Re-reading these chapters, with a more or less critical detachment, and leaving them--good, bad and indifferent--as they were originally printed, one is forced to the conclusion that sentiment--which would seem to arouse what is most hostile in the cultivated dweller in cities--is an all-pervading essence in primitive communities, colouring and discolouring every phase of life and thought. One instance among a thousand will suffice. Stage coaches, in the writer's county, used to be held up, single-handed, by a highwayman, known as Black Bart. All the foothill folk pleaded in extenuation of the robber that he wrote a copy of verses, embalming his adventure, which he used to pin to the nearest tree. Black Bart would have been shot on sight had he presented his doggerel to any self-respecting Western editor; nevertheless the sentiment that inspired a bandit to set forth his misdeeds in execrable rhyme transformed him from a criminal into a popular hero! The virtues that counted in the foothills during the eighties were generosity, courage, and that amazing power of recuperation which enables a man to begin life again and again, undaunted by the bludgeonings of misfortune. Some of the stories in this volume are obviously the work of an apprentice, but they have been included because, however faulty in technique, they do serve to illustrate a past that can never come back, and men and women who were outwardly crude and illiterate but at core kind and chivalrous, and nearly always humorously unconventional. The bunch grass, so beloved by the patriarchal pioneers, has been ploughed up and destroyed; the unwritten law of Judge Lynch will soon become an oral tradition; but the Land of Yesterday blooms afresh as the Golden State of To-day--and Tomorrow. * * * * * CONTENTS CHAP. I. ALETHEA-BELLE II. THE DUMBLES III. PAP SPOONER IV. GLORIANA V. BUMBLEPUPPY VI. JASPERSON'S BEST GIRL VII. FIFTEEN FAT STEERS VIII. AN EXPERIMENT IX. UNCLE JAP'S LILY X. WILKINS AND HIS DINAH XI. A POISONED SPRING XII. THE BABE XIII. THE BARON XIV. JIM'S PUP XV. MARY XVI. OLD MAN BOBO'S MANDY XVII. MINTIE XVIII. ONE WHO DIED XIX. A RAGAMUFFIN OF THE FOOTHILLS XX. DENNIS * * * * * I ALETHEA-BELLE