The heroine

Dedication

To the noblest of earth's children, the grand, masterful men and women who carved out our first civilization on the Pacific Coast; they who felled the first trees, built the first cabins, blazed out the roads, and constructed the first bridges, plowed the first fields and reaped the first golden harvest — the pioneers of the Pacific Coast; as one of them, this work is dedicated

by the author,

M. P. S.

Preface

People who are stung by the conviction that they have aided in the great wrong of inveigling young maidens into early marriages will, perhaps, denounce us as having exceeded the bounds of cool philosophy in our criticism on the early marriage of girls. But the first dawn of reason brought to our mind the full tide of this overwhelming falsehood, together with its evil effects upon the individual, as well as upon the whole human race. * ' And though the heavens fall, " we are compelled to speak the truth, and not complacently smile at this monster lie any longer.

The laws governing the property of girls, as well as those of the marriage rites, are based most basely on this falsehood, that girls arrive at the age of maturity sooner than boys; girls being legally of age at eighteen and boys at twenty-one. The wonder is, that a fact so wide of the truth, and fraught with so much evil, and not an atom of good, could acquire such a hold on honest people, and not find some one to refute it long ago.

We defy any physiologist to find, in the whole realm

6 PREFACE.

of nature, an atom of fact that will substantiate the lie that girls grow faster than boys. We defy a person living to bring an instance of one case, from an elephant to a mouse, including the human race, where the parents can produce male offspring who will mature less rapidly than the female offspring. Nature would have to invent a new kind of parentage before she could accomplish this great feat. Let any physician refute this who can, but let him not forget that the author still holds a pen. There are profound physiological laws governing growth and maturity that few people could be made to comprehend. Even the average physician would have to be better versed in physiology than he is, we are sorry to say, before he could grasp these great truths that are before him, working out, with unerring precision, the great laws of growth, maturity and decay.

The characters in the story are drawn from real life. No living author could have produced them without witnessing the scenes depicted in the work. It covers a new, romantic, broad field. The characters are good and bad, just as they existed; Murdstone being first cousin to Dickens's Murdstone, in David Copperfield. Everybody is familiar with that hard character. This Murdstone has, however, with bible in hand, determined to grind some good from out his own character, and there is hope for him. The world is as full of Murdstones as it is of Smiths, and the name should be

PREFACE. 7

used oftener to show up that hard type of man. It is the intention of the author to try to make people see the wrong they do to children by beating their flesh to enlighten or cultivate their brains. The thing is vile, and parental authority a crime ten times to one, that should be abolished from families; love only, parental love, guiding the childhood of our nation.

Judge Boughtup and Cursica Miser are characters too often met with, alas, in real life, and if they did not exist as they are portrayed, or act as they are represented, the sun never hung in the heavens.

It is wonderful to note how the transaction of eight thousand dollars, passing from the one man to the other, left the one in the deepest obscurity, while the other took the money and bloomed out where his dastardly proceedings have made landmarks all along a life of iniquities perpetrated upon his fellows.

Feeling the necessity of having a historic sketch, giving at least, a glimpse of the family life of the first settlers on the Pacific Coast, this work was undertaken with the hope that possibly the very errors, blunders and incompleteness may be the means of inspiring someone to write a more perfect and complete account of this period.

Knowing how soon time obliterates every vestige of the past, the writer felt that the work had better be done in this crude way than never to be done at all; knowlog full well that a time will come when a people

8 PREFACE.

enjoying the magnificence and marvelous wealth of these Pacific States will look back with hearts filled with gratitude to the people who laitl the foundation for it all, made sacrifices and endured privations that would be difficult for any historian, however accurate or gifted, to portray, and any account of those days, however imperfect, will be held sacred by them.

THE AUTHOR.

Chapter I. Jewels Or No Jewels

It was the winter of 1871 in New York City. We were at dinner in the richly draped, warm dining-room of the brownstone-front mansion of the banker Barren, The cheerful warmth of the room contrasted strongly with the outside sleet and snow that was just beginning to fall; it gave a soft glow to the silken draperies and bright mirrors that served as doors on the china closets, and extended from ceiling to floor, reflecting the warm light of the fire, the stately clock above it that told of the flight of time in a chime of bells, and the fine, old, carved oaken side-board, with its antique Persian ewer and tray of exquisite beauty, and its dainty blue and gold china; for Mr. Barren was not a poor banker — he was a millionaire.

