wages were fifty cents a day, a small sum ; 
 but he counted it a great favor to get the job, for it en 
 abled him finally to secure one hundred acres of land. 
 And oh ! how happy he was to have this his first home 
 for his little family ! 
 
 They made him justice of the peace. The people 
 were always making him justice of the peace as long as 
 he lived ; but he never would allow any trouble to come 
 to a trial. I know he sometimes spent half the night, 
 after his day s toil, running about among the neighbors, 
 settling up misunderstandings which they wanted to 
 settle by law. 
 
 The first year we planted corn on the new, wild land, 
 so full of stumps and snags and trees, so rank with net- 
 
004 MEMORIE AND HI ME. 
 
 ties and thistles and all the thousand nameless weeds. 
 The squirrels seemed to come by thousands. They sat 
 clown in siege around that little field, as if determined to 
 take up the last grain. My father had encouraged these 
 little squirrels about the place. He liked to see them, 
 to hear them chatter in the boughs above and rustle 
 through the leaves. They broke the awful monotony 
 and solitude, and gave his sad and patient soul compan 
 ionship ; but now it seemed as if they would be his ruin. 
 He borrowed a gun, and one sultry spring afternoon 
 he took the gun on his shoulder, and, taking me with 
 him to carry the game, we set out to go around the 
 field and destroy the squirrels ; but, as we went on 
 around the field, he did not try to shoot them. Back of 
 field we sat down in the dense woods, and there he 
 
 began to threaten them with the gun. " Bonny ! Bun 
 ny ! don t you go in there ! If you do I will shoot you 
 dead !" And he would raise the gun and, with great 
 show of anger, frighten them away. And so the sun 
 went down while my father was trying to get courage to 
 break the hush and sweet tranquillity of the scene by 
 shooting one of his little companions of the wilderness. 
 
 Mother met us at the door, and, handing her the gun, 
 he said, timidly and half -regretfully : "No, no, Marga 
 ret, I can t shoot them, and I won t try to do it any 
 more." Nor did he ever again take a gun in his hand. 
 My father never fired a gun in his life. I know it is 
 hard to understand how a man can live the best half of 
 a century in the wilderness, among wild beasts and wild 
 er men, and never have use for arms or ever get angry. 
 
 - But such was my father, and it is this sweet nature of 
 his that makes his memory so dear, and speaks more for 
 him than all that tongue or peri can ever say. And yet 
 my father was the most entirely brave man I ever knew. 
 
III LIXGS MILLER. 22-) 
 
 I know of no other man in the history of the West who 
 ever set out, unarmed and almost alone, with his little 
 family, to cross the Plains. I remember some Indians 
 came into camp one Sunday while we were "at prayers. 
 They did not speak, but soon passed on. We were 
 never disturbed the whole weary seven months journey. 
 But many men who were armed and constantly on the 
 iilert were killed. 
 
 But I am anticipating, and ought to tell here what be 
 came of the little bit of land so hardly won in the Indian 
 Ileserve, in Indiana, Hardly had it been well paid for 
 and a good foothold established, when a clock peddler, 
 with his son, came along with a wagon-load of clocks. 
 This sort of incipient Jim Fisk professed to fall ill, and, 
 being so very eager to get rid of his clocks and return 
 to Boston, persuaded my sympathetic and simple-heart 
 ed father to give him a mortgage and take the load of 
 clocks. And so it was the little home was lost and we 
 set out for Oregon ; but, being still poor, we had to 
 stop a year or two in other places before venturing across 
 the Missouri, and work for teams and supplies. 
 
 When we reached and settled in Oregon the Govern 
 ment gave father and mother each one hundred and sixty 
 acres of land, as it did all settlers at that time, and here 
 we again built a cabin, and planted flowers and fruit trees 
 in the door-yard. But the terrible journey, the peril, the- 
 care of three little children all this had been too much 
 for mother. Her mind gave way at intervals now, and 
 father s life was the saddest, loneliest in the world. 
 
