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raw-boned; a rugged man, fearless and simple; taking delight in incurring risks and not given to asking questions"; noted as "a phenomenal tobacco chewer." Fancy Joseph B. Chiles, "a gentleman farmer, born in Tennessee, and a harumscarum, half-horse, half-alligator sort of genius". Fancy the North Carolinan "Bunk," who, with his muzzle-loading long rifle kills by a single ball a lone elk browsing more than 250 yards away, airline or as measured with a riata, 318 yards; Fancy this strange race of beings who were invading slothful California, pouring in over the mountains like Huns or Goths upon Greece or Rome, and one and all welcomed at that pestiferous rendezvous of New Helvetia!

And fancy the Fremont company, as they reappeared-"their rifles, revolving pistols, and long knives, glittered over the dusky buckskin which enveloped their sinewy limbs, while their untrimmed locks, flowing out from under their foraging caps, and their black beards, with white teeth glittering through, gave them a wild savage aspect."

Called back again, to the Sacramento, by mysterious courier, Captain Fremont encamped once more beside Sutter's Fort. Now all Northern California was on the qui vive. Events were impending; if the Americanos did not seize the balance of power, England would; Mexico, at least, was impotent.

Down the valley of the Sacramento General Jose Castro, commanding the province, was threatening to expel by force of arms these distrusted barbarians

infesting it. Hearing the rumors flying

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Monument to James W. Marshall, discoverer of
gold. Erected at Coloma, California

dust, and the dashing horsemen, scouting
the fields in every direction.
Everything bore the impress of vigilance
and preparation for defense."

June 10, of this 1846, Ezekiel Merritt, the raw-boned tobacco-eater, issuing forth with a dozen comrades, from the com

bined Fremont-Sutter rendezvous, fell

upon Lieutenant Francisco Arce, Castro subaltern, and deprived him of 170 horses designed for the Castro reinforcement. Word was left with Lieutenant Arce that if General Castro desired the

horses he must come and take them!

hither-thither, Sutter's Fort had assumed an aspect menacing: "with its crenelated walls, fortified gateway, and bastioned angles; the heavily bearded, fierce-looking hunters and trappers, armed with rifles, bowie knives and pistols; their ornamented hunting shirts, and gartered leggins; their long hair turbaned with colored handkerchiefs; their wild and almost savage looks, and dauntless independent bearing; the wagons filled with golden grain; the arid, yet fertile plains; the caballadas driven across it by wild lano, metamorphosed into the presidio of shouting Indians, enveloped in clouds of

Scarcely had the stolen stock been stowed safely at Sutter's, when Merrit. Dr. Semple, John Grigsby (hard names for Spanish tongues to crack), with some thirty followers, marched across westward for the old mission of San Francisco So

(Continued on Page 72)

Why Should She Worry Because the Rest of the World Does?

By Arthur T. Vincent

HE LADY sitting at the dressing Ttable placed her hat carefully upon

her head and turned slowly from side to side, viewing herself as best she could from various angles. Presently from without there came a jingle much like an impatient dinner bell. The lady laid down her hand mirror and went to a window which looked down upon the street and saw that an electric had stopped in front of the house.

fur complacently. "Simply thrown together. I never seem to have any time for myself any more. It's too provoking. People just seem to think one can find time for everything-"

"That's just what I tell my husband," replied the other, skillfully maneuvering the car as they turned on to a crowded boulevard. "Sometimes it just seems that people are conniving to keep one away from home. I told Edward just this morn

Going out into the hall to the head of ing-well, if you will tell me where you the stairs she called, "Norah."

"Yes'm."

"Mrs. Ware has come. Tell her I shall be down immediately."

"Yes'm," and a moment later she heard the door open as the maid went to do her bidding.

Then she went back to the dressing table, sat down and deliberately took up the hand mirror and turning her head slowly, viewed herself, side view, and smiled fondly at herself in the larger mirror, gave her hat a slight tilt upward, then pulled it forward to its former angle and smiled at herself again. She leaned nearer the mirror and with a bit of cotton daintily powdered the tip of her nose, smoothed her already smooth eyebrows, dusted the powder carefully off her nose and then touched her cheeks, lightly, as if to ascertain whether the bloom upon them was correct.

Next, she put a fur about her neck, drawing it up closely and studying her reflection in the glass seriously, then settled it farther back on her shoulders and appeared better satisfied with the effect.

Then she went down, and out to the electric. She greeted the woman waiting, who returned her smile, and stepped in, saying, "Oh, I am so sorry to have detained you. But I have been so rushed. I never saw anything like it. I am simply thrown together," and she readjusted her

are going, I'll try to keep out of your way-" Her companion glanced at her quickly and then saw that she was not quoting her remarks to Edward but was speaking to a limousine which had wheeled suddenly in their path but had now gone blissfully on its careless way— "I told Edward this morning I'm so tired. of never having a day at home."