Jean Reining had been at the home of her queenly sister-in-law a whole week, stupid mortal, and had not observed that in eating soup (if such esthetic mortals could be said to eat soup and not absorb it) they dipped the soup away from them instead of towards them in conveying it to the mouth. We had finished soup, however, and fish and fowl had been brought, and Mr. Barren was carving with that ease that comes only with practice. Madam Barron sat waiting, resplendent in her beauty and jewels, flashing her wit at Jean Reining. She said: u You will write a story and put us all in it — the bears of the Sierras and the bankers of New York." And Mr. Barron remarked: " Bears are good to write about, I am sure. I have just bought a fine skin for a carriage robe that is rich, black and glossy." " Perhaps,'' said Madam, " Mr. Barron will lend you the robe to enable you to give a more accurate description of the bears.'* " Oh, that would be tame indeed," said Jean, brightly. "I shall have real wild bears, perhaps not in * droves of five hundred/ as Sam Slimmins describes them in « Picturesque Sierras,' but one, now and again, roaming in dignified solitude, helping himself to acorns — a harmless, proper creature enough when you do not venture to encroach upon his dominions. My ideal bear would never wander into this great city and molest you."

" What is the title of your book to be, Jean ? " inquired Madam Barron.

" Now, really, I do not know what to call the book; it's the most puzzling question I will have to grapple with," answered Jean, feeling that she was being laughed at, and wishing that Madam had her dinner 0n her plate so that she could give her attention to that and not be able to talk any more, when to Jean's relief, Madam said, with a little laugh, "I have it, I will help you this much, call it ' Why is this Thus ? '

"G-ood]enough," answered Jean with a smile. " The book, if it is ever written, shall be called by your title."

"How soon shall you publish it? " asked Mr. Barron, " I have promised Mark Steger that I will take one hundred copies of his book that he is writing, entitled * How Will it End ? ' and I will do as well by you."

" I shall be proud to have so good a reader, and will order the bookseller to send you a hundred copies," said Jean, plunging into her dinner with an appetite that her sister-in-law's banter had only sharpened.

The two sisters-in-law were as unlike as could well be. Madam Barron was a woman of thirty years, with steel-gray eyes, dark hair, a Grecian nose,

JEWELS OR NO JEWELS. 11

perfect features, and a complexion that rivaled a rose in its fine tones. She was stately in her carriage, with a touch of languor scarcely definable, and yet when you came to know her, you would see that this love of ease entered largely into her character, giving strong color to all her acts. Her dress was of soft, pearl-gray silk, one of Worth's, costing anywhere between three and five hundred dollars. On her well-poised head, with its wealth of rich, dark hair, hovered a dainty gold butterfly, with eyes of costly diamonds, its outspread wings seeming to flutter against her braids; diamonds fastened soft lace at her throat.

Madam Barron had been a poor girl, too, in her childhood, but she had an ambitious aunt, who thought it cheaper to spend one summer at Saratoga than to care for her handsome niece many summers in the humdrum town they lived in. Sure enough, one outing did the business. Mr. Barron saw the beautiful Oelia at the opening ball of the season, danced with her twice, and every mamma there decided the gi.i had won her prize before the evening closed, and the gay throng had passed from the bright scene into oblivion, to be again reunited, walking, driving, boating, dancing again. O, the happy, merry time ! Mr. Barron had only a few days to spend from his business. Celia was far too pretty a girl to leave untrammeled by an engagement. Her aunt was interviewed, Celia sought, and a carefully arranged engagement made. Mr. Barron always declared that he had to make love to his wife all their married life because he had had no time to do the usual amount of courting before, and surely he always looked the lover and she the happy bride. The aunt was the happiest mortal alive, saying often:

" Supposing I had kept that splendid creature hid up in that mountain village of Tuckertowu, you would never have had such a wife."

"O, yes, I should," declared Mr. Barron. "I never would have married any other girl than your niecer Mrs. Multbrd. I'd have gone fishing for trout in Tuckert »vvn mill-ponds," heartily insisted Mr. Barrou, " but I should have found Celia."

