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 in 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?"