THE question of questions,-"Am I to live or die?"—once came to me in such form that it seemed to demand the answer from myself.

It was at Sacramento, in July of 1849, the hottest month of the hottest of all years to unacclimated Argonauts. I had been working in the mines at Horseshoe Bar, where all day long a blazing sun and the cold water of the river played equally upon my body. Sickness clutched me, and clawed at my vitals. I exhausted my remnant of strength by walking in one day the thirty miles between the Bar and a city of refuge. The three frame buildings and the hundreds of ents which were called Sacramento City nust surely contain some of the friendliness of the world; some hospitality for a sick boy, even though he knew no face of all the souls vho dwelt there. At the end of the longest lay in my memory, I staggered and fell at he foot of a great tree which invited me to is protection-I knew, for I saw and heard -with a lowering of its broad limbs and a afy susurrus of welcome. There I lay for vo weeks, and helplessly watched the battle ithin me between nature and disease. I ad a loaf of bread bought with the last nch of gold dust in my buckskin bag, and r food it was enough and more than ough. Occasional sips of water were to had by crawling a few yards to a camp of regon emigrants. My tree stood only a indred yards back from the levee, and ere was a steady flow of busy strangers inping by. But I was nothing to them, d they were less to me. With face turned my great and pitiful friend, the tree, and h a spirit strangely stilled, I waited for her change.

At last I ceased to feel the sharp claws of inclosed devil. Had it gone, or was it y faint for lack of food? Could the unsumed remnant of me be rebuilt into lth?

It seemed to me that, nerveless and

spent as I was, I needed merely to recall my will from its exile and enthrone it again. It was only the question between living and dying, and the will is the master of life. But really, was it worth while to live? The dulled eyes gazed upward for an answer to the question, for none came from within. My friendly tree with its outpushing branches and sensitive leaves, always growing, but at no time filling more than a certain space, and that not fully, seemed to image human life. But beyond was the calm arch of solid sky through which death and I would vanish into the interspaces of the infinite mystery. So lifeless was I that it seemed to be a mockery to debate whether I should call back my will, when I was unconscious of even a velleity in the great choice.

The doubt was decided by one of those little things which jolt, the wheels of living, although in itself it seemed too small or

mean to be a sufficient motive. Two men passed by, and commented upon me:

"Look at that poor devil again, lying there no more dead than he was a week ago. There's about as much real life in him as stays in a boiled kitten. Think of a chap's looking at us through that dead glaze on the eyes! Wonder how long he means to last."

"Dunno. check now.

But he's passing in his last Bet you a doubloon he isn't alive at this time tomorrow."

"Done! There's a little meat yet on the bones. He's lasted so long now that he can stick it through a little longer."

"Bet you two doubloons that he's dead inside of two days."

'Can't take that bet. But it does gravel me why a fellow won't get up and dust out of the way when he knows that he's gone anyhow."

They passed on, but left a wholesome sting with their brutal words. What! was my life worth no more than a stake to gam

ble over? Come, royal Will, the over-lord of life, and make it serviceable! The blood seemed to blush and redden within me; the senses tingled; the hands clenched; and I sat up, opening myself to the inflow of air and sweet sounds and the manliness of hope.

The next day when they passed by, I leaned against the tree and touched my hat to them in salutation :

"Good morning, gentlemen. One of you has lost his bet. Thanks to you I've won more than that."

They stared; the winner approached as if to clap me on the shoulder, but did not do it; both laughed, and passed away from the life they had saved.

The kindly stirring of hunger then came, and I soaked and swallowed the crust of the loaf that had lasted through my sickness. Then I meandered away from the tree awhile, and felt the recreative pleasure of a little strength rising out of the lower depths of lassitude. But next day there was no crust, and there was no money. I must not only live but earn a living. Strolling down to the levee, I came to a shanty with a cloth sign, "Placer Times." Within was a young man pulling away at a hand-press, in all the compressed dignity of editor, compositor, pressman, and printer's devil. He hailed me:

"Don't you want to earn a dollar in twenty minutes ?"

"If I can - yes. But I have hardly the strength to stand."

"That's all right. Just lean up here, and shove that little ink-roller over the types before I pull."

I could do that and did it. He handed me a Mexican dollar with a smile of compassion. I took the coin with a queer feel ing; it was my first dollar for manual service. I had earned money before, but not for hand-work done for others. It was wages but it meant bread, and was as good as money could ever be.

