might jist as well git fresh potatoes when you want any cheap fixin's for supper. I'm mighty glad I didn't come from sich a pore place as New England." And her husband agreed with her as to their good fortune and shared her appreciation of Indiana.

At the end of the month, her friends had their Mamaluke Hill house in readiness, had inserted fine notices in the Sacramento papers, and even the San Francisco dailies gave them a flattering puff. Notices were printed and scattered through the mines, and bushels of them were left at the Georgetown post-office, setting forth the unequaled accommodations and homelike comfort of the new house. These notices were balm to Mrs. Luddick, for by this time she was well known in Georgetown, and it was mentioned that she was to be the amiable and thoroughly competent housekeeper.

Now, the new hotel would be the largest house she had ever undertaken to manage. It consisted of five rooms- -the bar, parlor, dining-room, a kitchen, and a long, narrow shake shed fitted up with rows of bunks nailed to the wall. In addition, there was a group of tents at some little distance, designed to accommodate the half-dozen members of the household, none but the barkeeper occupying the "hotel" at night.

Aside from this encouraging promotion, she felt a proprietary right in Mamaluke Hill, for she owned a deep mining claim staked off near some richly paying ones.

"I can manage things here splendid," she said to her husband, who had been working hard all the month at the Hill. "I've learnt so much about minin'-cookin' from the Georgetown folks, besides all I knowed before, that I reckon I'll make a good cook; an' for its size thar's no housekeepin' at the hotel. It's as easy as our two rooms was back in Indiany; an' I was always afeard o' big houses, too."

So Mrs. Luddick was sufficiently confident of herself, and the boarders were sufficiently humble, and glad to be pleased,

and the opening of the hotel was most auspicious.

She tried hard to succeed, but often despaired in view of the peculiar disadvantages that opposed her. If she found an agreeably sounding recipe in the New York Ledger, to which she was a subscriber, it required a dozen ingredients beyond her reach-some by the width of the continent. No culinary genius had bethought himself or herself of the wide virgin field that mountain and mining camps presented, and the triumph possible in making something from nothing. And no Indianian of Southern extraction, of Mrs. Luddick's generation, had before found herself so poor as to have to piece a meal, for that was a step worse and lower down than no meal at all. They had generally the richest materials, in the fullest quantity, at hand, and the warmingover and hashing-up process was a scorned economy.

Nevertheless, Mrs Luddick's affairs proceeded serenely until nearly midsummer.

It had grown dry, and hot, and smoky; the Hill was enveloped in dust and heat, and the freshness of spring, which had animated the human soul, was likewise dulled and wilted. There was a good deal of sickness in camp; and one of those attacked was one of the boarders. He was

a member of a partnership, and the others tended him in their fashion, bringing him the rough food of the general table, until the poor fellow refused it.

Mrs Luddick was at this time the only woman at Mamaluke Hill, and she was far too busy to look after him, never thinking in the first place, that that might be her duty.

One scorchingly hot mid-day, when she was at her busiest, one of the sick man's partners came into the kitchen. He was very tall, and darkened the room as he stooped and entered the outer door. He carried a tin bucket in his hand, spoke with a nasal drawl, used correct language, and sniffed as he glanced about the kitchen.

"My partner," he said, "says he cannot eat the food served at the common table. He wants a few delicacies, something light, and nourishing, and assimilative. Can't he have some soup today?"

I

Mrs. Luddick mused a moment. She had eaten soup in New York, and thought it very poor stuff, filling one up with water and vegetables, or rather cattle fodder, such as turnips and carrots and celery, a sort oft makeshift for want of something better. was not customary to have it in the mines; but desirious of pleasing if she could, she stepped briskly to the great iron pot from which she had just lifted several cabbages, filled the bucket with the thick, steaming liquid, and saying smilingly that she hoped he would like it, and if he did she would make him some every day, handed it back to the envoy and he departed.

But he returned in a few moments in a smothered rage. His speech dropped its drawl and nasal twang, his eyes sparkled, and his form dilated, until it struck Mrs. Luddick even in the midst of her trouble, and she wondered how he had ever got in at the door.

He told her angrily, setting the bucket down on the table with a bang, that that was no soup. It was hot water, poisoned in an iron pot. A sick man didn't want hot water, or a distillation of cabbage leaves. Didn't she know the laws governing delicacies of palates and the idiosyncracies of stomachs? did she not know the craving of a sick man, penned in these desert mountains, for some palatable tidbit that should remind him of home, and cheer and enliven him, and, in fact, cure him?--and more to the same purpose.

