CHAPTER XXV.

In the spring of 1854, I bade adieu to Marysville, and started for San Francisco, preparatory to leaving for the Atlantic States. Three years previously, I had entered Marysville, when it was a little town, built mostly of canvas. Distinctly did I recollect my feelings at that time. All those bright hopes and buoyant anticipations--how had they been realized? Alas! as are too many of the frail hopes of earth, they had been blasted and blighted in the bud. Now I left it a large city, containing ten thousand inhabitants. Blocks of brick, fire-proof buildings had been reared; churches also, whose spires seemed pointing to that better land; and school-houses, whose doors were thrown open to receive hundreds of happy children who had emigrated with their parents to this inland city. And I left it now, a sadder and a wiser woman; for there I had drunk deep draughts of sorrow, and had learned, by bitter experience, the fallacy of placing implicit confidence in earthly objects.

I was borne down those magnificent streams for the last time; yet every object is distinctly daguerreotyped in my mind as I saw it then. Yes! I bade all those scenes a final adieu; and would that I could have bade farewell to heart-troubles also. But how tenaciously they will gather around the fountain of memory, ever ready to spring to the surface, at the mention of some name, or half-forgotten word either of kindness or reproof! It was a bright May day, the last I passed in San Francisco. I met there several of the tried, firm friends of other days; and certainly I needed their support and protection then, if ever. Varying, conflicting emotions crowded so thick and fast upon the tablets of the brain, and so gained the ascendency over the power of self-control, that it was impossible for me to support my trembling frame without assistance, as I walked down the densely crowded wharf to get on board the steamer that was to convey me from scenes of suffering to my childhood’s happy home.

That day, three steamers left that wharf, within an hour of each other, for the Atlantic States,--the “Uncle Sam,” the “Panama,” and the “Cortez.” I went on board the “Uncle Sam.” She was the last to leave, and was crowded with passengers: she had on board about eight hundred people.

When the gun was fired,--the signal for departure,--as the echo reverberated over the waters, I fancied it to be one unanimous farewell emanating from the breasts of all on board,--a farewell to the sunny vales and towering mountains, to the gold-studded placers and majestic streams, the deep ravines and rocky cañons, of beloved California.

What different emotions swelled the bosoms of those persons who stood gazing, perhaps for the last time, on that great emporium of the West! Many perhaps, then on board, like myself, had threaded its sandy streets when in its state of infancy; had viewed the scene from Telegraph Hill, when nought but canvas shanties dotted the surface of those valleys, surrounded by numerous sand-hills, which had since been levelled to make room for elegant blocks of granite buildings, which reared their stately proportions, the admiration of thousands, and an honor to the energetic and enterprising projectors.

Some were returning, from a residence in that city and country, to their Eastern homes, blessed with an abundance of the shining metal which had lured them to its shores, and perhaps entirely destitute of all those principles of virtue and honesty that ever shed a brilliant lustre over the human mind, and give to the humble, indigent, and sorrow-stricken, a passport to a happy home above.

The possession of wealth does not necessarily pervert the human heart; and yet how often do we see the possessor utterly regardless of the feelings of the worthy poor! Wealth too often takes the precedence of intellect; and many times we have seen the gifted mind struggling through years of poverty, uncheered by even an encouraging word from the rich, and finally sink in obscurity into an early grave.