e were frequent
irruptions of closely-shaven and tightly-cravated men, and delicate,
flower-faced women, in the one long street of Five Forks, and a
scampering of mules, and an occasional procession of dusty brown-linen
cavalry.

A year after "Hawkins's Idiot Asylum" was completed, one day there
drifted into the valley a riotous cavalcade of "school-marms,"
teachers of the San Francisco public schools, out for a holiday. Not
severely-spectacled Minervas, and chastely armed and mailed Pallases,
but, I fear, for the security of Five Forks, very human, charming, and
mischievous young women. At least, so the men thought, working in the
ditches, and tunnelling on the hillside; and when, in the interests
of science, and the mental advancement of juvenile posterity, it was
finally settled that they should stay in Five Forks two or three
days for the sake of visiting the various mines, and particularly the
"Blazing Star" tunnel, there was some flutter of masculine anxiety.
There was a considerable inquiry for "store-clothes," a hopeless
overhauling of old and disused raiment, and a general demand fox "boiled
shirts" and the barber.

Meanwhile, with that supreme audacity and impudent hardihood of the sex
when gregarious, the school-marms rode through the town, admiring openly
the handsome faces and manly figures that looked up from the ditches,
or rose behind the cars of ore at the mouths of tunnels. Indeed, it is
alleged that Jenny Forester, backed and supported by seven other equally
shameless young women, had openly and publicly waved her handkerchief to
the florid Hercules of Five Forks, one Tom Flynn, formerly of Virginia,
leaving that good-natured but not over-bright giant pulling his blonde
mustaches in bashful amazement.

It was a pleasant June afternoon that Miss Milly Arnot, principal of the
primary department of one of the public schools of San Francisco, having
evaded her companions, resolved to put into operation a plan which had
lately sprung up in her courageous and mischief-loving fancy. With that
wonderful and mysterious instinct of her sex, from whom no secrets of
the affections are hid, and to whom all hearts are laid open, she had
heard the story of Hawkins's folly, and the existence of the "Idiot
Asylum." Alone, on Hawkins Hill, she had determined to penetrate its
seclusion. Skirting the underbrush at the foot of the hill, she managed
to keep the heaviest timber between herself and the "Blazing Star"
tun