CALIFORNIA SCENERY, NO. 10.—One of the most far-famed peaks of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California, just where that chain of mountains unites with the Cascade Range of Oregon, is Mount Shasta, lifting his cloud-piercing and snow-capped summit to the height of 14,511 feet. The Indians called the mountain Wyeka, now corrupted into Yreka, meaning “the White One.” The word is preserved in Yreka City, thirty-five miles north of the mountain. Shasta is located 330 miles north of San Francisco, fifteen miles from the Southern Pacific San Francisco and Portland Branch Railway. A good view of the mountain is obtained for miles along the railway, the best perhaps at Sissons. It has been well remarked that Shasta in the north and Whitney in the south were two grim and faithful sentinels, for centuries guarding the gold buried in California soil. The mountain is of volcanic origin, and was once active. A section of 10,000 square miles in Northern California is covered with lava, including Shasta. The two dark-colored peaks are the Black Buttes, probably half a mile high, near Mount Shasta. The region about Shasta must be a delightful one for a summer vacation. One would get plenty of pure air and water, and God seems to come nearer in His created works untouched by man.
WHAT OUGHT SHE TO HAVE DONE?
By Helen A. Steinhauer
(An o’etrue tale.)
Once upon a time there was a dear young girl who married before she was either old or wise enough to be a wife; and, not knowing how to bear and forbear, she sometimes had sharp words with, and angry feelings toward, the man whom she loved even more than the mother who gave her birth. Of course he wasn’t perfect—nobody is, you know—and this only made matters worse.
She had a laudable desire to help her husband and to earn her own bread—altho she had not done so before her marriage; but, unfortunately, the way she had to do it was attended with serious drawbacks. She had, as night operator in a telegraph office, to give up her natural rest; and as a consequence, she grew sickly, and nervous, and sometimes touchy and irritable; and her lawful protector, not understanding woman’s nature, found fault and became exacting, and often overbearing and unkind. At least that is what people said; for, alas! alas! our poor girlie held a somewhat exposed position, and what should have been kept sacredly private became town talk, her nights being of necessity spent in a depot, where prying persons could eavesdrop, and where passers-by overheard much that these two would not have had known to a third party on any account.
Then, too, it being a public office, young men could drop in of an evening; and the civilly-disposed were not slow to make capital of this, and hint and spread rumors which would have made our sweet, innocent girlie’s face crimson, and her bonnie brown eyes flash with righteous indignation, had she dreamed what was going on behind her back.
True-hearted women friends grieved in secret, and sought to persuade her to return to the shelter of her childhood’s home, for she had a fond father and lovely Christian mother, whose heart’s sorrow and life trial it was that she would persist in leading this exposed sort of life.
By and by her lawful protector was called away by circumstances, and forced to leave her in charge of his brother—an honorable and most kind young man. But this made further capital for the impure-minded and they were not slow to trade upon it.
Still our headstrong lassie refused to be counseled; nor would she pay the long-promised visit to her girlhood’s home (a boarding-house was her only other), altho her father offered to do all in his power to smooth her way, and make further toil on her part unnecessary, while her return would have brought gladness and sunshine into the life of her sad-faced mother.
Her lady friends—the motherly ones—deplored the fact that she failed to recognize that their better knowledge of the world fitted them to give her good advice, and were pained that she so positively refused to heed their loving counsel and avoid the appearance of evil.
The mere fact of her husband’s absence should have led her to make a change in her mode of life, while her own failing health formed a cover under which she could have gracefully withdrawn. But our girlie thought she knew best and would not be guided.
What could we do with her? There was nothing that we could do for her but to throw around her the mantle of love and pity.
But alas! and again, alas! altho woven of the strongest strands, its texture is such that it is no shield against the darts of prejudice and slander, which penetrated to wound and destroy our fair girl’s fame. Why will she not be guided, and take the only step which could have saved it and set her right before a censorious and uncharitable world? The daughter who throws herself into the extended arms of her parents, and seeks the shelter of her early home, finds herself in the holiest as well as the safest place this side of heaven, when made such by a Christian mother’s prayers.
