may appear, the citizens of San Fran/cisco are about the most enthusiastic church-going people I know of. They go to church with as much spirit as they go to the stock market; and I believe every one of them, as was said of Mr. Macready in Othello, is "terribly in earnest." It is the way of a lively, versatile, and energetic people to do things with a vim. I see no reason why they should not make as bold a dash for heaven as they do for the good things of earth. We have an excellent system of public instruction, consisting of high, primary, model, normal, cosmopolitan, special, and evening schools. Besides these we have across the bay the University of California, an institution destined at no very distant day to take rank with Yale and Harvard. We have manufactories of woolen fabrics; carriage and wagon making establishments; sugar, candle, furniture, billiard, cigar, and tobacco factories; distilleries, flouring mills, rolling-mills, and some very large iron-foundries; glassworks, artificial stone works, a manufactory of watches, and some ship-building.

Such is the Queen City of the Pacific, of which our own sweet poetess, Ina D. Coolbrith, so sweetly sings:

-"the wonderful city

That looks on the stately bay,
Where the bannered ships of the nations

Float in their pride to-day."

I think it has been pretty clearly demonstrated that a vast amount of good has grown out of the discovery of gold since 1848; that without the mining interests to attract population to California, this State and all the adjacent Territories would have been ranges for Indians and cattle to this day, and the vast commerce of the Pacific would have fallen into other hands than ours.

The treasures drawn from the earth have not only given unparalleled prosperity to American interests on the Pa

VOL. 15.-23.

cific Coast, but have sustained the credit of our Government at home and abroad through a long and costly civil war. California has stood like a rock, stemming and turning aside the financial disasters that from time to time have threatened to overwhelm us. The late Robert J. Walker, one of the ablest statesmen who ever presided over the Treasury Department since the days of Alexander Hamilton, said, shortly before his death: "When we reflect that each nation is but a part of the great community of states, united by ties of commerce, business, and interchanges, and find the rest of the world sustained by a specie currency, which is of uniform universal international value, how can we, who are dealing with depreciated paper, expect to compete successfully with those countries whose money is gold or its actual equivalent? So long as the currency of the world is gold, any nation departing from this standard impairs its own power of successful competition, and gradually drives its products from the markets of the world." Without the Pacific States to sustain the paper issues of our Government, they would have depreciated to the standard of the old Continental shin-plasters, a bushel of which could hardly purchase a meal. I refrain from reference to the Confederate currency of more recent times, further than to say that it required a good deal of it to buy anything. Of one thing we may rest assured: had our brethren of the South, who held out for four years, unaided and impoverished, without trade, without money, and without extraneous sources of supply, against the combined power of the North, with the wealth of the world to sustain it—had the people of the Southern Confederacy possessed the treasury of the Pacific slope to maintain its forces and preserve its credit abroad-the result, in all probability, would have been different.

No part of the United States presents

at this day a greater number or variety of attractions to the tourist than California. It offers a radical change in its various aspects from any other part of the world. The climate combines very nearly all that is desirable in the tropics with the best features of the climates of the temperate zone. Within a few hours from San Francisco we have the snowcapped Sierra,

"A swaying line of snowy white,

A fringe of heaven hung in sight
Against the blue base of the sky;"

we have the warm valleys of the Sacramento, San Joaquin, and Coast Range. Persons seeking health and recreation can find both, if such luxuries are to be had anywhere. Surrounded by scenery equal to that of Norway or Switzerland, invigorated by the balmy breezes of the valleys, refreshed by an untrammeled and unconventional life, the tourist in California must be hard to please indeed if he does not find "a balm for the sickness of care." The world does not contain another such natural wonder as the Falls of Yosemite, that fearful chasm in the Sierra, where

"cedars sweep the stream
Among the bowlders, mossed and brown,
That time and storm have toppled down
From towers undefiled by man."

Of late years, since easy communication has been established, the valley of the Yosemite has been visited by thousands of travelers from Europe, the Atlantic States, India, China, and Russia. The Geysers of Sonoma, with their hissing, steaming, sulphurous waters, their weird and Satanic surroundings of rock and precipice, are reached in less than a day over one of the most picturesque roads on the Pacific Coast.

The pellucid lakes of the Sierra and Coast Range furnish opportunities for water excursions, trout-fishing, and bathing. The shores abound in game, and there are excellent hotels at every available point. Among the most noted min

eral waters are Harbin's Springs, Bartlett's, Siegler's, Skaggs', Gilroy, and Paso Robles. Some of these are not surpassed by the famous springs of Germany for purification of the blood and the cure of rheumatism.