 It was a pleasant spot we found a high, long, grassy 
 ridge, running down from the great dark wooded Sierras 
 in the rear through the rich, level Canias Valley. And 
 here my father lived and toiled for more than thirty 
 years. I think he never, in all that time, went a .him*- 
 
226 MEMOltlE AND RIME. 
 
 dred miles away from his home. He had had travel 
 enough crossing the Plains ; and then he was at work 
 all the time working with his hands, ploughing, planting 
 making beautiful the new world about him. He grew 
 a little forest of fir and pine and locust on the bare, 
 grassy ridge ; and the grouse and pheasants and quails 
 came down out of the dark Sierras and made their homes 
 there. And they ate his fruit and berries the old story 
 of the squirrels. But the most ungrateful of all the 
 creatures that he encouraged to come and live around him 
 was the eagle. One spring my father and brothers kept 
 missing the lambs. The Indians were set on the watch 
 for wolves. My brother scoured the country with dogs. 
 Still the lambs grew fewer in number each day. One 
 morning my father heard a loud bleating in the air. 
 Looking up, he saw one of his long cherished and great 
 ly admired eagles sweeping away toward the Sierras with 
 a crying lamb in his claws. 
 
 It would seem that any one ought to have grown rich 
 here in these early days. Many did ; and, indeed, my 
 father oftentimes was far from poor ; but when he had 
 anything ahead worth plotting for, the old story of the 
 Yankee with the clocks, in some form or another, would 
 be repeated, and my gentle father s sympathies would 
 again run away with him and his money, so hardly 
 earned. And then poor, dear mother ! 
 
 When secretly setting out for London, to publish a book, 
 I went to pay my poor parents a visit at the little farm 
 on the Ridge. 1 found my father ploughing in the field, 
 and he seemed to be in great trouble. Finally he 
 stopped the team, and as we sat down on the plough to 
 rest he told me that he had been helping somebody, and 
 had, unknown to us all, got a debt of near a thousand 
 dollars on his shoulders, which he could not pay 
 
HULIXGS MILLER. 227 
 
 without giving a mortgage. AVell, I figured over the 
 probable cost of my trip, and found that, by taking sec 
 ond and third class tickets, 1 could make the journey 
 and save the thousand dollars. And so there, sitting on 
 the plough, the sweet-smelling ploughed ground under our 
 feet, and his great, proud eagles circling overhead toward 
 the dark summits of the Sierras, we solved the great 
 little financial trouble, and I got his tears of gratitude 
 in ten thousand times compensation. But soon he was 
 again trying to help somebody, and this time there fell a 
 mortgage on his bit of land. How glad I was, in less 
 than a year, to send back to him such a story of glory 
 and success through the newspapers as to make him be 
 lieve that we should never again need a dollar. And he 
 was permitted to go to his grave in the full belief of the 
 innocent fiction that one of his family, at least, had es 
 caped from the thraldom of poverty in the wilderness 
 and had fame and fortune for his own. And for this I 
 am thankful. It cheered him and lighted the last days 
 of this gentlest being I ever knew, with true and unselfish 
 pleasure. 
 
 My friends, this is all. Pardon this rambling sketch ; 
 but I am not equal to any eulogium. And then, some 
 how, I think he would not like it. You can see, by 
 what I have already said, what kind of a man he was 
 good to others, all the time good to others ; so unselfish, 
 so hard working ; a very humble man, it is true, and 
 working in humblest ways. But God manages that, I 
 think. Let me conclude with a few lines from my 
 Oregon brother s letter. u His work is over. The 
 poor, tired hands that labored so long and faithfully are 
 now crossed to rest forever. The weary feet, that wan 
 dered so far to find n home, wander no more now. 
 Peace ! peace ! peace !" 
 
> >$ MEMORIE A XI) III M K . 
 
