in other places.

The introduction of a female nurse in the camp also met with
objection. It was argued that no decent woman could be prevailed to
accept Roaring Camp as her home, and the speaker urged that "they
didn't want any more of the other kind." This unkind allusion to the
defunct mother, harsh as it may seem, was the first spasm of
propriety,--the first symptom of the camp's regeneration. Stumpy
advanced nothing. Perhaps he felt a certain delicacy in interfering
with the selection of a possible successor in office. But when
questioned, he averred stoutly that he and "Jinny"--the mammal before
alluded to--could manage to rear the child. There was something
original, independent, and heroic about the plan that pleased the
camp. Stumpy was retained. Certain articles were sent for to
Sacramento. "Mind," said the treasurer, as he pressed a bag of gold-
dust into the expressman's hand, "the best that can be got,--lace, you
know, and filigree-work and frills,--d--n the cost!" Strange to say,
the child thrived. Perhaps the invigorating climate of the mountain
camp was compensation for material deficiencies. Nature took the
foundling to her broader breast. In that rare atmosphere of the Sierra
foothills,--that air pungent with balsamic odor, that ethereal cordial
at once bracing and exhilarating,--he may have found food and
nourishment, or a subtle chemistry that transmuted ass's milk to lime
and phosphorus. Stumpy inclined to the belief that it was the latter
and good nursing. "Me and that ass," he would say, "has been father
and mother to him! Don't you," he would add, apostrophizing the
helpless bundle before him, "never go back on us."

By the time he was a month old the necessity of giving him a name
became apparent. He had generally been known as "The Kid," "Stumpy's