That evening a heavy swirl of dust came rolling by my tree. From it the creaking of a prairie-schooner, the solid trampling of oxen, and the singular exhortations of their

driver were audible. He was talking to them in the cheery and kindly tone which some men use to their humble friends:

"Almost there, my hearties. Two blocks more and we're at the corral. Haw there, Bright and Buck! come now, haw in just a little more; can't you for me? Right, my good boys, and steady now. We'll take a day's rest before we point noses for Coloma again. O gee, Bally boy-gee up, I say— why don't you gee now? What is the matter?-oh, you stiff-necked son of a bull of Bashan, gee. I say-GEE! God-bless you, old fellow, if you don't gee, and I will if you do. Gee, I say, or learn the glory of the goad. There now, slow, boy--all right this time, but don't try to put me into a passion again, as the profane young man otherwise remarked. Now, hippah! andale !"

By this time the dust surrounded me also, and I saw eight massive oxen swaying along under the guidance of a short, stalwart man about fifty years old, whose quick, shiningeyes. and alert voice ruled them far oftener than the long whip which he rarely transferred from his shoulder to theirs. The oxen seemed to appreciate their master, and each great animal swung out his heavy head from the yoke affectionately toward him as he walked up and down along their line. It was the first decent intercourse between man and beasts that I had seen in California, and I smiled with an odd pleasure.

"Eh, my boy-why, what are you laugh ing at?"

"Only because for the first time, sir, I see oxen appreciate as well as understand human language."

"H'm, aye-perhaps. Better late that never." His rapid eye ran over me. "But how pale and thin you are! What's the matter? No matter now-come along with us to camp, and let's have it over a cup of coffee."

So said and done. When the oxen wert unyoked, corraled, and fed, we sat dow to a pot of coffee and a rasher of bacon of which, however, I could take only the fragrance. We talked late into the night He also was a Yale man and a peripatetic

Of late years he had been a professor in a Western college, and on hearing of the discovery of gold had taken a roving commission to leave his chair long enough to extract from El Dorado the funds to endow an enlarged professorship on which his soul was bent. Almost immediately on his arrival in California, he found freight to be fifty cents a pound between Sacramento and Coloma, and so bought an ox-team as the quickest way to earn the endowment of his new professorship. He was of the highest type of the Californians at that day. No sturdier, more adaptive, genuine, kindly, and masterful soul illuminated his fellow beings than Grove Woolley, professor of natural history, driver of oxen, and quickener of men. He soon drew out my short story, and then so liloquized:

"You're sick yet, and won't be on the active list for weeks. And you are out of noney, and haven't the strength just now o earn it in any ordinary way. Very well, hen, earn it in an extraordinary way. You an't rustle and bustle; you must earn honey sitting in a chair-if you can find ne in Sacramento. Seems to me that a chool is the only thing. Look at the glory f teaching the first school in the great Valy of the Sacramento, and—” "The glory be waived, if you please." "But the necessity remains. Now, there e no children here except in the Oregon milies who came down in wagons from the illamette and got in ahead of the Eastern migration, and that is clear men. Pick ța place for your school-some fine old e on the bank of the slough close byculate around among the Oregon camp es to-morrow evening, and open school xt day. Time was never made to be lost. hen I return from Coloma next trip, I'll d you half well and teaching the young

a how to shoot.'"

"Teaching the young idiots how to shout," choed sadly, for the prospect was not pertly cheerful to me.

That's a paraphrase, my boy, and always good, but never so true as the real thing. pend upon it that nothing in the world is

so worthy as is a sound, clean, accomplished fact."

"Not even the factor?"

"Don't forget, my verbal young friend, that we do sometimes 'build better than we know,' and that the greater includes the less."

The advice was not especially enticing to me, but it was the logical outcome of the situation. I was too sick to be fit for anything else, and it must be proved if I was well enough to be fit to teach school. Early next morning I selected the most venerable and profoundly stooping tree on the southern bank of the slough, as being most suggestive of the Academe. The foliage perfectly protected one from the noon sun, and the glare of morning and evening was shut out by an old wagon cloth furnished and stretched under my supervision by the kind hands of Professor Woolley. Then I walked around to all of the evening camp-fires of teamsters, and drummed up a dozen Oregon children to learn what they would or could of me at an ounce of gold a month each, payable at the end of the month.

