The Women of the West 59 



they make the lives of their " men folks," as they 

 are pleased to call them, abjectly miserable. The 

 following anecdote, not a new one to Western read- 

 ers, illustrates the man's point of view. A long- 

 suffering husband was burying his wife. The coffin 

 had been taken from the hearse by the pall-bearers, 

 and was being carried through the somewhat nar- 

 row gate of the cemetery. It chanced that in 

 passing through the gate, the coffin was thrust 

 hard against one of the posts. Almost immedi- 

 ately, to the amazement of the mourners, a muffled 

 scream was heard. The lid was hastily unscrewed. 

 And, lo ! the woman was not dead at all. She 

 was taken home and lived for three more years. 

 Then she died again. At the funeral, as the coffin 

 was being lowered from the hearse, the husband 

 addressed the bearers very solemnly : " Boys — 

 mind that post.'* 



We come now to the Western woman who leads 

 the double life, — the life of the peasant and the 

 gentlewoman. There are hundreds of these be- 

 tween San Diego and Victoria, nay, thousands, 

 who, as a factor in the future of the Pacific Slope, 

 challenge attention — and pity. Personally I can 

 conceive nothing more pathetic, more heart-break- 

 ing, than the spectacle of a gently nurtured girl 

 constrained by poverty to bake and wash and 

 sweep, to play the parts of cook, nurse, wife, ser- 

 vant, and washerwoman, and yet, by virtue of what 

 is bred in her, constrained also to dress as a lady 

 dresses, to eat what a lady eats, to read what a 

 lady reads. Here, again, the curse of a new coun- 

 try, the insatiable desire to appear other than what 