The only thing that could be said to mar the appointment of their elegant home and the seeming happiness of their marriage was that there never came any little Barrons and Barronesses to add to their great happiness; so to amuse themselves, they played that Jean's little golden-haired Dot was their very own, when mamma Jean was not near to hear. The little lady would enter into the fun with as much zest as her uncle and auntie did. They adopted her in their hearts, bought her dresses that suited her type of ixiuty, and petted her without stint. Every day her loveliness increased, and she grew more charming in her childlike ways. All their fondness and caressingr however injudiciously lavished upon her, instead of spoiling her, only brought out the more her sweet and tender nature, as she nestled in the hearts of all who saw her. Dot had hair like spun gold in the sunlight. It fell in heavy waves all over her shoulders, reaching below her sash, where it clustered in great heavy ringlets that would have delighted the soul of a Titian. Amie, the French maid, might brush it ever so straight, and in a two minutes' romp it would curl up in those great, luscious curls at the ends, in the most bewitching way. Dot had large eyes like her mother, but they were blue, like her Auntie Barron's. Her nose was slightly retroussZ, with broad nostrils that indicated good breathing capacity, and insures to any animal good health. She had chubby cheeks and a funny little mouth that she could kiss very sweetly with, and with which she played the diplomat in the most remarkable way; these kisses deciding whether she should be a poor little girl and live with Mama Jean all her life, or be the sole heiress of her Uncle Barron, and always stay with Auntie

JEWELS OR NO JEWELS. 13

Barren. Dot was a tall child for her five years, as well rounded in limb and firm of flesh as any young filly that ever won a race. No sculptor could ask for a finer model; there was strength, endurance, delicacy, perfection. The soft, velvety skin, glowing with health, was not too white, but gave promise that a tinge of the olive from Mamma Jean's dark eyes, hair and skin, would assert itself in the little lady, and make for her a wealth of rarest beauty when she grew to womanhood. All the ills that children are usually tormented with had touched her lightly, as water touches a duck's back, and rolled off, much the same way, leaving her bright, fresh, sunny as a great luscious La France rosebud, giving promise of a long, strong, happy life, as a morn in August gives promise of sunshine.

One evening as Madam J3arron and Jean sat. alone in the library, Madame said in confidential, sisterly tones: u Jean, my dear, I never in my life saw a hand and arm so exquisitely molded as yours is," and Jean raised her big brown eyes and answered in charming frankness: " You surprise and please me. If you were anybody else, my dear sister, I should think that you were flattering. If I have a grain of vanity about me you have toucned it. Oar family historian has lately chronicled the fact that our English grandmothers •were fond of their shapely fingers, and really I think it is something to be proud' of."

" Indeed, Jean,*you should wear jewels," said Mrs. Barren; and poor Jean looked up with her great eyes , a little saddened and answered:

44 Oh, I never could."

Mrs. Barron thought that she meant she could not afford the expense of jewels, and said:

" Oh, never mind, my dear, I am going to Tiffany's next week to get some beautiful diamonds, and as I have so many myself, I shall deem it a great favor if you will accept them."

"I appreciate your kindness, my dear sister. I fear you do not understand me. I cannot wear jewels. My nerves are sensitive. Perhaps I may be possessed of the same feeling that men have about jewels; you see, yourself, they do not wear them," said Jean in her directness, being half afraid, all the while, that she would offend Madam Barron, and so went on —

"I think, I get as much enjoyment in seeing other women wearing ornaments, and, perhaps, more than they do. I enjoy the sparkle of diamonds," and was just about to add that she did not like to see ornaments in the ears, but remembering in time, that Madam Barron had worn such heavy rings in her ears that one had worn its way through the lobe of the ear leaving a horrid deformity, she refrained from saying that she thought it was a piece of barbarity to have holes pierced in the flesh for the purpose of attaching ornaments to the person.

" Don't allow me to impress you with the idea that I do not wish to appear well — no ones cares more for personal attractiveness than I," said Jean quietly, " but it is impossible for me to wear gold bands pressing on the delicate tissues of my fingers. I have tried it, and they suffocate me. I am sensitive. I like soft laces, and light, warm cashmeres to touch my flesh — something like those worn by the women of the Orient would suit me." Jean was feeling that she was getting farther and farther from her sister-in-law's idea of what was proper for women of culture and refinement to wear, and so she queried :

" If I had all the jewels in Tiffany's great storehouse, what do you think I would do with them ? I would sell them, as he does, but I would not take the money and buy more. I would build a great work-house, a sort of emergency establishment, where the laboring classes when they were thrown out of employment would find work and be sure of their daily bread, until they could get their old work back again or secure better occupation; where women who had lost their

JEWELS OB NO JEWELS. 15

husbands, and had young children to support, could be employed until they could find more remunerative business. I would have great work-shops, where boys and girls could learn how to become skilled laborers, and if I were our great national government, I would build this kind of establishment in every state in the Union, jewels or no jewels."

CHAPTER IL

JEAN REMING.

