FIELD-DAYS IN CALIFORNIA 



slope a little below my level ; solitary, yet with 

 something uncommonly thrifty and homelike 

 about it, up there by itself among the hills, no 

 neighbors in sight, only the hills, the valley, and 

 the friendly sky. A dog lay asleep on the piazza, 

 and the woman of the house was at work among her 

 plants under the windows. It is encouraging to 

 think that there are still people in the world who 

 do not need to live in a city, or even in a village. 



Another ranch, a few miles nearer town, was 

 less pleasing in its aspect : a rough shed of ahouse, 

 never half built and now longuncared for, a small, 

 straggling orchard of fruit trees, equally unkempt, 

 and a wreck of a barn. A letter-box by the road- 

 side bore in lead-pencil the name of the occupant ; 

 a bachelor, he must be, I said ; certainly a man 

 with no woman's hand to care for him ; else 

 there would have been at least a geranium or a 

 rose-bush in sight. 



The name appealed to me, for personal reasons ; 

 and, when I came opposite an old man cutting 

 wood not far down the road, I hailed him. 



Was he the George whose name I had seen 



on the letter-box a short distance back ? He 

 answered that he was. I explained my cousinly 

 interest in the name, and in an easy, manly tone 

 he told me his story. 



He came to California in '49, and had been 

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