-aged friend will sometimes draw forth from the misty past some
youthful misdeed, and set the faded picture up before a girl's eyes,
framed in fiery retribution--for an object lesson and a terrible
example--so will I, benevolent, if not middle-aged, put before the
eyes of my sisters a certain experience of mine. I expect my little
act of self-abasement for the instruction of my sex to have this
merit: the picture I will show you is not dim with age, and not cut
and cramped to fit the frame of a special case. The colours are hardly
dry, and both picture and tale are quite unvarnished.

I am a plain American girl of twenty. I am not so plain, as I come to
think of it, as one or two others I know--not being distinguished even
by unusual or commanding ugliness. I spent last winter in San
Francisco with relatives, and intended returning home as I
came--overland. But the invalid friend who was asked to chaperon me
back to New York, was advised by her physicians to take the trip by
sea _via_ Panama, for health's sake, and I was easily induced to
change my arrangements and bear her company.

It was on a sunny April morning that our friends met us at the wharf
of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company to bid us God-speed on our
month's voyage from the Golden Gate to the harbour of New York.

Fruits and flowers, boxes of salted almonds and Maskey's best bonbons,
as well as books, from Prescott's "Conquest of Mexico" to the latest
novels, were showered upon us, with the understanding that it was to
be a long and tedious voyage, and we should need all the comfort
obtainable to support existence, with the knowledge that if we
survived, we might be the better for the journey. The signal for
visitors to leave the ship had been given, and Major Sanford, turning
to go, stood face to face with a tall, foreign-looking young man, who
smiled with quick recognition, showing small white teeth like a
woman's.

"You raimembair me, Major?"

Major Sanford did "raimembair," and, turning to me, presented "Baron
de Bach."

"--he knows all our good friends, was here four years ago on his way
round the world in his steam yacht--glad to think you'll have such
good company. Good-bye!" And Major Sanford was the last to run down
the gangway. How little he knew what entertainment he was providing in
coupling my farewell to him with "hail" to Baron de Bach!

Slowly we moved away from the dense crowd that covered the wharf. In
the cloud of fluttering ha