"Well, it's the age. You and I, who are thinking women, really should have lived fifty years ago, when woman's sphere was sphere was in the home, while now—”

"That's just what I think. It's just— well, some day you will do that once too often and I suppose I'll be blamed for running over you," and the lady frowned at a sprightly gentleman who had darted from in front of her and skipped nimbly to a safety zone. "Do you know I was out with a friend the other day in her perfectly new car and a woman crossing the street just deliberately walked right into us. She broke the wind shield to the car she hit it so hard. And when we stopped and got out I never saw a more stupid seeming woman. One of her pumps had come off and we picked it and her up and helped her over to the curbing and she just sat down and didn't say a word—not a word of thanks. I picked up her hatit was one of those foolish affairs, not at all suitable for street wear and she didn't even try to put it on straight. I told her several times she should watch

more carefully, and when we drove away, there she just sat-and the broken glass had scratched the new car, too. My friend was so disturbed over it. She said she just dreaded for her husband to see it. Oh, good gracious! can't you see I'm turning this corner," and she spoke conversationally to a man some yards away from her.

They were on one of the main business streets now, and as the traffic became more congested the driver devoted her remarks almost entirely to it, while her companion sifted or translated that part of the conversation which was meant for her.

"There, now, where do you think you are-out in the country?" and she spoke pleasantly to the rumble a huge truck left behind, as it shot around the small car. A passing car "honked" at her and mistaking its greeting for a warning, she jingled her bell resentfully in answer and then recognizing a friend as its driver, she smiled graciously and waved a forgiving

hand.

A traffic policeman held up a warning finger, but she bore down upon him, smiling confidently and indicating that she intended going in the direction toward which he was forbidding traffic. Motioning with a white gloved hand, she waved him out of her way, pretending to herself and almost persuading the officer himself, that he was not there at all, she went blissfully on, unconscious that bewildered and frantic traffic was trying to follow in her wake, while an irate officer attempted

to hold it back and shouted direful warnings at it.

Arrived at the playhouse the driver wheeled her car up to the curbing and after she had come to a stop she looked back and exclaimed: "Oh, my! I'm inside the 'no parking' zone. I thought my car would fit in between that other car and the post." She peered out at the side. "There is no other place but this."

"Why, we'll just move the post up farther. I've often done it when I didn't have room," and the other woman began to open the door.

"I hadn't thought of that," replied the other, and they got out and she locked the door.

They both took hold of the heavy "no parking" weight and prepared to move it when a man's shadow fell upon them. "Oh, how fortunate!" they chorused. "Thank you so much. Please help us

move this just about a yard-there, that will do nicely," and they sighed from the

exertion.

They brushed off their gloves and "Thank you so much," while the shadow, whose owner they had not troubled to notice, touched his policeman's cap and looked after them, a baffled expression on his face. "Well, I'll-can you beat it! If there's anything you don't like. just move it," and he exaggerated a low and sweeping movement of his arm as though doffing his cap in mock admiration, as the unconscious ladies vanished into the theatre.

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H

The Certainty of Forty

Cupid's Pranks Are Impossible to Predict

By B. Virginia Lee

¡E WAS her brother's pal, and he was her soul confidante and he was a bachelor, and he was a womanhater, yet he sat by the hour each day listening to Mary Louise and her tales of woe, with a certain sort of a smile which made Jimmie Banderstan's blood rush to his cheeks and surge a stuffy feeling about his throat, which increased as he watched.

There was Mary Louise with her fluffy curls falling carelessly about her face, which was vivid with the color of life, and there was he, seated a few steps above her, with his pipe in his hand, intently listening while he filled it, mentally debating whether it would not be a better policy to smoke a cigarette.

Although Jimmie had certain definite proofs that Mary Louise could never be attracted to Jeremiah, he was not so perfectly sure that Jeremiah might not have ulterior motives in his interest in Mary Louise's troubles.

Jimmie found, however, a fallibleness in his reasoning power that Mary Louise could never love Jeremiah. She had with the certainty of nineteen, constructed a person in her own golden-thatched mind, and called him "Jimmy K." How well Jimmie knew what this person's qualifications should be, and inasmuch as he scored the first hit on his first name, he felt sure that he would be far better able to qualify than Jeremiah on any of the remaining.

Jeremiah had by no means a soft nor deep voice. Mary Louise's self-created hero had both. Jeremiah spoke in strident tones, dropping g's and r's and he did his best to crowd as many words into a mouthful as possible. His method of talking was that of a phonograph on

high gear. He was furthermore

as

nervous and ate cigarettes by the dozens. "Jimmy K.", the ideal, was big and dark. Jeremiah rose to the proud altitude of

five feet, seven and three-quarters inches, and though once dark, his locks were now plentifully streaked with that substance of the Crown of Glory. "Jimmie K." was young, probably about twenty-five and Jeremiah was experiencing all the bleakness of his fortieth winter. Jimmie was strong and fond of displaying the clinch and impersonations of that swarthy gentleman, the well known Mr. J. A. Othello, with the osculatory cushions. "Jeremiah could never do this," Jimmie argued with satisfaction, "He was," he argued further, "weakness diluted to infinity."

