selves into their respective graves, the claret (a favorite
wine with miners) and oysters are exhausted, brandied fruits are rarely
seen, and even port-wine is beginning to look scarce. Old callers
occasionally drop in, looking dreadfully sheepish and subdued, and _so
sorry_, and people are evidently arousing themselves from the bacchanal
madness into which they were so suddenly and so strangely drawn.

With the exception of my last, this is the most unpleasant letter which
I have ever felt it my duty to write to you. Perhaps you will wonder
that I should touch upon such a disagreeable subject at all. But I am
bound, Molly, by my promise to give you a _true_ picture (as much as in
me lies) of mining-life and its peculiar temptations, nothing
extenuating, nor setting down aught in malice. But, with all their
failings, believe me, the miners, as a class, possess many truly
admirable characteristics.

I have had rather a stupid time during the storm. We have been in the
habit of taking frequent rows upon the river, in a funny little
toppling canoe carved out of a log. The bridge at one end of our
boating-ground, and the rapids at the other, made quite a pretty lake.
To be sure, it was so small that we generally passed and repassed its
beautiful surface at least thirty times in an hour. But we did not mind
_that_, I can assure you. We were only _too_ glad to be able to go onto
the water at all. I used to return loaded down with the magnificent
large leaves of some aquatic plant which the gentle frosts had painted
with the most gorgeous colors, lots of fragrant mint, and a few wan
white flowers which had lingered past their autumnal glory. The richest
hothouse bouquet could never give me half the pleasure which I took in
arranging, in a pretty vase of purple and white, those gorgeous leaves.
They made me think of Moorish arabesques, so quaint and bizarre, and at
the same time dazzlingly brilliant, were the varied tints. They were in
their glory at evening, for, like an oriental beauty, they lighted up
splendidly. Alas! where, one little month ago, my little lake lay
laughing up at the stars, a turbid torrent rushes noisily by. The poor
little canoe was swept away with the bridge, and splendid leaves hide
their bright heads forever beneath the dark waters.

But I am not entirely bereft of the beautiful. From my last walk I
brought home a tiny bit of outdoors, which, through all the long, rainy
months that are to come, will