way of stating it in the Aurora country. The milk of human
kindness, like some wine, must not be uncorked too much in speech
lest it lose savor. This is what they did. The woman would have
returned to her own people, being far gone with child, but the
drink worked her bane. By the river of this ravine her pains
overtook her. There Jim Calkins, prospecting, found her dying with
a three days' babe nozzling at her breast. Jim heartened her for
the end, buried her, and walked back to Poso, eighteen miles, the
child poking in the folds of his denim shirt with small mewing
noises, and won support for it from the rough-handed folks of that
place. Then he came back to Squaw Gulch, so named from that day,
and discovered the Bully Boy. Jim humbly regarded this piece of
luck as interposed for his reward, and I for one believed him. If
it had been in mediaeval times you would have had a legend or a
ballad. Bret Harte would have given you a tale. You see in me a
mere recorder, for I know what is best for you; you shall blow out
this bubble from your own breath.

You could never get into any proper relation to Jimville
unless you could slough off and swallow your acquired prejudices as
a lizard does his skin. Once wanting some womanly attentions, the
stage-driver assured me I might have them at the Nine-Mile House
from the lady barkeeper. The phrase tickled all my
after-dinner-coffee sense of humor into an anticipation of Poker
Flat. The stage-driver proved himself really right, though
you are not to suppose from this that Jimville had no conventions
and no caste. They work out these things in the personal equation
largely. Almost every latitude of behavior is allowed a good
fellow, one no liar, a free spender, and a backer of his friends'
quarrels. You are respected in as much ground as you can shoot