Jean Kerning was a firmly-built, compact woman, of medium size, with very large hazel-brown eyes. Her queenly pose impressed one that she was a much larger woman than she really was. Her strength of character diffused itself about her like an atmosphere — you felt it as you feel the brightness of a June day, or the breeze of an ocean sea-side. If she stepped into a brilliant social company, all eyes were upon her; if into a legislative body of statesmen, each great man armed his wit with a keener edge, found words to convey his subtlest meaning, feeling sure that the deep, brown, soulful eyes of Jean Reming would fathom his profoundest thought, if no one else did.

When Jean was a mere maiden, and lived on the border of those vast forests of the Pacific Coast, where rolled the mighty Oregon, and heard naught save its own dashings, the Indian was touched by the same feeling, something akin to awe, and on two or three occasions, this power of Jean's had prevented an outbreak of the savages. The Indian, with heart raging with all the untrained passions of hatred and revenge for the pale-faced foe, had been subdued into burying his tomahawk, and wheeling into good behavior, simply by the presence of this young girl at the door of his wigwam. The untamed soul of the desperate savage was made to feel that it was better to look for a day of deliverance by appealing to the better part of his foe than by total extermination of the whites who were trespassing on his landed estates which he held by inheritance in fee simple.

Jean called this power her fate. She hated to be

JEAN REMING. 17

observed, and since her earliest recollection, it had been her misfortune to be. It made her retiring and careful; both to a degree. Her movements, if studied, were almost classical in grace, her smile was only a bright ripple that scarcely moved a muscle of her fine oval face, and quickly faded into a Madonna-like sadness.

Jean Reming, when a child was an only daughter of Benjamin Ames, a clergyman who had five sons. It may seem strange that Jean should come nearer taking the place of her father, when he died while the children were all small, than any of the sons.

The older sons, as it often happens, had to rustle for themselves; so it came about that Jean should be the prop of her mother whose constant companion she was. Alfred, the youngest, was an infant only one year old, Will seven and Jean nine; the other two boys, Ben and Tom, twelve and fourteen. The eldest son had been left at school in New England. The Ameses had immigrated to this country only the year before.

Mrs. Ames was a New England wife and mother; left on the broad prairie of an Illinois rented farm, when her husband, dying, left her with a narrow income strangely inadequate to the almost unlimited necessities of a vigorously growing family. The mother was a well-bred lady. Her thorough education stood her well in the stirring time of her great need. She was wholly untrained to do business, however. Jean Ames, being" the idol of the house, her mother was afraid her daughter would grow up boyish, because she was the only girl among so many boys. But if there had been five daughters instead of one, Jean's nature would have asserted itself just the same. Mr. Ames was a man of education, and knowing that he would be away from home preaching, always kept everything in order about the place. So Mrs. Ames decided to remain on the farm with her little ones until the following spring, as the wood was all piled up under the shed for the 2 long winter's use — walnut and hickory logs, the best wood that was ever put into a big, old-fashioned, openfaced fireplace in the world to throw out a bright blaze, drying the snow from the boy's feet or making you ashamed to let a tear glisten on your face even for so great a loss as a husband and father — father of such a promising flock as the little Ameses were. And then the feed was all stowed away in the big barn for the horses, cows, sheep and young cattle; corn for the cackling hens, waddling ducks and clamoring geese. The hogs were being fattened, everything in readiness for the ""king of winter's sure coming, when alas! the king of terror had swept away the father so suddenly, giving only four days' warning. The neighbors had all decided that it was a very foolish thing1 for Mrs. Ames to try to stay on the farm all winter — that she ought to sell out everything she could and give away the rest and go back to her family in the East. A Mr. Teet, living near, came in to say that as she was left in so helpless a condition with her little ones, he would take home her fattest hog in the pen, kill it and bring her back all the hog; he keeping the head, feet and offal for his trouble. Mrs. Ames smiled at the odd proposition, saying : " I fear that will be poor pay for your trouble, Mr. Teet/'

" Oh, Mrs. Ames, I shall not mind doing you a kindness; the bible tells us to be good to the widow and fatherless."

Mrs. Ames wiped away a tear she could not repress at hearing her little ones spoken of in this helpless way; she could scarcely realize the fact yet, as her husband was often away from home, and to her it seemed he must come back. In a moment she recovered and said.