 Shall the dead live again ? My friends, I cannot prove 
 to you that the dead will rise again. I cannot prove to 
 you that the sun will rise again. But I surely believe it 
 will. And I as surely believe the dead will rise again. 
 Oh, why should man perish utterly ? Blow a little thistle- 
 seed far away, a little thing no bigger than a pin s point ; 
 let it fall on the dark earth, even though it be in the 
 farthest corner of the world, yet it will in the spring 
 time come forth a lovely flower, perfect in its kind. 
 And man is surely as much to God as a little thistle 
 down. 
 
 Y. 
 
 JOHN BROWN JOSEPH 1>E BLONEY. 
 
 Harper s Ferry, December 8, 1 S8>. The face of nature 
 is frowning here forever. Dark and wrinkled, rugged 
 and unfriendly to look upon, there is an atmosphere of 
 hostility about this place, of savagery, of sullen defiance 
 and impatience, that makes one willing to hasten away. 
 Sabre-cuts in the face of the land ; a fierce scowl on the 
 face of the earth ; a sullen roar in the rivers as they run 
 angrily together ; a sullen silence on the few people ; 
 dilapidation over the town a tired, deserted, nightmare 
 town, as if it would like to wake up and throw off some 
 indefinable terrors ; and this is Harper s Ferry, where 
 was, in fact, fired the first gun of the greatest, the sad 
 dest, the best and the worst war that ever was. 
 
JOHN" BROAVX JOSEPH DE BLOXEY. 220 
 
 I do not get at the heart of the best people here. 1 
 have little time, little inclination too, perhaps. A scribe 
 wandering about alone with his own meditations, no let 
 ters of introduction, a pad and pencil in his hand and a 
 flannel shirt on his back, is not jnst the man for first- 
 class men to open either their hearts or their doors to, I 
 admit. And then, what could they tell me that has not 
 been told a thousand times ? Besides, what does this 
 new generation know ? As for the old, it perished in 
 the war. 
 
 But those hills have not perished. They looked down 
 on it all. Their stony lips are set in everlasting silence. 
 And yet they tell me that John Brown came here, 
 climbed their heights, looked down into these rivers, 
 measured their waters, made a thousand calculations how 
 to advance, how to retreat, where to fight, and then to 
 die. I think the arsenal with its store of arms had not 
 all to do with bringing John Brown here. There was 
 comradeship in these glorious old hills. One likes to 
 have such friends at his back and close about him in days 
 of desperate enterprise. 
 
 " What ! A pilgrimage to Harpers Ferry to write of 
 old John Brown ? Thought you were a Democrat ; 
 thought you had your paper in Oregon suppressed for 
 treasonable utterances dnriu the wah ?" A good man, 
 a friend, said this to me, and I answered : " My friend, 
 whether it is my love for the poor man at election, the 
 little horse in the horse-race, or the bottom dog in the 
 dog-fight, I do not know. I do not care. I only know 
 that I admired, pitied, and now revere John Brown. I 
 am going to make a pilgrimage to Harper s Ferry now 
 on the twenty-fourth anniversary of his execution. 
 
 " But this man John Brown was a murderer mur 
 dered my people, sail." 
 
230 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 " Yes, but he did not murder many inen ; not one 
 hundredth part as many as Sherman or Sheridan. He 
 did not desolate the defenceless Shenandoah or burn his 
 way through the South. He did not say, I have made 
 the Shenandoah Valley so desolate that even a crow 
 would have to carry its rations if it attempted to fly over 
 it. It was the man now at the head of the nation s 
 army who said that. And yet if you were asked to dine 
 with that man to-morrow, the chances are you would not 
 only break bread with him, but even pocket the bill of 
 fare as a trophy. I prefer the dead lion to the living 
 but why finish the biblical paraphase ?" 
 
 " Then you don t like Grant ?" 
 
