shrined image was crowned with fidehty and noble
purpose. And thus, through years of anxious toil
they held to their hopes, dreaming at night horrible
dreams of staring gold-diggings up to their neck in
glittering mud, their heads wreathed in rattlesnakes,
gnawed by wolves, or cut off for foot-balls by the
savages, all the while not knowing whether their hus-
bands were alive or not. Their existence they knew
to be a living death, yet they worked away, sewing
for the tailor, making shirts, giving lessons to the
neighbors' children, or even working out.
There were others, however, who took a more free and fanciful view of their situation, and determined to enjoy and make the best of it. These lived on the cliarity of their family or friends. It was unsafe to treat them with coldness or neglect, for any moment their husband might return a millionaire. Young and beautiful and abandoned ! True, temporarily and for her own benefit abandoned ; but why should he think more of gold than of her? The first taste of wedlock was sweet; by it, however, the appetite was only whetted, not gratified. Former and unsuccess- ful lovers were now remembered and smiled upon, and flirtation was found a pleasing way to shorten the hours of a husband's absence. Some returned in time to reclaim their wives from too free a course of dissi- pation ; others did not.
Du Hailly refers to the English custom of sending young women out to India to get married there, and says that this custom finds its counterpart in Califor- nia in a curious prospectus in which an American woman, Mrs Farnham, offered to organize, on a large scale, a scheme for the emigration of women to San Francisco. The highest respectability was required, and no emigrant was admitted under twenty-five years of age. A ship was chartered especially for their use, and each must have 1200 francs. Small as was the amount required, the enterprise was not a success ; but this did not hinder the Californian colonization ag^ents
