|Cummins City is still a crude metropolis. Society has not yet arrived at the white vest and lawn sociable period there. There is nothing to hamper any one or throw a tiresome restraint around him. You walk up and down the streets of the camp without feeling that the vigilant eye of the policeman is upon you, and when you register at the leading hotel the proprietor don't ask how much baggage you have, or insist upon it that your valise ought to be blown up with a quill to give it a robust appearance. Speaking of this hotel, however, brings to my mind a little incident which really belongs in here. There are two ladies at this place, the only ones in the city limits, if my memory serves me. One of these ladies owns a lot of poles or house logs which were, at the time of which I speak, on the dump, as it were, ready to be used in the construction of a new cabin. It seems that some of the prospectors of the corporation, without the fear of God or the Common Council of Cummins City, had been appropriating these logs from time to time until out of a good, fair assortment there remained only a dejected little pile of "culls." The owner had watched with great annoyance the gradual disappearance of her property from day to day, and it made her lose faith in the final redemption of all mankind. She became cynical and misanthropical, lost her interest in the future, and became low spirited and unhappy. One day, however, after this thing had proceeded about far enough she went to her trunk, and taking out the large size of navy revolver, the kind that plows up the vitals so successfully and sends so many Western men to their long home. Then she went out to where a group of men had scattered themselves out around camp to smoke. She wasn't a large woman at all, but these men respected her. Though they were only rough miners there in the wilderness they recognized that she was a woman, and they recognized it almost at a glance, too. There she was alone among a wild group of men in the mountains, far from the protecting arm of the law and the softening influences of metropolitan life, and yet the common feeling of gallantry implanted in the masculine breast was there. She indicated with a motion of her revolver that she desired to call the meeting to order. There seemed to be a general anxiety on the part of every man present to come to order just as soon as circumstances would permit. Then she made a short speech relative to the matter of house logs, and suggested that unless a certain number of those articles, now invisible to the naked eye, were placed at a certain point, or a certain amount of kopecks placed on file with the chairman of the meeting within a specified time, that perdition would be popping on Main Street in about two and one-half ticks of the chronometer.