 " As a soldier, no. The most pitiful sight to me is 
 that of a man, any man, strutting about this earth with 
 an implement buckled to his side for the purpose of 
 poking some unfortunate fellow to death. We are a 
 pastoral people in these States ; keepers of sheep are we, 
 and tillers of the soil. But right here let me tell you, 
 while speaking of tilling the soil, that the best, the brav 
 est, the very noblest deed that now looms up and out of 
 and over all the desolate days and deeds of that war was 
 done by that man Grant ; and quietly and modestly 
 done, and done in defiance, too, of all the powers at 
 Washington. And that immortal deed, the one splendid 
 work of the war, was expressed in these words under the 
 apple-tree at Appomattox : i No, General Lee, I don t 
 want your horses. Let your men take them home. 
 They will need them to plough with. 
 
 Some old, indolent mules from the country round 
 about ; greasy old wagons ; a good many old and very 
 indolent negroes shivering in the frosty weather on the 
 corners ; corner groceries that have been whittled away 
 by jack-knives the only sign of industry I see about or 
 
JOHN" BROWN JOSEPH DE BLONEY. 231 
 
 enterprise of any kind ; a few seedy-looking horses 
 hitched before the few stores ; an old fortress on a wind 
 ing hill where " Stonewall " Jackson pointed to the 
 State flag of Virginia and said, " Wherever thon goest, 
 there also will I go" and that is Harper s Ferry as I 
 find it, where John Brown bled, with his sons about him. 
 
 Out yonder in the middle of the river the water still 
 plashes and leaps over and divides around the same great 
 rock there where his black allies fell. Some ignorant, 
 tobacco-eating idlers showed me a battered old estab 
 lishment from which the old man, now sixty years old, 
 pointed his gun and fought all night, his sons at his side, 
 at his feet, dead, dying, fighting. Of course there is no 
 sentiment about these men. You hear hard, and maybe 
 not entirely undeserved, remarks from these ignorant 
 and unsympathizing idlers. 
 
 Coming here on the anniversary of John Brown s 
 execution he was hung on the second of December, 
 only a short walk away I hoped to find something new 
 to tell you. !Not so. 
 
 But it is an impressive fact that, looking south from 
 any other point of the llepublic, this one man and hia 
 sons stand up forever before you forever true, grand, 
 reverend, resigned. 
 
 In the great dramas of the days to come this is the 
 man who will walk the stage with the most majestic 
 mien. It will not be the noisy-mouthed man of the cap 
 ital ; it will not be the contractor with his bloody mill 
 ions ; it will not be the general of the war with a million 
 men at command, who will loom up largest and last. 
 But it will be simple, honest, humble old John Brown, 
 who died in pity for his helpless fellow-men. 
 
 It is a singular thing that this man, in one sense, 
 ordered his tombstone before setting out for Harper s 
 
233 MEMORIE A^D 1UME. 
 
 Ferry. At least ho had his father s tombstone brought 
 from ~New York to the half -savage little farm which 
 Gerrit Smith had given him. The inscription on this 
 Btone, reared to the father of John Brown of Harper s 
 Ferry, reads as follows : 
 
 " In memory of Capt. John Brown, who died at New 
 York, Sept. ye 3, 17T6, in the 42d year of his age." 
 
 Beneath this is the old hero s epitaph, and it reads : 
 
 " John Brown, born May 9, 1SOO ; was executed at 
 Charlestown, Ya., Dec. 2, 1859." 
 
 A CALIFORNIA JOHN JiKOWN IN A SMALL WAY. 
 
 Joseph De Bloney, whom I first met on the head of 
 the Sacramento River in the spring of 1855, was of the 
 old Swiss family of that name famous, you know, for 
 being the first to renounce their high rank of nobility 
 and assume a simple republican name. This was a 
 learned man. Even in the mountains there he had 
 many books. But I think few people ever knew his 
 worth. Certainly but few ever sympathized with him. 
 I believe he had first crossed the plains with Fremont. 
 He is probably entirely forgotten now. And the world 
 never heard of his feeble efforts to help his fellows. Ilis 
 ambition was to unite the Indians about the base of 
 Mount Shasta and establish a sort of Indian republic, the 
 prime and principal object of which was to set these 
 Indians entirely apart from the approach of the white 
 man, draw an impassable line, in fact, behind which the 
 Indian would be secure in his lands, his simple life, his 
 integrity, and his purity. Some of the many tribes were 
 friendly ; some were hostile. It was a hard undertaking 
 at best, perilous, almost as much as a man s life was 
 worth, to attempt to befriend an Indian in those stormy 
 