"Jimmie K." was stubborn. He wouldn't let Mary Louise do the things she wanted. "Jimmie K." dreamed dreams with her. Jeremiah was forty and had learned by experience that such dreams were futile and never came true, and therefore nipped them in their infancy. Forty operates on the basis of expecting nothing until it arrives-and expecting least of all those things that may be promised, or half promised. "Jimmie K." was always expecting and therefore furnished much of the backbone in Mary Louise to accomplish those things he might wish most to happen.

The top of Jeremiah's head was overdeveloped as to dome and underveloped as to hair and what went into cranium was left out of chin-and he talked incessantly about Jersey and contrasted it with California, which made the problem of supporting Mary Louise all the more impossible to Jimmie, for she had told him only the night before that they would spend their honeymoon in Jersey.

The day before he had overheard Jeremiah's conversation with Mary Louise It seemed just as he was hearing it now.

to him, as he recalled, that her visits were too frequent. Jeremiah had put all this into her head with his lie about the East. Jimmie scoffed as he formulated Jeremiah's yesterday conversation. He had

said: "We have real woods there, growing naturally, not hand-planted palms. hopelessly inevitable pepper trees, and reduplicated eucalyptus. And we have trees that are green, and they stay green all the summer, and thunder-storms that come up on a minute's notice and catch you out without an umbrella and you have to run for shelter, which may be a tree under which you huddle, giving her your coat and getting your best shirt wet. Or Or maybe it happens while you're in a canoe, and then you hastily drag it up on shore, in a real woods, with soft black earth. under the trees-not sunbaked adobe, and you huddle under the canoe instead of under the tree. For all around excellence, give me a thunder storm, preferably the banks of the Potomac, and preferably again, the Virginia bank of said Potomac."

"And this," thought Jimmie, "was exactly where she wanted to go," and he supposed she'd want him to spoil his best shirt all for this follderoll. He might only be twenty, but he had never been quite so silly as this man at forty. He recalled also his desire to shake Mary Louise, a native daughter of California, for countenancing what next come from Jeremiah's lips, and even now he wondered why he, Jimmie, didn't rush out from his hiding place and make him eat his words. Jeremiah had deliberately belittled the Golden West, which was an indisputable slap in the face that called for combat.

"When I think of the East Coast as compared with California," he had said, "I weep bitter tears of pity for California. Has it ever occurred to you why California has such a run on its climate? It's because it is better than all the States that lie between it and the Eastern Middle States, where real country begins and progresses eastward. Compared to Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Montana, Utah and others, California is heaven, of course -but it isn't one-two-three alongside of Virginia, Maryland or even Pennsylvania. Florida has got it on California and we think Florida is a pretty bum State."

Jimmie also remembered with growing indignation the glance Jeremiah had given to Mary Louise before he continued.

"You should be in an East Coast environment instead of amongst your native geraniums and poppies. And that's another thing I can't stand-the color combinations of the flowers as they're planted out here. What makes them plant redviolet and red-orange geraniums so close together, and when they do plant them together, what rule is it that makes them plant a purple clematis so that it overhangs them, and a border of those broken egg flowers in front of them?”

She had thrilled to his next voluminous outburst of description. He had asked her with a deep earnestness, "Did you ever see a meadow of real green grass, Eastern green, sprinkled all over with for-get-me-nots, or with wood violets? Did you ever see a field of wild iris, their purple heads rising above blue-green rushes? Did you ever see a real daisy field, looking like a snow bank set with gold nuggets? Did you ever wade through buttercups up to your waist-a vast yellow ocean, swept by wind billows breaking against a purple-green woods for a shore?"

Mary Louise had shaken her head in wonderment. The East offered all this-it offered snow-variety. That was where she must spend her honeymoon. But now the sting of Jeremiah's words had swayed and fallen under a greater menace. Jimmie could not distinguish what Mary Louise was saying, but her gestures all but indicated what followed.

Jeremiah Brewster Bryce pushed his tobacco down for the last time, smiled down upon the girl.

"Before you hop into this, take a long breath, cross your fingers and, walking completely around it, look at it from all sides."

Mary Louise nodded helplessly.

"In the first place," he continued, “you are both twenty, and of course you both think this is the one and abiding love. But at twenty, one can be certain by no means of love's loneliness, nor abiding ability, nor at thirty, nor at forty, nor at fifty. At twenty, one lacks the experience of surprise which comes with the discovery that a love supposedly of solid radium has turned out to be a mere phos

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