All these partners were cultured, exclusive Easterners who were not popular in camp, of whom she saw little, and whom, in common with all their kind, she hated heartily. She stood in terror of their sharp tongues, angular tempers, and keen wit. Their kin had sold her father paper harness

and paper shoes, flannels that dissolved in the washing, cotton broadcloth, clocks with soft copper works, and beans labeled coffee at a price demanded for coffee instead of beans. To her all the East seemed a land preempted by the Spirit of Darkness. Her memory was a long one she recalled these things while the ring of the bucket on the pine table still sounded in the kitchen. Surprised, disappointed, mortified, and angry, she burst into tears, sank down on the floor, and rocked back and forth, her head buried in her flour sack apron.

Her husband hurried in, the young man explained matters, and hastily departed, taking the offending soup with him; and he never returned again on any similar mission. But the soup incident hurt Mrs. Luddick very much, and she often afterwards stood and stared into the thick cabbage-water, and wondered how soup was made, and if there was any possibility of hitting on its manufacture by chance. Of course she was far too proud to ask any one but her husband, whose opinion of soup was even less flattering than her own.

In early September, she was lounging one afternoon in the shade of the front porch, where the shake roof offered most grateful relief from the hot sun. In consonance with the weather, she wore a dress of pale, thin material, simply made, and in consonance with the fashions of the day far too full and flowing for present æsthetically slim draperies. She was quite idle, and was humming over a tune some fiddle had squealed out on the porch the night before. Her position commanded the road that careened zigzag over the rise toward Georgetown. The heavy mule teams had ground it to a powdery dust, which the faint breeze kept constantly stirring, and from an ordinary driveway it had widened to a gullied avenue, pleasantly shaded by low oaks and manzanitas, gray under the summer's accumulation of dust, and pine trees whose upper branches were yet agreeable in appear

ance. A spot of green, harboring a spring in its bosom, under cover of thimbleberry bushes, filled up the foreground, and the rippling stream in the gulch made a low music, when one willed to hear and appreciate it, which was perhaps not often.

The usual signs of bustle about the camp -the pounding of hammers, and ringing of picks, and songs of idlers-were almost stilled by the overpowering weather. Even the lively motions about the saloons were hushed, and their brilliant fascinations forsaken for the cool, low willows that swished in the brook, and the shade of the mossy banks.

Presently, far up the cañon, there was a low crack, too long for a rifle shot, followed by a halloo, and another and another, coming nearer and nearer; until presently two gray, bowed heads appeared above the rise, followed by a gray yoke, and then the gray top of a prairieschooner, more bowed gray heads, and gray yokes, and gray wagon, until the full team creaked over the rise, to an almost incessant chorus of swinging blacksnakes and profanity. Then came another Then came another team, a third, fourth, and fifth-forty oxen in all, and half a dozen horsemen, riding along as wearily as the oxen moved.

It was a novel sight to Mrs Luddick. She had heard much of the "trains" from the Donner Lake division down, but she had seen none. All the cattle were miserably thin and dispirited, though fine animals, and seemed nearly weighed to the earth beneath the load of dirt that they carried. The low wheels of the caravan sank down in the deceptive ruts, (for these prairie ships were not piloted into port, like their more fortunate sisters,) and groaned in their tremendous efforts to roll out; and so in slow procession they moved down the slope and drew up by the hotel.

The red cloud of dust rolled from the oxen's feet upward among the wagons, and when they shifted off in the breeze, there

seemed to Mrs. Luddick's rather bewildered gaze to be dozens of heads popped from the fronts and rears of the wagons.

There was a lull, perhaps of thankfulness too full for words, and then the wagons emptied themselves of their human cargoa flock of children, tanned to the hue of gypsies, bare-legged and bare-headed, and barely enveloped in some colorless stuff that might have been calico four months before; slouchy, slim girls, and disheveled women, and one or two sallow, wild-haired, sick men. The horsemen dismounted heavily; the drivers dropped their whips, and shook the dust from their broad hats, and probably dipped into the trough around which the horses were already crowding; while the oxen, twisting their imprisoned heads, shoving and pulling, struggled towards the homely bubbling fountain, uttering occasionally a low moan of eager desire.