JOHN BROWX JOSEPH DK I .LOXEY. 233 
 
 days on the border, when every gokl-liunter crowding 
 the hills in quest of precious metals counted it his privi 
 lege, if not his duty, to shoot an Indian on sight. An 
 Indian sympathizer was more hated in those days, is still, 
 than ever was an Abolitionist. And it was against bit 
 ter odds that this little California John Brown, even 
 long before John Brown s raid, tried to make a stand in 
 behalf of a perishing race, lie, too, failed. The plastic 
 new land was in a chaotic state. More men than he 
 were trying to fashion something solid and useful out of 
 the Republic s new possessions. Walker was even try 
 ing to extend these possessions to ".Nicaragua. Fremont 
 had hoisted the bear flag. It made him a prisoner. It 
 ought to have made him President. 
 
 De Bloney gradually gathered about twenty-live men 
 around him in the mountains, took np homes, situated 
 his men around him, planted, dug gold, did what he 
 could to civilize the people and subdue the savages. 
 
 Our neighbor, Captain Jack, in his lava-beds, was born 
 of this man s endeavor. Of. course his motives were 
 misconstrued by the few who took any notice of him at 
 all. Some suspected that we had found gold-mines of 
 great Wealth. Others, again, said we were stealing 
 horses and hiding them away in the hearts of the moun 
 tains. And I concede that property disputes with some 
 settlers gave some grounds for suspicion. Yet De 
 Bloney was as honest as a sunset and as pure as the 
 snowy mountains around ns. 
 
 But he had tough elements to deal with. The most 
 savage men were the white men. The Indians, the 
 friendly ones, were the tamest of his people. These 
 white men would come and go ; now they would marry 
 the Indian women and now join a prospecting party and 
 disappear for months, even years. At one time they 
 
234 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 nearly all went off to join Walker in Nicaragua. Only 
 two ever lived to return. I, too, wandered away from 
 him more than once, but at last kept close and always 
 with him. He taught me much, and was good. Once 
 the unfriendly Indians burned his camp. He raised a 
 company, followed and fought them. This was the 
 battle of Castle Rocks. I was shot in the face and neck, 
 and was nearly a year getting well. By this time there 
 was a war on the other side of the mountain, and I 
 was drawn into that also. This was the Pit River 
 war. Here I got a bullet through the right arm, and 
 was laid up for another long season. 
 
 By and by he had his plans matured, and had armed 
 his Indians in defence against the brutal and aggressive 
 white men. I was sent on one occasion to Shasta City 
 for ammunition. I had made similar raids before. My 
 horse was shot on the return. I was dreadfully bruised 
 by a fall, and the two Indians with me took me in turns 
 behind them. Then we got, or rather captured, a 
 fresh horse and kept on. But I was too badly hurt to 
 go far, and they left me with some Indians by the road. 
 Here I was captured by the pursuing white men. This 
 was in 1859. I was in my seventeenth year, and small 
 for my age. Of course, they had sworn to hang the 
 renegade to the nearest tree. I was really not big 
 enough to hang, and so they took me back to Shasta 
 City, put me in jail, and my part in the wild attempt to 
 found an Indian republic was rewarded with a prompt 
 indictment for stealing horses. A long time I lay in 
 that hot and horrible pen, more dead than alive. 
 
