poke, "she earnt her _old man_" (said individual
twenty-one years of age, perhaps) "nine hundred dollars in nine weeks,
clear of all expenses, by washing! Such women ain't common, I tell
_you_. If they were, a man might marry, and make money by the
operation." I looked at this person with somewhat the same kind of
_inverted_ admiration wherewith Leigh Hunt was wont to gaze upon that
friend of his "who used to elevate the commonplace to a pitch of the
sublime," and he looked at _me_ as if to say, that, though by no means
gloriously arrayed, I was a mere cumberer of the ground, inasmuch as I
toiled not, neither did I wash. Alas! I hung my diminished head,
particularly when I remembered the eight dollars a dozen which I had
been in the habit of paying for the washing of linen-cambric
pocket-handkerchiefs while in San Francisco. But a lucky thought came
into my mind. As all men cannot be Napoleon Bonapartes, so all women
cannot be _manglers_. The majority of the sex must be satisfied with
simply being _mangled_. Reassured by this idea, I determined to meekly
and humbly pay the amount per dozen required to enable this really
worthy and agreeable little woman "to lay up her hundred dollars a
week, clear of expenses." But is it not wonderful what femininity is
capable of? To look at the tiny hands of Mrs. R., you would not think
it possible that they could wring out anything larger than a doll's
nightcap; but, as is often said, nothing is strange in California. I
have known of sacrifices requiring, it would seem, superhuman efforts,
made by women in this country, who, at home, were nurtured in the
extreme of elegance and delicacy.

Mr. B. called on us to-day with little Mary. I tried to make her, at
least, look sad as I talked about her mother; but although she had seen
the grave closed over her coffin (for a friend of her father's had
carried her in his arms to the burial), she seemed laughingly
indifferent to her loss. Being myself an orphan, my heart contracted
painfully at her careless gayety when speaking of her dead parent, and
I said to our hostess, "What a cold-blooded little wretch it is!" But
immediately my conscience struck me with remorse. Poor orphaned one!
Poor bereaved darling! Why should I so cruelly wish to darken her young
life with that knowledge which a few years' experience will so
painfully teach her? "All _my_ mother came into my eyes" as I bent down
and kissed the white lids which shrouded her beautiful