"But I have always heard," I said, "that women were idealized and idolized in those days." "That is a very pretty fiction. If you had seen what I have seen on this coast, you would not think we had been much idealized. Women have a certain value among men, when they can be useful to them. In the old States, where every man has a home, women have a fixed position and value in society, because they are necessary to make homes. But on this coast, in early times, and more or less even now, men found they could dispense with homes; they had been converted into nomads, to whom earth and sky, a blanket and a frying-pan, were sufficient for their needs. Unless we came to them armed with endurance to battle with primeval nature, we became burdensome. Strong and coarse women who could wash shirts in any kind of a tub out of doors under a tree, and iron them kneeling on the ground, to support themselves and half a dozen little, hungry young ones, were welcome enough--before the Chinamen displaced them. We had some value as cooks, before men, with large means, turned their attention to supplying their brothers with prepared food for a consideration below what we could do with our limited means. And then the ladies, the educated, refined women, who followed their husbands to this country, or who came here hoping to share, perchance, in the golden spoils of the mines! Where are they to-day, and what is their condition? Look for them in the sunless back rooms of San Francisco boarding-houses, and you will find them doing a little fine sewing for the shops; or working on their own garments, which they must make out of school hours, because the niggardly pay of teachers in the lower grades will not allow of their getting them done. Idealized indeed! Men talk about our getting out of our places where we clamor for paying work of some kind, for something to do that will enable us to live in half comfort by working more hours than they do to earn lordly livings." How much soever I might have liked to talk this labor question over with my intelligent hostess at any other time, my curiosity concerning her own history having been so strongly aroused, the topic seemed less interesting than usual, and I seized the opportunity given by an emphasized pause to bring her back to the original subject. "Did you come first to California?" I asked.