SUNDAY IN THE SIERRAS.
Never did the press feed on a political war, or a calumniated poet, as
these men of the Howling Wilderness fed on this one woman of the Forks.
Yet let it be remembered they always, and to a man, with scarce an
exception, spoke of her with the profoundest respect. Few of them had
had the pleasure of seeing her, fewer still of speaking to her, yet she
was the ever-present topic. Even the weather in a London Winter is
hardly more popular a theme, than was the Widow when they met in knots
in the little town after the day's work was over.
The brave, silent, modest little woman had put her hands to the plow at
once. These men knew perfectly well that honest people had no business
there but to work; and when her little hands, that did not look at all
as if they had been used to toil, took hold of the hard fact of life,
and the little face bent above the wash-tub, and the fine white brow
glistened with a diadem of diamonds that grew there as a price for
bread, they loved her to a man.
What strange savage scenes were enacted here before the arrival of this
one good woman. Every Saturday night was a sort of carnival of death.
Men went about from drinking-shop to drinking-shop, howling like Modocs,
swinging their pistols, proclaiming themselves chiefs, and seeking for
bloody combat. They gave the country a name and a reputation in this
first year of gold mining in the Sierras that will survive them every
one.
On Sunday the scene was somewhat changed. With all their savagery and
wildness and nonsense, it was always understood that the work of the
week must go on, and Sunday was the great day of preparation.
Sunday was not a day of rest. It is true the miners slept a little later
on Sunday morning, but Sunday was to all a day of terror and petty
troubles beyond measure. It always came to some one's turn, every Sunday
morning, in every mess or cabin, to begin his week's cooking for his
mess, and for that reason, if for no other, there was at least one man
miserable in every cabin whenever the dreaded Sunday came.
Then there was the mending of clothes! Mercy! Great big hairy men
sitting up and out on the hill-side with their backs up against the
pines, sitting there out of sight, half naked, stitching, stitching,
stitching, and swearing at every stitch.
But the great and terrible event of Sunday, before the Widow came, was
the washing of clothes. Neither love nor money could induce any one save
the uncertain little Chinaman to undertake this task for them, before
the arrival of the Widow. Therefore when Sunday came these men went down
in line, silently and solemnly, to the little mountain stream (allowed
to rest and run clear and crystal-like on Sunday), and stood in a row
along its banks, in top-boots, duck breeches, red shirts, and great
broad hats. Then, at a word, each man laid aside his hat, undid the
bosom of his shirt, straightened his arms, and drew his shirt up and
over his head, and then fastened his belt, and squatted by the stream,
and rubbed and rubbed and rubbed. Brawny-muscled men, nude above the
waist, "naked and not ashamed," hairy-breasted and bearded, noble,
kingly men--miners washing their shirts in a mountain-stream of the
Sierras. Thoughtful, earnest, splendid men! Boughs above them, pine-tops
toying with the sun that here and there reached through like fingers
pointing at them from the far, pure purple of the sky. And a stillness
so profound, perfect, holy as a temple! Nature knows her Sabbath.
I would give more for a painting of this scene--that sun, that sky and
wood, the water there, the brave, strong men, the thinkers and the
workers there, nude and natural, silent and sincere, bending to their
work--than for all the battle scenes that could be hung upon a palace
wall. When the great man comes, the painter of the true and great, these
men will be remembered.
It is said that Diogenes, when he saw a boy drinking water from his
hand, scooped up from the stream, threw away his cup, the last utensil
he had retained.
This shirt-washing went on in some camps for years. These men were
compelled to study simplicity, and did from necessity nearly what the
cynic did from caprice. Where every man had to carry his effects on his
back for days and days, through steep and rugged paths, an extra garment
was not to be thought of. Men got used to the one-shirt system, and
seemed to like it. Some stuck to it with a tenacity hardly respectful to
the near approach of civilization.
Once upon a time, to coin a new beginning, a younger brother came out to
visit one of these brave old miners, now gray and grizzled, but true to
his old traditions and habits of life. He called on him on Sunday,
entered his cabin, and found him covered in his blankets.
"What, my brother, are you sick?" said he, after the first salutations
and embraces were exchanged.
"Sick! No, not sick."
"Then why are you in bed?"
"Oh! I washed my shirt to-day and got in bed to let it dry."
"Why! Haven't you got but the one shirt?"
