in which the women dressed themselves in smart clothes and the men in brown boots and other things, obviously preferring parading up and down wooden side walks and verandahs to enjoying the country life in the country. There is one private house there belonging to Tevis the principal proprietor of Wells Fargo's business, and of course enormously wealthy. It stands on the beach in about two acres enclosed by a wire fence and looks more like a suburban residence than the sort of private park that an English gentleman of similar wealth would think necessary for comfort.

After leaving Tallac the steamer made two unimportant stops at Bijou and Hobart, and so brought us back to Glenbrook about three o'clock after a circuit of about sixty-four miles. The steamer fares are very high, amounting to about twopence a mile, owing to the absence of competition, but even so there did not appear to be sufficient passenger traffic while we were on the lake to pay for running a boat like the Tahoe.

There are natural hot springs on the lake itself at the north end where there has been an hotel, now deserted but which was at one time visited by the steamer and ought one would imagine to be as good as any other of the resorts.

Lake Tahoe is twenty-five miles long and twelve miles wide, covering a total area of two hundred and four square miles. It is situated 5,260 feet above sea level and is 2,000 feet deep in its deepest part. No words are too strong to express the crystal purity of its waters which enables you to see the bottom through thirty feet of water with perfect distinctness. The mountains surrounding it tower from two thousand to four thousand feet above the lake, and the purity of the air rivals that of the water. The natural scenery is most attractive but has been terribly spoiled in some places, and notably around Glenbrook, by the way in which the mountains have been skinned of trees by avaricious lumber men, leaving only barren and scrubby crags. Although increasing in popularity every year, it is by no means so frequented yet as it deserves to be, but if it is to maintain its beauty it is to be hoped that the Government will soon intervene to preserve all trees within two miles of the water.

We began soon to look out for a home and ultimately found a tumble-down, untidy but prettily situated place belonging to Mrs. Short. This lady had allowed the house to fall into great disrepair and we had some difficulty in coming to terms, but ultimately obtained a lease, Mrs. Short undertaking to do some of the most necessary repairs. Our next care was to make an expedition to Car

son where we purchased mattresses, blankets, sheets, curtains, table linen, cutlery, kitchen things etc., to the value of about £50, and had on the whole a very favourable experience of American shopping.

In the matter of servants, fortune as usual favoured me. Mollie had set her heart upon Chinese servants of whose quiet ways I also approved, and we had been struck with the excellent cooking of the Chinaman at the hotel. What then should happen but that he, being about to be discharged for the winter, should offer himself to us condescendingly, saying that he liked us and adding as a recommendation that he knew the ways of English people and was used to their eccentricities in the matter of afternoon tea and tarts with crust on only one side of the fruit. We closed at once with his offer, whereupon he offered to stand me a cigar, and Mollie a drink. This American freedom was too much for her and she declined it haughtily. His name was Charlie and his wages were to be $40 a month or £96 a year. Enormous as this sum was I found it was the same he had been receiving at the hotel, and therefore agreed to it. He undertook to find us also a boy who should act as housemaid and do the washing at $30 a month. A few days later this "boy" arrived from Tallac and when presented to us turned out to be an aged Chinaman of fifty or so, called Jim.

On the 12th September we went to Carson to make arrangements for our winter supplies with the butcher and grocer, and to meet Stanley, Mollie's eldest son, whom we had sent for. He arrived the next morning very nearly dead, having travelled from London without stopping, and having been put off his food by the journey. A careful calculation of times had succeeded in making a telegram hit him on his departure from Chicago which sustained his hope that an indefinite number of days in the train would ultimately bring him somewhere.

We dragged him out of the train, unconscious of having arrived and took him off to Shaw's Hot Springs, where we all had the luxury of a wash. We were independent of the stage, having become bold enough to drive ourselves in and out with Dan Couillard's team of white mustangs and his buggy. We therefore started back about three in the afternoon, and the nature of the stage road, which we explained to him was a good one, caused Stanley as much surprise as in his exhausted condition he was capable of feeling. We were glad to get away, for we felt some embarrassment in walking about Carson with him, because of his turned-up trousers and his general

English superciliousness. He had pained our loyal Nevada souls by an impertinent way of commenting on the streets, sidewalks and shops of Carson and even on the sacred Capitol building itself.

