fifty dollars a ton.

In 1854 and 1855 San Francisco had a monthly magazine that any city or
state might have been proud of; this was _The Pioneer_, edited by the
Rev. Ferdinand C. Ewer. In 1851, a lady, the wife of a physician, went
with her husband into the mines and settled at Rich Bar and Indian Bar,
two neighboring camps on the north fork of the Feather River. There were
but three or four other women in that part of the country, and one of
these died. This lady wrote frequent and lengthy descriptive letters to
a sister in New England, and these letters were afterward published
serially in _The Pioneer_. They picture life as a highly-accomplished
woman knew it in the camps and among the people whom Bret Harte has
immortalized. She called herself "Dame Shirley," and the "Shirley
Letters" in _The Pioneer_ are the most picturesque, vivid, and valuable
record of life in a California mining camp that I know of. The wonder is
that they have never been collected and published in book form; for they
have become a part of the history of the development of the State.

The life of a later period in San Francisco and Monterey has been
faithfully depicted by another hand. The life that was a mixture of
Gringo and diluted Castilian--a life that smacked of the presidio and
the hacienda,--that was a tale worth telling; and no one has told it so
freely, so fully or so well as Gertrude Franklin Atherton.

"Dame Shirley" was Mrs. L.A.C. Clapp. When her husband died she went to
San Francisco and became a teacher in the Union Street public school. It
was this admirable lady who made literature my first love; and to her
tender mercies I confided my maiden efforts in the art of composition.
She readily forgave me then, and was the very first to offer me
encouragement; and from that hour to this she has been my faithful
friend and unfailing correspondent.

South Park and Rincon Hill! Do the native sons of the golden West ever
recall those names and think what dignity they once conferred upon the
favored few who basked in the sunshine of their prosperity? South Park,
with its line of omnibuses running across the city to North Beach; its
long, narrow oval, filled with dusty foliage and offering a very weak
apology for a park; its two rows of houses with, a formal air, all
looking very much alike, and all evidently feeling their importance.
There were young people's "parties" in those days, and the height of
felicity was to be invited to t