a few single unattended women--happily seen more often at night behind
gilded bars than in the garish light of day--and an equal number of
pale-faced, dark-moustached, well-dressed, and suspiciously idle men.
A dozen rivals of Thompson's Saloon had sprung up along the narrow
main street. There were two new hotels--one a "Temperance House," whose
ascetic quality was confined only to the abnegation of whiskey--a rival
stage office, and a small one-storied building, from which the "Sierran
Banner" fluttered weekly, for "ten dollars a year, in advance."
Insufferable in the glare of a Sabbath sun, bleak, windy, and flaring in
the gloom of a Sabbath night, and hopelessly depressing on all days of
the week, the First Presbyterian Church lifted its blunt steeple from
the barrenest area of the flats, and was hideous! The civic improvements
so enthusiastically contemplated by the five millionaires in the earlier
pages of this veracious chronicle--the fountain, reservoir, town-hall,
and free library--had not yet been erected. Their sites had been
anticipated by more urgent buildings and mining works, unfortunately
not considered in the sanguine dreams of the enthusiasts, and, more
significant still, their cost and expense had been also anticipated by
the enormous outlay of their earnings in the work upon Devil's Ditch.

Nevertheless, the liberal fulfilment of their promise in the new house
in the suburbs blinded the young girls' eyes to their shortcomings in
the town. Their own remoteness and elevation above its feverish life
kept them from the knowledge of much that was strange, and perhaps
disturbing to their equanimity. As they did not mix with the immigrant
women--Miss Jessie's good-natured intrusion into one of their
half-nomadic camps one day having been met with rudeness and
suspicion--they gradually fell into the way of trusting the
responsibility of new acquaintances to the hands of their original
hosts, and of consulting them in the matter of local recreation. It thus