WIVES AND OTHER WOMEN.

311

her to his regenerate heart. Gaudet tentamine virtus! The men were relatively superior to the women. As a rule, the better class of men came to California, and a more ordinary class of women. The trip to this country was tedious, disgusting to a sensitive, delicate woman; there was no society here, no household con venience. It was a very hard place for a woman. The finer specimens of womanhood could find husbands at home; there was no necessity for them to undergo the horrors of a sea voyage to California, and its society afterward. Nevertheless, multitudes of noble and true women did come; but it must be admitted that woman here in early times was not the intelligent, refined, and sensible being that is found in older and more settled communities. In California good husbands regularly once a week rolled up their sleeves, and helped wife or daughter at the wash-tub.

To live in purity, woman must have the sympathy of those around her; thousands in California have fallen simply from the fact that men had no faith in them. Othello played before a Californian audience in those days would have appealed to sentiments strange to the hearts of many of the hearers.

Now and then ships from France and elsewhere would enter the port, with companies of respectable girls on board, who would be immediately caught up by gamblers and saloon-keepers, to assist at the table or dispense drinks, at two hundred and fifty dollars a month; but alas, within a week or two, despite the vigilance of the proprietor, they would be mated!

Thus we see that there were true women and there were false women among those the gold-seekers left behind. California widows they were called, and they were to be found in every rural town, every hotel, boarding-house, and watering place. Faithful, modest wives and mothers some of them were, patiently waiting the end of this sudden and strange family disruption. Round them were mouths to feed and no remittance came; yet never doubting, the heart-en

shrined image was crowned with fidelity and noble purpose. And thus, through years of anxious toil they held to their hopes, dreaming at night horrible dreams of staring gold-diggings up to their neck in glittering mud, their heads wreathed in rattlesnakes, gnawed by wolves, or cut off for foot-balls by the savages, all the while not knowing whether their husbands were alive or not. Their existence they knew to be a living death, yet they worked away, sewing for the tailor, making shirts, giving lessons to the neighbors' children, or even working out..

There were others, however, who took a more free and fanciful view of their situation, and determined to enjoy and make the best of it. These lived on the charity of their family or friends. It was unsafe to treat them with coldness or neglect, for any moment their husband might return a millionaire. Young and beautiful and abandoned! True, temporarily and for her own benefit abandoned; but why should he think more of gold than of her? The first taste of wedlock was sweet; by it, however, the appetite was only whetted, not gratified. Former and unsuccessful lovers were now remembered and smiled upon, and flirtation was found a pleasing way to shorten the hours of a husband's absence. Some returned in time to reclaim their wives from too free a course of dissipation; others did not.

Du Hailly refers to the English custom of sending young women out to India to get married there, and says that this custom finds its counterpart in California in a curious prospectus in which an American woman, Mrs Farnham, offered to organize, on a large scale, a scheme for the emigration of women to San Francisco. The highest respectability was required, and no emigrant was admitted under twenty-five years of age. A ship was chartered especially for their use, and each must have 1200 francs. Small as was the amount required, the enterprise was not a success; but this did not hinder the Californian colonization agents

WIVES AND OTHER WOMEN.

313

from continuing to solicit in their publications the fair sex to come. "What does it matter about money," they said, "that is the last consideration of a gentleman among us." "The young person who loves the world and its pleasures," says one of them, "will find here partners ready to procure her every enjoyment; while she who is inclined to domestic comfort will meet quiet and steady men whose doors will open to welcome her."

Of the wrecked hopes of men in California many speak; of the wasted sympathy of woman, of her vain yearning for the promised tenderness, of her faith among the faithless, her constancy after all affection had been withdrawn from her, her deep sorrows and sufferings as the reward of a devoted life-none at all. What are the blows of battle to him who engages in the conflict in comparison to the helpless agony of an eye-witness? All things will a man give for his life. Woman gives all for love; deny her this and she is dead indeed. A catalogue of Californian infidelities, broken vows, brutal treatment, failure to provide on the part of him who took from a happy home a tender loving heart under promise of eternal love and protection, would make one blush for the race. came hither to rough it, and it did them no harm, but added to their manliness. For woman, a life in California in early times was probably one of the most trying positions she could be called upon to endure, her love, her pride, her health, and strength, her honor and religion, all being brought under the crucial test. If she could drudge by day, and withstand discomforts by night, and live under it, she could manage to get along; but with want and unkindness this could not always be. Too often her weary life was soulless duty, and death the only recompense; and thus was her gentle spirit crushed and made ripe for heaven.

Men

Content is godliness; but for a woman to have content, she must have something beside wealth; her

heart knows no alchemy that will turn it into gold. There is a limit beyond which mere mental culture and unaspiring industry, be they never so earnest and patient, cannot broaden or deepen the soul. There must be a little sentiment, a little feminine ambition, a little womanly excitement other than that which a purely money-making husband usually gives; else the tender harmony of the heart is silenced, and the delicate flower withers and droops. California was no place for a fastidious woman. She who could wash best, iron best, or cook best, was the most independent, and the one to win fortune, and even happiness if her nature admitted it. Nevertheless, there were many whose hearts nothing but a golden key could unlock.

It is not to be wondered at that intemperance in business and pleasure should result in social discord. Though the Yankee element predominated, there was in society at the first, scarcely what could be called a recognized or recognizable nationality; California was then but a geographical expression-Vox et præterea nihil.

The guests of a large dinner or supper party were as varied in character and qualities of mind as among the rich men of Rome, who had acquired wealth by disreputable means in the days of Pliny, though the San Francisco host did not carry the distinction so far as to serve up different qualities of food and wine to the different guests as in Rome.

CHAPTER XIII.

FURTHER ABNORMITIES.

E come gli stornei ne portan l'ali
Nel freddo tempo a shiera larga e piena;
Cosí quel fiato gli spiriti mali

Di quá, di lá, di giú, di sú gli mena:
Nulla speranza gli conforta mai;

Non che di posa, ma di minor penor.

-Dell Inferno.

In Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead, Charon compels all to strip before entering his boat; the rich man of his wealth, the vain man of his foppery, the king of his pride and kingship, the athlete of his flesh, the partrician of his noble birth and his honors, the philosopher of his disputatiousness, his rhetorical flourishes, his antitheses and parallelisms, and all his wordy trumpery. None may go to the regions of the dead even with a rag of clothes on.

Now there are many in California who would like to take with them there all they have, who are tremblingly fearful of dying and leaving the wealth they love so much; who cannot bear the thought of parting with it even after death; and so they leave it to be dissipated by lawyers and executors, instead of devoting it themselves to some useful and noble purpose. Many large estates have, in this way been scattered, which doubtless wrung the souls of their former owners as they looked up, watchful and wistful, at the hapless flow of their dear ducats. After all, there is a not wholly unjust law of compensation applicable to savage and civilized, poor and rich, the past and the present; even the most tormented in life may find relief in the

( 315 )