 God pity all prisoners, say 1. Fortunately I could see 
 and even smell some pine trees that stood on the hillside 
 hard by. I know I should have died in those hot days, 
 with the mercury up in the nineties, but for the friend- 
 
JOHN BROWN JOSEPH DE BLOXEY. ^35 
 
 ship, the fragrance, the sense of freedom in those proud 
 old pine trees on the hillside. Meantime, as always 
 happens, I was left alone. All the men passed away 
 like water through a sieve, and only the Indians remem 
 bered me. On the night of the 4th of July, while the 
 town was carousing, they broke open the jail, threw me 
 again on to a horse, and such a ride for freedom and 
 fresh air was never seen before. 
 
 Poor De Bloney lost all heart and gradually sank to 
 continued drunkenness on the border and ultimate obscu 
 rity. As for myself, 1 tried to inherit his high plans 
 and spirits, and made one more attempt, for I had formed 
 ties not to be broken. But the last venture was still 
 more disastrous. Volumes only could tell all the dread 
 ful story that followed the tragedy and the comedy, 
 the folly and the wisdom. And yet now, after a quarter 
 of a century, I still fail to see anything but good and 
 honesty and integrity in these bold plans for the protec 
 tion of the Indians the Indians, to whose annihilation 
 we, as a nation, have become quite reconciled. Ah ! 
 how noble in us to be so easily reconciled to the annihila 
 tion of another race than our own ! I never saw De 
 Bloney after this final failure. I would not be taken 
 again prisoner, and so an officer in pursuit was shot from 
 his horse. We separated in the Sierras, and sought sep 
 arate ways in life I made my way to Washington 
 Territory, sold iny pistols, and settled down in an ob 
 scure settlement on the banks of the Columbia, near 
 Lewis River, and taught school. And here it was that 
 the story of John Brown, his raid, his fight, his capture, 
 and his execution, all came to me. Do you wonder that 
 my heart went out to him and remained with him ? I, 
 too, had been in jail. Death and disgrace were on my 
 track, and might find me any day hiding away there 
 
236 MEMORIE AND RIME. 
 
 under tlie trees in the heart s of the happy children. 
 And so, sympathizing, I told these children over and 
 over again the story of old John Brown there. And 
 they, every one, loved, and honored and pitied him. 
 
 And now yon can better understand why I was so 
 resolved to make a pilgrimage to Harper s Ferry on the 
 anniversary of his execution. However, he does not 
 need my sympathy, or any one s sympathy. I am here 
 simply because it is my sad pleasure to be here at this 
 time. 
 
 It was an odd sequel to our failure to establish our 
 Utopian Republic about the base of Mount Shasta, with 
 the great white cone for a -centre, that I should finally 
 meet these same men who had fought and had captured 
 me in California up in the. new gold-fields of Northern 
 Oregon. And singularly enough, they were very kind. 
 I had received too many wounds fighting for these same 
 men on the border of California to be quite the " rene 
 gade" they counted me once. And when the Shoshonee 
 Indians now attacked our camp at Canyon City, Oregon, 
 these same men chose me their captain to lead them in 
 battle. And how they did wish for poor De Bloney 
 now! But he had been buried away up in the golden 
 fields of Idaho. A three-months campaign, and I was 
 finally beaten, leaving many dead. Bat, as if still to 
 convince me of their love and confidence, when we re 
 turned to Canyon City, they elected me judge of the 
 country, and for the four years of my administration 
 stood truly by me, as if to try to make me forget some 
 thing of the sorrow and the shame of imprisonment. 
 Yet for all that I was in some sense an old man from the 
 time of our failure and flight. And how wretched the 
 few remaining Indians there now ! There are only now 
 and then in all that splendid mountain region a few mis- 
 
.JOHN imowx JOSEPH DE BLONEY. tit 
 
 erable hovels of half-starved, dispirited beggars of the 
 lowest sort to be met with. Captain Jack and his sixty 
 brave rebels were the last of this race. But they made a 
 red spot on the map which the army will long remember. 
 
 FOR THOSE W T HO FAIL. 
 
 " All honor to him who shall win the prize," 
 The world has cried for a thousand years ; 
 
 But to him who tries, and who fails and dies, 
 I give great honor and glory and tears. 
 