" If you will prepare the pig for meat, Mr. Teet, I shall be very glad. Mr. Rogers was going to send his hired man over Saturday to kill and dress the pig, but your kind offer will save us from an obligation to Mr. .Rogers.5'

JEAN REMING. 19

Mr. Teet brought back the pig next morning. If anyone could have looked at that circumvented porcine without laughing, he would have to be interested in the meat question ot the family, as Jean was. Mrs. Ames looked at the remnants of the curtailed pig and then at Mr. Teet, who was looking as though he thought for the first time that possibly he had taken the lion's share from the widow and orphans, and as though he might say that the pig had shrunk somewhat since the morning before when he took it away, arid remarking rather apologetically: " You know, Mrs. Ames, the pig did not weigh so much as we thought it would when it was in the pen." Our meanest acts never look quite so bad to us as when some one else is looking at them with us.

The children had gathered about the table, laughing —who could help it? Ben, bursting into the kitchen, said: " Well, Ma, I think the pig's head is cut off'just behind the shoulder, and the tail up to the shoulder."

Mrs. Ames was looking seriously at the pig and Mr. Teet alternately. Jean was not ten years old, but she knew her mother would say nothing to the man who had so imposed upon them, and indeed what good would words do. Little Jean was not so wise a person as her mother, however, so she stepped in front of Mr. Teet, saying, with a directness that made him quail : "Why didn't you take all the pig?" Now the pig would have weighed one hundred and fifty pounds when Mr. Teet took it away in his wagon, and he brought it back weighing fifty pounds, in a small bag which he carried with ease on his shoulder.

Ben, a boy of fourteen, with his brown curls pushed back from a massive brow, with cheeks round and red as an apple, exclaimed with an impatient air, " Mother, I think it is degrading to let a person swindle you that way."

u Well, my child, very true, but what can you do? >J

"Nothing now, mother, but pocket our humiliation, and look out for the next benevolently inclined hypo-

Chapter III. The Boys* Game Club

Ben Ames was both an active and scholarly little fellow. He read history, to the great satisfaction of his mother and the children, on dark, rainy nights. But when the beautiful snow, together with the clear, cold moon, made the hunting grounds almost as light as day, Ben, with the boys of the game club, went out hunting coon and rabbit, and the talk of these boys of bringing down bears, deer and wild turkey was much more plentiful than the game itself, although the boys really did bring in game now and again, to the great surprise of themselves and the old folks at home. In those days the prairies of the West abounded with deer and wild turkey.

It turned out that the fun-loving old nigger Johnson captured the coons for the boys, and the club bought the turkej^s of some more fortunate hunter and distributed the sports and the honors as they could, without being found out.

As winter was well advanced, one morning there was great excitement over a delicious, fat wild turkey hanging high in the wood-shed at the Ames's. When Jean asked Ben who shot the turkey, "He or Joe Rogers?" Ben said, u Neither of us, and you needn't ask, Miss, for we boys have a rule in the club that we shall not tell who shoots the game, for some of the boys who never shoot anything — but their guns oft' — don't like it, that's a fact," with a little strut across the floor, adding: "Girls could not make a rule like that, because they would tell, every time; girls cannot keep a secret.'7

THE BOYS' GAME CLUB. 21

" No," blurted out Jean; " girls don't have secrets to keep, is the reason."

"Children! children!" exclaimed Mrs. Ames, who had heard more of this dialogue than either of the children supposed, " you ought to be quite happy over the turkey without caring who killed it. But I suppose your sister wishes you to carry off the honors of the club as you do those'of the spelling-school," added she, soothingly, to Ben.

"No," cried Jean, "I don't want him to get any honors at all, if he struts so, and says such spiteful things about girls, that are not true, either."

"My dear child," replied Mrs. Ames, 'you got the best of your brother when you said girls had no secrets to keep, and I should think that ought to satisfy you/'

"And I should think so too,^' said Ben, " but girls never know when they do score a point, just because N we boys don't flinch when we're hit."

Mrs. Ames suspected there was something troubling Ben's conscience a little, so she said, " You may bring home some of the boys from school to-night, Ben, and we'll eat the turkey and have some fun indoors and not go hunting to-night."

Ben was pulling on two long mittens and came back to his mother where she still sat at the breakfast table, giving her a rousing hug, and a kiss that sounded like a pop-gun, saying: ".I will bring Will Niles, for he is the best boy in "school. How many boys can I bring, mother — six?"

"No," cried Jean, "only three!"

That morning Mrs. Ames eat thinking. "While she washed and dressed the smaller children, curled little Alfred's soft brown hair over her fingers — her sweet child treasure — the tears would come, but she wiped them quickly away with the corner of little Alfred's apron and kissed his curls. She was so unused to crying. The tears that had come to her eyes were tears of sympathy; she had so often told women with like affliction of the dear Father's love, that she tried to think the same for herself now, but found it a little harder to see the silver lining behind this cloud that had bereft her of her husband.