eemed to be
recalling the very emotions of that time.

"Vancouver?" I said: "that is on the Columbia River."

"Yes; I was living in Portland at that time."

In reply to my glance of surprise, she changed the scene of her story to
an earlier date.

"Mr. Greyfield had always wanted to come to California, after the gold
discoveries; but when he married me he agreed not to think of it any
more. I was very young and timid, and very much attached to my
childhood's home, and my parents; and I could not bear the thought of
going so long a distance away from them. It was not then, as it is now,
an easy journey of one week; but a long six months' pilgrimage through a
wilderness country infested by Indians. To reach what? another
wilderness infested by white barbarians!"

"But I have always heard," I said, "that women were idealized and
idolized in those days."

"That is a very pretty fiction. If you had seen what I have seen on this
coast, you would not think we had been much idealized. Women have a
certain value among men, when they can be useful to them. In the old
States, where every man has a home, women have a fixed position and
value in society, because they are necessary to make homes. But on this
coast, in early times, and more or less even now, men found they could
dispense with homes; they had been converted into nomads, to whom earth
and sky, a blanket and a frying-pan, were sufficient for their needs.
Unless we came to them armed with endurance to battle with primeval
nature, we became burdensome. Strong and coarse women who could wash
shirts in any kind of a tub out of doors under a tree, and iron them
kneeling on the ground, to support themselves and half a dozen little,
hungry young ones, were welcome enough--before the Chinamen displaced
them. We had some value as cooks, before men, with large means, turned
their attention to supplying their brothers with prepared food for a
consideration below what we could do with our limited means. And then
the ladies, the educated, refined women, who followed their husbands to
this country, or who came here hoping to share, perchance, in the golden
spoils of the mines! Where are they to-day, and what is their condition?
Look for them in the sunless back rooms of San Francisco
boarding-houses, and you will find them doing a little fine sewing for
the shops; or working on their own garments, which they must make out of
school hours, because the niggardly pay of teachers i