The miners, aroused by the well-known. jingling bells and sounding whips, flocked down from the hills in twos and threes. There were greetings and hand-grips, shouts and hurrahs, swearing and kicking and whipping, a huddling together of the weary women, and modest hiding of those parts of their attire least calculated to show them off to advantage. The horses were unsaddled and their equipments flung on the porch, and the freed beasts rolled on the young grass about the spring. Finally, the wagons were geed and hawed into proper position, and the yokes unpinned; the great tongues dropped to the ground; the splintered, worn wheels sank restfully into the weeds and low bushes; and the oxen, freed, sought comfort where they would; and then there was another lull. The miners dropped away again in twos and threes, the excited town dogs sought repose, the dust settled into its customary puffing and swirling about the ruts.

Mrs. Luddick pulled herself together, and invited the women into the three rooms

at their service, where they said they reckoned they'd wait till the men overhauled the wagons.

But the men didn't overhaul them. There were hay and oats to be bought in campand the transactions proved either very long and difficult, or pleasant. It grew late, and finally the women went out in a body and unpacked the wagons. Strong hands jerked off the covers; the camp utensils, bedding, furniture, bundles, bags, and carpet sacks were flung out, for those particular treasures most safely stored away in the wagon beds.

By this time, Mrs. Luddick's supper engaged her completely, and she made no more observations. She prepared her meal most carefully. In addition to those essentials, coffee and biscuits, she had a bread pudding, fried meat and bacon, dried venison, Chili peaches, and stewed apples. She had no too great plenty, for the usual number of boarders was doubled by those curious to see what attractions the train had brought.

The new arrivals were well-to-do, and the women, some half-dozen, were very nice, even elegant, for Mamaluke, in cool, light dresses and pretty ornaments, such as silken belts and gauzy ruffles, and there was a suggestion of perfume in the air about them.

They laughed and sang until far into the hot night; the children played their childish. games; there were two fiddles and an accordion from camp, and much joking and jollity. The moon came up over the hills, and the camp lay white and almost unshadowed in its direct rays. There was a sound of munching jaws and swishing tails, nickers and scuffles, all night among the wagons, and a subdued yet dominant undercurrent of snoring from the same direction. O peaceful September night! O silent mountains and hushed camp! O tired, far-traveling wanderers!-the gathering together of the forces of nature, one supplementing the other, perfecting and sending forth that complicated, wonderful

thing-a State. Of such materials, in such a way, out of such beginnings, did California grow.

The Luddicks had decided to leave the mines, and seek their fortunes in the smoother, simpler pastures further down the Sacramento, entirely overlooked in the rush up the river, but now coming into prominence. The women just in from the plains, or a portion of them, consented to fill Mrs. Luddick's position, and she remained a few days to aid them in their proper installation.

They immediately demanded a couple of aids, assistance she quite ignored unless it was voluntary, They also determined on at grand blow out" in their particular line. Winter supplies were just beginning to come in from Sacramento at Georgetown, and from these they filled the kitchen with barrels and boxes, dried and salted goods, pumpkins and squashes, and one box of tomatoes from San Jose. They ordered cans of milk up from Georgetown, something Mrs. Luddick had entirely dispensed with, and the butcher came loaded with half a dozen different sections of beef, where Mrs. Luddick had made one do.

She looked on in silent amazement, and felt a chill sense of despair take possession of her, while these agile, deft, intelligent women gathered their forces. How had the house managed to put up with her inefficiency at all? she wondered; and what contempt they would feel for her under this new régime! She was not envious by any means, but sad and discouraged. She had spirit enough remaining, however, to watch. and learn all these women could teach her in the next two or three meals preceding her departure.

The prettiest and deftest of the trio went to the barrel brimming over with bread. "O, my!" she cried in genuine horror, "did you ever see the equal of this? What do you do with it all?" turning to Mrs. Luddick.

"Throw it away.

pigs out here, and they eat it."

The four woman gathered about the barrel and peered into it with various exclamations.

"Well, we'll tell 'em not to bring so much."

It'll make fine toast, some of it. you ever have that?"

"No."

Did

These breezy, ingenious women spoiled the long-suffering boarders, and nearly bankrupted their employers; but they taught Mrs. Luddick several needed lessons and though she left Georgetown with a heavy heart and a sense of failure, glad to escape from a place whose blue autumn skies seemed joined with the town in laughing at her and her assumptions, efforts, and trials, later on her sad experiences and sufferings in Georgetown and at Mamaluke, came back to her, and helped her in equally primitive places, on equally disadvantageous occasions, and supported her on to triumph.

I. H. B.