At opening, my school-room was uniquely furnished. There were no desks or seats except half a dozen emptied merchandise boxes. The trunk of the tree had a gnarled bunch at the ground, which made a natural seat for the pedagogue. The only book I could muster was my pocket Shakspere, from which I feared I should be obliged to teach the alphabet to the younger cubs. Obviously, my instruction must be mainly objectteaching or orally, from brain direct to brain. The fine simplicity that ruled the situation was really enticing.

day.

and

Only two pupils were ready for the first They were sister and brother, Gloriana Clay Banks. Gloriana was happily named; she was peerless, the nonpareil in my experience. Pike county excelled itself in giving her birth and training. The plains. over which she traveled in an emigrant wagon to Oregon furnished her a large and slow breadth of view. The fat valley of the Wil lamette, in which she developed to young womanhood, impressed its yielding plump

ness upon her form and mind. The Cayuse pony on which she rode from Oregon to the Sacramento lent her a contrary tricksiness of spirit very alluring to the student of unexpected character in humanity. But her face and voice were caught back and condensed from the oversoul of the beauty and music of mankind. The face I have never seen elsewhere except suggestively in Middleton's fine painting of Holy Eyes. Every feature was purely finished; every combination was in harmony. The eyes, bright and steady, glowed warmly under a fair, cool forehead. The mouth would have been a provocation had it belied the innocent eyes. The voice was gentle, naturally modulated, but hesitatating, inquiring, and tentative. From face and voice one could easily see that the mind of the girl was a virgin thicket. There was no other beauty. Her form was largely developed for her apparent age of sixteen, and she carried herself in the uncertain manner of one who had never seen a graceful woman. Her hands were somewhat coarsened by the work of a frontier life, but they were not spoiled. Everywhere below the face she seemed to be incased in some foreign substance, which would soon disappear under trituration with men and women of finer grain than she had yet known. She sug gested to me a perfect face in marble, beneath which the body was only chisel-chipped, and again, a disguised figure which had just removed the mask so that a heavenly face startled you in its outlook from the clumsy garments. But she was equally unconscious of her beauty and her awkwardness. So late as sixteen o'clock in the morning, her mind labored in the slow, dull rhythm of a sleeping heave and fall.

When I asked her what she had studied, she replied in a level, monotonous way:

"Webster's Spellin'-book, Easy Reader, some writin', some 'rithmetic, but I never could git acrost vulgar fractions. I hain't got no head for cipherin'. Never did see anythin' to come out o' figgers."

"I said that perhaps you are not a grammarian."

"Grammarian! No, sir-I'm a Mazouri

an."

There was a sublimity in her unconsciousness that no touch of English could express. I muttered involuntarily:

"Heu! quantum mutatus ab illo."
“Anan, sir?”

"It suggested itself to me, Gloriana, that perhaps the grammarian and the Missourian do slightly differ."

"Please, sir-what's the differ?"

"They are the same, but not in the same stage. The Missourian is first in natural order, and, I fear, is somewhat plantigrade. The grammarian comes afterwards, and wears right and left shoes that fit. The second can never become the first, but the first may develop into the second. You shall, Gloriana."

"Gloriana! oh, Heavens!" ejaculated a drawling voice behind me. I turned and gazed upon a tall young fellow, but a few years callower than myself. His large features had a melancholy habit; his fine eyes flickered lambently; and his head drooped alternately toward the shoulders. He seem ed able but unwilling to move out from under some pressure in the atmosphere. There was a lazy, refined richness in his voice, and he modulated it as mellowly as a flautist with his stops.

"Surely, you said Gloriana, sir, and I-I have never seen her or any one until now. Pardon me, but is it Spenser whom I address, or possibly Lyly? And where are the other Euphuists? And this, which my dream said was California-is it Fairyland, or Alantis, or Utopia, or Arcadia, or, possibly, the Hesperides? I thought 'the greatest glorious Gloriana had passed away, a virgin queen.' But now, here, in a republican age ever young, and without a crown, excep the fulvousness of natural gold! Where are we?—what is this?-who are we all, and can there be any others? Good stranger, en

"The which?"

"This is only a school, al fresco, and p mary, I fear. It is located in Sacramento