their collective qualities. If I were to lay before the reader all
the good and bad I know about them by actual discovery, and all the
mean, and heroic, attributes this habit I have of studying people has
revealed to me, I should meet with incredulity, perhaps with opprobrium.
However that may be, I have derived great enjoyment from having been
made the recipient of the confidences of many women, and by learning
therefrom to respect the moral greatness that is so often coupled with
delicate physical structure, and almost perfect social helplessness.
Pioneer life brings to light striking characteristics in a remarkable
manner; because, in the absence of conventionalities and in the presence
of absolute and imminent necessities, all real qualities come to the
surface as they never would have done under different circumstances. In
the early life of the Greeks, Homer found his Penelope; in the pioneer
days of the Pacific Coast, I discovered mine.

My wanderings, up and down among the majestic mountains and the sunny
valleys of California and Oregon, had made me acquainted with many
persons, some of whom were to me, from the interest they inspired me
with, like the friends of my girlhood. Among this select number was Mrs.
Anna Greyfield, at whose home among the foot-hills of the Sierras in
Northern California, I had spent one of the most delightful summers of
my life. Intellectual and intelligent without being learned or
particularly bookish; quick in her perceptions and nearly faultless in
her judgment of others; broadly charitable, not through any laxity of
principle on her own part, but through knowledge of the stumbling-blocks
of which the world is full for the unwary, she was a constant surprise
and pleasure to me. For, among the vices of women I had long counted
uncharitableness; and among their disadvantages want of actual knowledge
of things--the latter accounting for the former.

I had several times heard it mentioned that Mrs. Greyfield had been
twice married; and as her son Benton was also called Greyfield, I
presumed that he was the son of the second marriage. How I found out
differently I am about to relate.

One rainy winter evening, on the occasion of my second visit to this
friend, we were sitting alone before a bright wood fire in an open
fireplace, when we chanced to refer to the subject of her son's personal
qualities; he then being gone on a visit to San Francisco, and of course
very constantly in his