forsook it hurriedly and took to the woods. Here she might have
starved but for the intervention of one McCarty, a poor market
gardener, who found her, and gave her food and shelter under the
implied contract that she should forsake politics and go to work.
The latter she for a long time resisted, but as she was considered
large enough by this time to draw a cart, McCarty broke her to
single harness, with a severe fracture of his leg and the loss of
four teeth and a small spring wagon. At length, when she could be
trusted to carry his wares to Murphy's Camp, and could be checked
from entering a shop with the cart attached to her,--a fact of
which she always affected perfect disbelief,--her education was
considered as complete as that of the average California donkey.
It was still unsafe to leave her alone, as she disliked solitude,
and always made it a point to join any group of loungers with her
unnecessary cart, and even to follow some good-looking miner to his
cabin. The first time this peculiarity was discovered by her owner
was on his return to the street after driving a bargain within the
walls of the Temperance Hotel. Jinny was nowhere to be seen. Her
devious course, however, was pleasingly indicated by vegetables
that strewed the road until she was at last tracked to the veranda
of the Arcade saloon, where she was found looking through the
window at a game of euchre, and only deterred by the impeding cart
from entering the building. A visit one Sunday to the little
Catholic chapel at French Camp, where she attempted to introduce an
antiphonal service and the cart, brought shame and disgrace upon
her unlucky master. For the cart contained freshly-gathered
vegetables, and the fact that McCarty had been Sabbath-breaking was
painfully evident. Father Sullivan was quick to turn an incident
that provoked only the risibilities of his audience into a moral
lesson. "It's the poor dumb beast that has a more Christian sowl