The ancient river-beds are full of interest to the geologist, the mines to the capitalist, the rich soils to the agriculturist, and the commerce of the Pacific to the merchant and navigator. A fresh field is found everywhere for the inspiration of the artist or the man of letters. Bierstadt, Keith, and Hill have done their best work in the high Sierra; Bret Harte, Joaquin Miller, and Mark Twain have won imperishable renown by their delineation of life and scenery on this coast. Their works are read in nearly every modern language. Their fame is ours.

And what but the invigorating and expanding process of life in California gave to our country in its time of need such military heroes as Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Hooker, Ord, Sumner, Baker, and Canby; such naval heroes as Farragut, Sloat, Shubrick, Rowan, Rogers, Craven, McDougal, and a host of others scarcely less distinguished than these?

In this hurried retrospect, extending over a brief quarter of a century, we have seen the marvelous growth of the Pacific slope in population, commerce, and wealth. We have seen a territory spring suddenly out of a chaotic condition into a leading State of the American Union. We have seen it grow in power until its influence reaches to the uttermost ends of the earth. We have seen fires sweep our principal cities, vigilance committees disrupt society, banks break, floods and droughts destroy our crops, but we have never yet seen the progress of California arrested. It is ever onward and upward, ever toward the goal of supremacy.

Some of us may live to see what I

now see in my mind's eye-a State inhabited by millions of intelligent and educated people; its broad valleys intersected by irrigating canals; railroads forming a net-work of intercommunication between every city, town, and neighborhood; the foot-hills covered with forests of eucalyptus and cypress; vine-clad slopes glimmering in their verdure; the Bay of San Francisco lined by cities and towns, making a continuous metropolis around the shores; the hills of Redwood and Contra Costa adorned with beautiful villas; the city of San Fran

cisco, unequaled in picturesque beauty of position, abounding in triumphs of architectural skill, inhabited by a million of prosperous freemen-the Queen City of the Pacific, the gem of the American continent! Well has the impassioned poet of the Sierra sung:

"Dared I but say a prophecy,

As sung the holy men of old,
Of rock-built cities yet to be
Along these shining shores of gold,
Crowding athirst into the sea,

What wondrous marvels might be told!
Enough to know that Empire here
Shall burn her loftiest, brightest star !"

CHAPTER VIII. —A WEDDING IN CAMP. HE next day, when Sandy came

low ebb. He missed the great reception he had expected, and went back home that night a troubled and anxious

man.

What could be the matter? He asked Limber Tim, but Limber Tim had learned the power and security of silence, and either could not or would not venture on any revelations. Besides that, he was very busy helping Bunker Hill with the baby. The camp openly and at all convenient times discussed the question now, and it began gradually to take shape in the minds of men that something was really wrong. Kind old Sandy did not dream what the trouble could be. He feared he had not been generous enough under his good fortune, and was all the time opening the mouth of his leather bag at the bar and pouring gold-dust into the scales, and entreating the boys to drink to the health of their little Half-pint.

"Yes, our little Half-pint it is, I reckons; leastwise it's pretty certain it aint yourn." Sandy looked at the man,

and then the man set down his glass untouched and went off. He had not

he had said, but having

blurted it out in a very awkward way and at the very worst time, got off and out of it as best he could.

Sandy was tortured. The dear little Widow saw it, and asked him what the trouble was, and the man-blunt honest fellow-told all that had happened. The camp was disgusted with the man who had mooted this question. They counted him a traitor to the Forks-a sort of Judas. If he had gone and hung himself the camp would have been perfectly satisfied. In fact, it is pretty certain that the camp would have been very glad to have had any excuse, even the least bit of an excuse, to do that office for him.

The camp was angry with Sandy, too, on general principles. He had betrayed it into a sort of idol-worship under a mistake. He had lured it into the expression of an enthusiasm quite out of keeping with the dignity of a rough and hardy race of men, and it did not like it.

"The great big idiot!" said the camp. "Didn't he know any better? Don't he

know any better now than to go on in this way, half-tickled to death, thinking himself the happiest and the most blest of men?" The camp was ashamed of him.

The little Judge, finding things going against the first family in the Forks, felt also that he in some way was concerned, and that he was called upon to explain. This was his theory and explanation: "The Widder was a widder?" "Yes."

Not that Sandy had said a word further than she had almost forced him to speak; not that she had yet ventured down into the Forks, or that Bunker Hill had ever breathed a word about it; but I fancy that women know these things by instinct. They somehow have a singularly clear way of coming upon such things. Day after day she read Sandy's face as he came up from his mine, dripping with the yellow water spurted from the sluice all over his broad slouch-hat, long brown

"Yes."