 Give glory and honor and pitiful tears 
 To all who fail in their deeds sublime ; 
 
 Their ghosts are many in the van of years, 
 
 They were born with Time in advance of Time. 
 
 Oh, great is the hero who wins a name, 
 
 But greater many and many a time 
 Some pale-faced fellow who dies in shame, 
 
 And lets God finish the thought sublime. 
 
 And great is the man with a sword undrawn, 
 And good is the man who refrains from wine ; 
 
 But the man who fails and yet still fights on, 
 Lo, he is the twin-born brother of mine. 
 
 THE END. 
 
PUBLICATIONS OF FUNK <& WAGNALLS, NEK YORK. 
 
 Tfce most important and practical work of the acre on tine 
 Psalms." SCHAFF. 
 
 Six voi.raiKS NOW re I:AI>V. 
 -SPURCEON S GREAT LIFE WORK- 
 
 THE TREASURY OF DAVID! 
 
 To be published in seven octavo volumes of about 470 pages eack 
 uniformly bound, and making a library of 3,300 pages, 
 
 in handy form for reading and reference. 
 
 It is published simultaneously with, and contains the exact matter o ; 
 the English Edition, which has t-olJ at $4.00 per volume 
 in this country^$28.00 for the work when com 
 pleted. Our edition is in every way pref 
 erable, and is furnished at 
 
 ONE-HAU THE PBICE OP 
 
 THE ENGLISH 
 
 EDITION. 
 
 Price, Per Vol. $2.CO. 
 
 "Messrs. Funk & Wagnalls have entered into an arrangement with 
 9tf to reprint THE TREASUR Y OF DA VID in the United States. 2 
 have every confidence in them that they will issue it correctly and worthily. 
 It has been the great literary work of my life, and I trust it will be as 
 kindly received in America as in England. I wish for Messrs. Funk suc 
 cess in a venture which must involve a great risk and much outlay. 
 
 "Dec. 8, i88f. C. H. SPURGE ON." 
 
 Volumes I., H., IH, IV., V. and VL are now ready; volume 
 VII., which completes the great work, is now under the hand of the 
 author. Subscribers can consult their convenience by ordering ail 
 the volumes issued, or one volume at a time, at stated intervals, until 
 the set is completed by the delivery of Volume VII. 
 
 From the 1-rge number of hearty commendations of this import 
 ant work, we give the following to indicate the value set upon the 
 Bame by 
 
 EMINENT THEOLOGIANS AND SCHOLARS. 
 
 Philip Sc-naff, i>.D.,the Eminent 
 Commentator and the President of the 
 American Bible Revision Committee, 
 aye: "The most important and prac 
 
 tical work of the age on the Psalter IP 
 The Treasury of David, by Charles H 
 Spurgeon. It is full of the force and 
 genius of this celebrated preacher, and 
 
 (OVER.) 
 
 Tkt about workt -unll bt sent by mail, postage Paid, on receipt of the pritt. 
 
PUBLICATTONS OF FUNK dk WAGNALLS, NEW YORK. 
 
 rich in selections from the entire range 
 el literature." 
 
 Wlliam M. Taylor, D.D., 
 
 New York says: In the exposition of 
 the heart THE TuEASURy OF DAVID is 
 sui generis, rich iu experience and pre 
 eminently devotional. The exposition 
 js alwas fresh. To the preacher it is 
 e^picially suggestive." 
 
 John Hall, D.t>., New Voi-k, 
 
 says: There are two questions that 
 must interest every expositor of tha 
 Divine Word. What does a particular 
 passage mean, and to what use is it to 
 be applied in public teaching? in the 
 department of the latter Mr. Spur- 
 geon s great work on the Psalms is 
 without an e^ual. Eminently practical 
 in his own teaching, he has c fleeted in 
 these volumes the best thoughts of the 
 best minds on the Psalter, and es e- 
 cially of that grt- at body.loose y grouped 
 together as the Puritan divines. I ain 
 heartily glad that by arrangements, 
 ea isfactory to all concerned, tl * Messrs. 
 Funk & Wa-nalls are to bring uiis gr at 
 work within th.3 roach ot ministers 
 everywhere, as the English edition is 
 necessarily expensive. I wish the 
 highest success to the enterprise." 
 
