At each gate we said good-bye to the women of the family; and some of the girls I had seen traces of beauty in, now looked like goddesses and queens. But their advice was all about the same. The general tone was to stay away. Finally, near the depot, one old woman varied the advice by saying to me, as she shook hands:
“Homer, if you fail this time, come home and give up this here making pictures, and help your father work, as he’s getting pretty old!”
Father went with me to Woodburn, ten miles below Silverton, where we were to catch the main line of the Southern Pacific. There we spent the whole afternoon waiting for the California overland that came about six in the evening.
We spent the time talking of what I should do when I got to San Francisco; of the great sights I must naturally see, as it was evidently to be different from Portland.
Finally we had only an hour more to wait for the train, and I got to thinking of this—that father had protected me from hard labor all of my life, simply because it had been my mother’s wish that I should some day be a
