n the lower grades
will not allow of their getting them done. Idealized indeed! Men talk
about our getting out of our places where we clamor for paying work of
some kind, for something to do that will enable us to live in half
comfort by working more hours than they do to earn lordly livings."

How much soever I might have liked to talk this labor question over with
my intelligent hostess at any other time, my curiosity concerning her
own history having been so strongly aroused, the topic seemed less
interesting than usual, and I seized the opportunity given by an
emphasized pause to bring her back to the original subject.

"Did you come first to California?" I asked.

"No. I had been married little over a year when Benton was born. 'Now,'
I thought, 'my husband will be contented to stay at home.' He had been
fretting about having promised not to take me to California; but I hoped
the baby would divert his thoughts. We were doing well, and had a
pleasant house, with everything in and about it that a young couple
ought to desire. I deceived myself in expecting Mr. Greyfield to give up
anything he had strongly desired; and seeing how much he brooded over
it, I finally told him to be comforted; that I would go with him to
California if he would wait until the baby was a year old before
starting; and to this he agreed."

"How old were you at that time?"

"Only about nineteen. I was twenty the spring we started; and celebrated
my anniversary by making a general gathering of all my relatives and
friends at our house, before we broke up and sold off our house-keeping
goods--all but such as could be carried in our wagons across the
plains."

"You were not starting by yourselves?"

"O no. There was a large company gathering together on the Missouri
river, to make the start in May; and we, with some of our neighbors,
made ready to join them. I shall never forget my feelings as I stood in
my own house for the last time, taking a life-long leave of every
familiar object! But you do not want to hear about that."

"I want to hear what you choose to tell me; but most of all about your
second marriage, and what led to it."

"It is not easy to go back so many years and take up one thread in the
skein of life, and follow that alone. I will disentangle it as rapidly
as I can; but first let us have a fresh fire."

Suiting the action to the word, my hostess touched a bell and ordered a
good supply of wood, which I took as an int