Behold us then on the 20th September entering joyfully into possession of our own house, Mollie, Stanley and myself with Charlie and Jim. The next few days appeared to be devoted entirely to the consumption of tin-tacks: old carpets were got out, shaken and tacked in bedrooms, passages and staircase: our one magnificent new carpet was tacked in the parlour: yards of American cloth were tacked to tables and Mollie most industriously cut up cretonne and tacked it over resurrected chairs. After we had consumed I know not how many dozen packets of tacks, we sat down to look about us, and lo! we had a home.

The house stood back some hundred yards or so from the lake, was long and narrow in its ground-plan and was of course built of wood. Situated in the middle of a five or six acre field containing a few apple and plum trees, it was surrounded on the west and north by a comfortable verandah and connected by a long wooden sidewalk with a small gate fronting the lake. Near this gate stood the neat and pretty house of the Blisses. The southern end of the village terminated here, there being only Captain Pray's old mill and two or three dirty cottages between us and the woods and the main road leading to Bijou and Tallac round the lake shore.

Inside, the feature of the house was a double parlour extending the whole width, lighted by two windows on the north and two on the south, and furnished with a cheery, open fireplace four feet wide, an unusual feature in American houses. Here we lived and moved and had our being, the northern end having my writing-table with books, papers and so forth, while Mollie sunned herself at the southern windows and scattered around her needles, thimbles, scissors, cigarettes, novels and a mandoline. In front of the fireplace was a little round table which served to support the lamp at night and books and papers in actual use.

The curtains were of heavy green material of that primitive construction where the support was due to three rings slipped over three French nails. When these were drawn at night and we were gathered round the lamp

ligna super foco

Large reponens

to keep out the winter's cold, we felt that there was no cosier fireside in England than we had created in this desolate Nevada.

Many cats were deserted in winter in Glenbrook, whereupon they would run wild, starve and breed. A mother was bringing up such a family in a heap of old lumber at the back and was discovered by Charlie when she had finished one chicken and was beginning a second. We thereupon declared war, and after two days I succeeded in shooting four kittens with my revolver though I had not yet bagged the old one. The mother fled and Mollie discovered the last remaining kitten deserted and starving the next day. She brought it in very wild and not a month old, and it developed into our most cherished companion and pet, with a complete confidence in the security of its home. We called the cat "Tita" and adored it and brought it back with us, but after getting it safely to Maidenhead, lost it.

Mollie built a sort of wigwam in a little bay about half a mile away, and even when the weather got colder she frequently would when especially happy take a stroll along the edge of the lake through deserted woods and, shivering over a feeble fire on the beach with a feather in her hair and cigarette ash smeared on her face, pretend to be a Red Indian. She generally returned from these strolls very glad of soft cushions and a warm room.

CHAPTER XXVII

GLENBROOK IN WINTER

MONG the inhabitants of Glenbrook our first acquaintance was

AM

naturally the stage-driver who brought us to Glenbrook, who perhaps cannot strictly be called an inhabitant. As I think I said before, on our first acquaintance with him he was very taciturn and uncommunicative, and only smiled sourly to himself when he heard Mollie declaring that some native shrub was a hazel nut. At that time he thought we were "gold bugs" and was not going to be drawn into any condescension to haughty Britishers, but later we established very friendly relations, and whenever he met Mollie they at once fell into a violent argument about women's rights. This he invariably concluded by saying: "I do not know what more you want. I always say a woman has every right a man has and one more-that's the right of protection." The idea of male protection was like a red rag to a bull and always sent Mollie off fuming, mollified only by a very feminine admiration for his eyes.

We had one experience with the stage-driver which we shall always remember. W. J. Bryan, the silver candidate for the Presidency, was to speak in Carson on his return East from the Yosemite Valley by way of Lake Tahoe and Glenbrook. Great preparations were made for his arrival; Nevada senators, the Governor and his wife, and many others crowded into Glenbrook overnight, and severely taxed its accommodation. The Tahoe was specially chartered to take him round the lake, and a special four-horse stage was to whirl him from Glenbrook to Carson. Meanwhile the mail was sent round the lake on the Meteor, and for the arrival of this boat the ordinary stage had to wait. The stagedriver had long since promised to take us into Carson, and pass Bryan's special stage on the way, but when the day came the fulfilment of this promise seemed impossible. Bryan arrived on the Tahoe, a more or less enthusiastic crowd of thirty met him on the pier, salvos of imitation artillery were let off from the Round-House,