ground, she
made a temporary arrangement with some boards for a bedstead, and fell
to making sheets from one of the innumerable rolls of cloth which lay
about in every direction, for, as I said before, these good people had
everything but a house.

My new room, with the exception of its red-calico window, was exactly
like the old one. Although it was very small, a man and his wife (the
latter was the housekeeper of the establishment) slept there also. With
the aid of those everlasting blue blankets I curtained off our part, so
as to obtain some small degree of privacy. I had _one_ large
pocket-handkerchief (it was meant for a young sheet) on my bed, which
was filled with good, sweet, fresh hay, and plenty of the azure
coverings, so short and narrow that, when once we had lain down, it
behooved us to remain perfectly still until morning, as the least
movement disarranged the bed-furniture and insured us a shivering
night.

On the other side of the partition, against which our bedstead was
_built_, stood the cooking-stove, in which they burnt nothing but
pitch-pine wood. As the room was not lined, and the boards very loosely
put together, the soot sifted through in large quantities and covered
us from head to foot, and though I bathed so often that my hands were
dreadfully chapped, and bled profusely from having them so much in the
water, yet, in spite of my efforts, I looked like a chimney-sweep
masquerading in women's clothes.

As it was very cold at this time, the damp ground upon which we were
living gave me a severe cough, and I suffered so much from chillness
that at last I betook myself to Rob Roy shawls and india-rubbers, and
for the rest of the time walked about, a mere bundle of gum elastic and
Scotch plaid. My first move in the morning was to go out and sit upon
an old traveling wagon which stood in front of my room, in order, like
an old beggar-woman, to gather a little warmth from the sun.

Mrs. ---- said, "The Bostonians were horror-stricken because the poor
Irish, who had never known any other mode of living, had no floors in
their cabins, and were getting up all sorts of Howard benevolent
societies to supply unfortunate Pat with what is to him an unwished-for
luxury." She thought that they would be much better employed in
organizing associations for ameliorating the condition of those
wretched women in California who were so mad as to leave their
comfortable homes in the mines to go a-pleasuring in th