52 Life and Sport on the Pacific Slope 



champagnes and to shoot his father's coverts ; and 

 when the author of his being writes a fatherly letter 

 complaining that his son's extravagance will force 

 him (the sire) to let his town house and spend the 

 season out of town, the son sends a postcard in reply, 

 expressing his regret and offering to rent the house 

 in question himself ! Once and again a youth such 

 as I have described (from life) marries a daughter 

 of the Golden West ; and then Greek meets Greek. 

 One girl I knew married a man who died under 

 peculiarly tragic circumstances. Everybody con- 

 doled with her, and perhaps she grew tired of cheap 

 verbiage. At any rate she silenced sympathy one 

 day by saying, in the most naive manner : " Yes, it 

 was dreadful, dreadful ; but, thinking it all over, I 

 would sooner it was him than me ! " 



It is not uncommon to read in the society notes 

 of a San Francisco paper that Miss X is enter- 

 taining a party of her friends at her country place! 

 The country place belongs to her father the bread- 

 winner, but he is seldom seen and as seldom heard. 

 The English father of daughters, loud-voiced, didac- 

 tic, prone to fits of " waxiness," the laughing-stock 

 of many, and the terror of the few unhappy women 

 over whom he rules, is unknown on the Pacific 

 Slope. If a Californian father ventured to find fault 

 with a daughter, he would be sent, metaphorically 

 speaking, to bed. For a week he would be given to 

 understand that he was in disgrace. He would 

 have to take his meals — as it were — at the side- 

 table. 



The women I am describing improve their minds 

 at the expense of their souls. Culture, which — 



