ure delight to them, and they felt every note of the music. They
treated Octavia and me with the courtesy fit for queens, and some
of them told us delightful things of shootings and blood-curdling
adventures, and all with a delicious twinkle in the eye, as much as to
say, "We are keeping up the character of the place to please you." We
did enjoy ourselves. The Senator says this quality of perfect respect
for women is universal in the mining camps. Any nice woman is absolutely
safe among them. I think there ought to be mining camps to teach men
manners all over Europe. You will feel I am exaggerating, Mamma, and
talking a great deal about this, but it is so marked and astonishing;
all have that perfect ease and poise of well born gentlemen (the Harry
manner, in fact) completely without self consciousness. I suppose they
get drunk sometimes, and probably there are riotous scenes here, but
I can only tell you of what we saw, and that was people happy, and
behaving as decorously as at a court ball.

Just before we left three or four really villainous looking men came in,
and instantly there seemed to be a stir of some sort; and Nelson and the
Senator stood very close to me, and while apparently doing nothing got
us near the door, and we all strolled out, and then they spoke rather
low to one another while they never let go of my arms. Awkward
customers, the Senator told us, and when these bad spirits were "around"
things often ended in a row. It was tiresome it did not happen, wasn't
it? Both Octavia and I felt we should have loved to see a really
exciting moment! To-morrow we go down the great Osages mine, which
belongs to Nelson and the Senator, and then to a dinner party in one of
the shacks, and the next day we start for the real wild, because this is
civilisation, and we are going to a quite young camp called Moonbeams,
miles across the desert. We shall have to leave the car, at the end of
the railway, and go in rough kinds of motors. It sounds too exciting,
and the Senator says there they can show us the real thing and we are
not to mind roughing it. We are so looking forward to it, and if you are
writing to Harry--but, no, do not mention me. By now he must have found
out Mrs. Smith has things which aren't attractive in a tent.

Tell Hurstbridge I will bring him a "gun," and Ermyntrude a papoose
doll.

Love from,

Your affectionate daughter,

ELIZABETH.

_Still Osages City_.

DEAREST MAMMA,--I must write each