Page:The New Penelope.djvu/18

12 came over from Vancouver who told me that Mr. Seabrook had a wife, and family of children, in a certain town in Ohio." Another pause followed, while she seemed 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