"But the one shirt! No! Do you think a man wants a _thousand_ shirts?"
These men were mostly shy with their letters and their tales of love.
That was sacred ground, upon which no strange, rude feet could pass. No
gold-hunter there, perhaps, but had his love--his one only love, without
a chance or possibility of changing the object of his devotion, even if
he had desired it. Men must love as well as women. It is the most
natural and, consequently, the most proper thing on earth. Imagine how
intensified and how tender a man's devotion would become under
circumstances like these. The one image in his heart, the one hope--HER.
So much time to think, bending to the work in the running water under
the trees, on the narrow trail beneath the shadows of the forest, by the
camp and cabin-fire, her face and hers only, with no new face rising
up, crossing his path, confronting him for days, for months, for
years--see how holy a thing his love would grow to be. This, you
observe, is a new man, a new manner of lover. Love, I say, is a
requirement, a necessity. It is as necessary for a complete man to love
as it is for him to breathe pure air. And it is as natural.
These men, being so far removed from any personal contact with the
objects of their affections, and only now and then at long intervals
receiving letters, all marked and remarked across the backs from the
remailings from camp to camp, of course knew of no interruptions in the
current of their devotion, and loved in a singularly earnest and sincere
way. I doubt if there be anything like it in history.
When men go to war, they have the glory and excitement of battle to
allure them, then the eyes of many women are upon them; they are not
locked up like these men of the Sierras, with only their work and the
one thing to think of. When they go to sea, sailors find new faces in
every port; but these men, from the time they crossed the Missouri or
left the Atlantic coast, had known no strange gods, hardly heard a
woman's voice, till they returned.
But let us return to this one firm first woman, who had come into camp
and taken at once upon her shoulders the task of washing and mending
the miners' clothes.
Men, even the most bloated and besotted, walked as straight as possible
up the trail that led by the Widow's cabin, as they passed that way at
night; and kept back their jokes and war-whoops till far up the creek
and out of her hearing in the pines.
A general improvement was noticed in all who dwelt in sight or hearing
of her cabin. In fact, that portion of the creek became a sort of West
End, and cabin rent went up in that vicinity. Men were made better,
gentler. No doubt of that. If, then, one plain woman, rude herself by
nature, can do so much, what is not left for gentle and cultured woman,
who is or should be the true missionary of the West--the world?
A woman's weakness is her strength.
She was tall, gentle, genial too, and soon a favorite with her many,
many patrons. She had a scar on the left side of her face, they said,
reaching from the chin to the cheek; but with a woman's tact, she always
kept her right side to her company, and the scar was not always noticed.
What had been her history, what troubles she had had, what tempests she
had stood against, or what great storm had blown this solitary woman far
into the great black sea of firs that belts about and lies in the
shadow of the Sierras, like a lone white sea-dove you sometimes find far
out in the China seas, no man knew; and, be it said to the credit of the
Forks, no man cared to inquire.
This meeting together, this coming and going of thousands of men from
all parts of the earth, where each man stood on the character he made
there in a day, deadened curiosity, perhaps.
At all events, you can go, a stranger, to-day, any where along the
Pacific, and, if your character indicates the gentleman, you are
accepted as such, and no man cares to ask of your antecedents. A
convenient thing, I grant, for many; but, nevertheless, a good thing,
and a correct thing for any country.
The old Jewish law of every seven years forgiving each man his debt was
an age in advance of our laws of to-day; and, if any means could be
devised by which every seven years to forgive all men their offences,
and let them begin life anew all together, an even start, it would be
better still.
How the work did pour in upon this first woman in this wild Eden set
with thorns and with thistles! There were not many clothes in the Forks
that were worth washing, but the few pieces that were presentable came
almost every day to the door of the Widow to be taken in by the little
hand that ever opened to the knock of the miners' knuckles on the door,
and reached through the partly opened place, and drew back timidly and
with scarce a word.
No man had yet entered her cabin. The wise little woman! If one man had
been so favored, without good and sufficient reason, then jealousy,
unless others had been allowed to enter also, would have made a funeral,
and very soon, too, with that one favored man the central figure.
No man had entered that cabin; but a boy had, and oftentime too. In fact
from the first little Billie Piper, whose cabin, as I have said, stood
hard by, seemed to be as much at home and as much in place with the
Widow as he was out of place with the men. The friendship here made him
enemies elsewhere. Such is human nature.