 William Ormiston, r>.T|. ( New 
 
 York, says: " I consider THE TREASURY 
 OP DAVID a work of surpassing excel- 
 Ien3e,of inestimable value to every stu 
 dent of the > salter. It will prove a 
 standard work on the Psalms lor all 
 time. The instructive introductions, 
 tae racy ori inil t-xp -sitions, the 
 numerous q aint illustrations gath 
 ered ip jm wide and varied fields, and 
 the suggestive seimonic hin s, render 
 the volumes invaluable to all preachers, 
 and indispensable to every minister s 
 library. All who delight in reading the 
 Psalxs and what Christian does not? 
 will prize this work. It is a rich 
 cycl ipaedia of the literature of taese 
 ancient odes." 
 
 Then. li. ^uyier, D.D.. Brook 
 lyn, says: " I have use I Mr. Spurgeon s 
 THE TREASURY OF DAVID i or tl ree 
 years, and iound it worthy of its name. 
 Whoso goeth in there will find rich 
 spoils. At both my visits to Mr. S he 
 spoke with much enthusiasm of this 
 undertaking as one of his favor te 
 methods of enriching himse.f and 
 others." 
 
 JesaeB. t homug, D.D , Brook- 
 lyn, says: " I have the highest concep 
 
 tion ot the sterling worth of all Mr. 
 Spurgeon s publications, and I incline 
 to regard his TREASURY OF DAVID aa 
 having received more of his loving 
 labor than any other. I regard its 
 publication at a l >wer price as a great 
 service to American Bible students." 
 
 New Yorlc Observer says: " A 
 rich compendium of suggestive com- 
 ment upon the richest devotional 
 poetry ever given to mankind. 
 
 Tli<- Congregatlonalist, Eos- 
 ton, says: " As a devout and spiritually 
 sugg stive work, it is meeting with 
 tae warmest approval and receiving 
 the hearty commendation of the most 
 distinguished divines." 
 
 United Presbyterian, Pitts- 
 burg, Pa , says: " It is unapproached 
 as a commentary on the Psalms. It is 
 of equal value to ministers and lay 
 men a quality that works of the kind 
 rarely possess." 
 
 North. American, Philadelphia, 
 Pa.: says: " \Vill find a place in the 
 library of every minister who knows 
 how to appreciate a good thing." 
 
 New Yorlc Independent pays: 
 " He has ransacked e /angelical litera- 
 ture,and comes forth, like Jessica from 
 her father s houeo, gilded with 
 ducats and rich plunder in the shape 
 of good and helpiul quotations. 
 
 New Yorli Tribune says: "For 
 the great majority of readers who seek 
 in the Psalms those practical lessons 
 in which they are so rich, and those 
 wonderful interpretations of heart-life 
 and expression of emotion in which 
 they anticipate 1he New Testament, we 
 know of no book like this, nor as good. 
 It is literally a Treasury. " 
 
 . S. Times sa s: "Mr. Fpurgeon s 
 style is simple, direct and perspicuous, 
 oiten reminding one of the matchless 
 prose of Bunyan." 
 
 Western Christian Advo-a e, 
 Cincinnati, O., says: "The price is ex 
 tremely moderate lor BO Jarge and inv 
 portant a work. * * * Wo have ex 
 amined this volume with care, and we 
 are greatly pleased with the plan of 
 execution." 
 
 C li ris. 1 iaii Herald says: " Con 
 tains mors felicitous illustrations, 
 more valuable sermonic hints, than can 
 be found in all other worka on the 
 s-me book put together." 
 
 The above works -wzll be sent by mail, postage paid, on receipt of the przct. 
 
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