he cold world through the medium of the
newspapers, that first attracted the attention of Tretherick.
Several poems descriptive of the effects of California scenery upon a
too-sensitive soul, and of the vague yearnings for the infinite which
an enforced study of the heartlessness of California society produced
in the poetic breast, impressed Mr. Tretherick, who was then driving a
six-mule freight wagon between Knight's Ferry and Stockton, to seek out
the unknown poetess. Mr. Tretherick was himself dimly conscious of a
certain hidden sentiment in his own nature; and it is possible that some
reflections on the vanity of his pursuit--he supplied several mining
camps with whisky and tobacco--in conjunction with the dreariness of the
dusty plain on which he habitually drove, may have touched some chord in
sympathy with this sensitive woman. Howbeit, after a brief courtship--as
brief as was consistent with some previous legal formalities--they were
married; and Mr. Tretherick brought his blushing bride to Fiddletown, or
"Fideletown," as Mrs. Tretherick preferred to call it in her poems.

The union was not a felicitous one. It was not long before Mr.
Tretherick discovered that the sentiment he had fostered while
freighting between Stockton and Knight's Ferry was different from that
which his wife had evolved from the contemplation of California scenery
and her own soul. Being a man of imperfect logic, this caused him to
beat her; and she, being equally faulty in deduction, was impelled to
a certain degree of unfaithfulness on the same premise. Then Mr.
Tretherick began to drink, and Mrs. Tretherick to contribute regularly
to the columns of the AVALANCHE. It was at this time that Colonel
Starbottle discovered a similarity in Mrs. Tretherick's verse to the
genius of Sappho, and pointed it out to the citizens of Fiddletown in a
two-columned criticism, signed "A. S.," also published in the AVALANCHE,
and supported by extensive quotation. As the AVALANCHE did not possess
a font of Greek type, the editor was obliged to reproduce the Leucadian
numbers in the ordinary Roman letter, to the intense disgust of Colonel
Starbottle, and the vast delight of Fiddletown, who saw fit to accept
the text as an excellent imitation of Choctaw--a language with which the
colonel, as a whilom resident of the Indian Territories, was supposed to
be familiar. Indeed, the next week's INTELLIGENCER contained some vile
doggerel supposed to be an answer to Mr