"The legislature granted, that first session, enough divorces to fill a book?" "Well?"

it eagerly as one reads the papers after a battle, and read it truly as if it had been a broad-sheet in print, and found herself in disfavor with the camp. Then she began to think if Sandy was thinking of his promise; if he had remembered, and still remembered, the time when in her great agony he promised, though all the world turned against her and cried "Shame!" he would not upbraid her. She wondered if he ever wished he had gone when she command

"Well, considerin' the climate of Californy, I think not." And the little man pushed out his legs under the card-table, puffed out his little red cheeks, leaned back, and felt perfectly certain that he had made a great point, while the wise men of the camp sat there more muddled than before.

However, as the days passed by men went on with their work in the mines, down in the boiling, foaming, full little streams, now overflowing from the snows that melted in the warm spring sun, and said but little more on the subject. It was certain that they were very doubt ful, for they only shook their heads as a rule when the subject was mentioned now in the great centre. That was a bad sign, and very hard evidence of displeasure with their patron saint of the autumn and the long weary winter.

The Widow must have known all this.

began to read his face for the truth. She read, read him all through, page after page, chapter after chapter. She found there was not a doubt in all the realm of his soul, and her face took on again a little of its gladness. Yet the touch of tenderness deepened, the old sadness had settled back again, and this time to remain.

The still blue skies of California were bending over the camp. Not a cloud sailed east or west, or hovered about the snow-peaks. It was full summer - time before it was yet mid-spring, and men began to pour over the mountains across the settled and solid banks of snow. Birds flew low and idly about the cabins, and sung as the men went on with their work down in the foaming muddy little rivers, and all the world seemed glad and strong with life and hope.

Still the Widow was glad no more. and men began to notice that Sandy did

not come to town at all. It was even observed that he had found a cut-off across the spur of the hill, by which he went to and came from his mining-claim without once setting foot in the Howling Wilderness, or even the Forks.

Limber Tim, too, seemed sad and sorely troubled. Sunshine and singingbirds do not always bring delight to all. There is nothing so sad as sadness at such a time.

Limber Tim no longer wrestled with saplings or picket-fences, or even his limber legs. He had other and graver matter on hand. The birds were building their nests all about him, and he too wanted to gather moss.

At last the boy-man was happy. At least, he came one night very late to "Sandy's," as the Widow's place was now called, and standing outside of the house, and backing up against the fence, and sticking his hands in behind him, and twisting his left leg around the right, he called out to Sandy in a voice that was wild and uncertain as a wind that is lost in the trees.

Sandy laid it down tenderly, covered it up, and, watching it a minute and making sure that it was sound asleep and well, went out. Limber Tim was writhing and twisting more than ever before. Sandy was glad, for he now knew that he was perfectly well, and that he had got the great matter settled, and that in a way perfectly satisfactory to himself.

And yet the two men were terribly embarrassed. What made the embarrassment very much the worse was the fact that they were at least half a mile from the nearest saloon. Fortunately it was very dark for a California night, and the men could look each other in the face without seeing each other.

There was a long and painful silence. Limber Tim wrestled with his right leg with all his might, and would have thrown it time and again, but from the fact that his two arms were thrust in behind and

wound through the palings, so that it was impossible for him to fall.

His mouth was open and his tongue was out, but he could not talk. At last Sandy broke the prolonged and profound silence:

"Bully for Limber Tim!"

Then there was another painful silence, and Limber Tim twisted a paling off the fence with his arms, and kicked half the bark off his right shin with his left boot-heel. "Sandy!" "Limber?"

Then Limber Tim reached out his tongue and spun it about as if it had been a fish-line, and he was fishing in the darkness for words. At last he jerked back as if he had got a bite, jerked and jerked as if his throat was full of fish-hooks, and jerked until he jerked himself loose from the fence; and poising on his heel before falling back into the darkness, and twisting himself down the hill, said this:

"Git the Judge, Sandy. Fetch her home to-morrow. Spliced to-morrow. Sandy, git the Judge to-morrow!"

And "to-morrow" kept coming up the hill and out of the darkness until the nervous boy-man was half-way to the Howling Wilderness.

The Judge was on hand, a cooler man now, even though it was midsummer. His shirt was open until his black hairy breast showed through as if it had been a naked bear-skin.

The Forks came in force to its second wedding, but the Forks, too, was cooler, and had put aside to some extent its faith and its folly. And yet it liked Bunker Hill ever so much. Bunker Hill, said the Forks, was not the best of women in days gone by, but Bunker Hill had never deceived.

She stood alone there that day, the day of all days to any woman in the world, and the boys did not like it at all.