Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885. Various
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the region, provided us with a genuine sensation. Hitherto we had had mere weather; this was a pronounced case of meteorology: until then I had taken no special satisfaction in the word. It had been raining frequently during the month, in quite unusual volume; the arroyos were pretty brooks, the sides of the divides wept, and there were wide, soft places on the prairies; the flocks went very lame from the excessive dampness, and riding was a splashing and spattering business; but the oldest inhabitant dropped no hint suggestive of the veritable meteorological coup which was quietly preparing.
We retired one night in our usual unsuspecting frame of mind, and awoke next morning to hear above the dull reverberation of the rain the booming of a torrent. The arroyo near the ranch was no longer an arroyo, but a stream fifty feet wide; and on the hither side of the pecan-trees of the creek could be seen a silver line: the water had already surpassed the banks. Before noon there was neither creek nor arroyo, but a river a mile wide rushing down the valley: we knew where the trees had been, by the swirling waves. A flood is like those serpents which fascinate before they strike. The monotonous rain failing ohne Hast, ohne Rast, the dead immutable murk of the sky, the rush of gray wave after wave, induced a state of dull lethargic wonder: the feet—the foot more, would it accomplish that? Already the floor of the ranch-house was under water. But there was soon a sufficient dashing about of riders in long yellow oil-skin coats, and all was done that the situation seemed to demand or admit of. The culminating moment of the day came toward two in the afternoon, when we stood on the roof of the ranch-house, with our eyes glued to a sulphur-colored patch a mile up the valley. It was a flock of sheep congregated on an unsubmerged knoll in the middle of the torrent. There was a sudden movement in the mass, the sulphur patch vanished, and there was borne to us distinctly a long, plaintive cry: the flock had been swept away. In a few minutes, however, we caught sight of many of them swimming admirably, and, much to our astonishment, they found a desperate footing opposite the ranch across the swift sweep of the arroyo. A dozen Mexicans were equal to the emergency. They stripped, threw themselves in, stemmed the current, and, with amazing pluck and fortitude, worked about amid the submerged cactus and chaparral, which must have wounded them savagely, holding the sheep together. Finally, after desperate urging, a wether was induced to breast the rush of the arroyo and landed safely high and dry on the hither bank, when, thanks to their disposition to follow a leader, all plunged in, and, after a vigorous push, found their perils at an end. But the count showed some six hundred missing.
It ceased raining toward four o'clock, and the sun set in great splendor. The next day the water had quite subsided, and I went, unsuccessfully, after plover over the bed of yesterday's river, but the beauty of the creek had been destroyed for the season. And farther down, where the flood had come at midnight, it had swept away many lives.
In November, when the broom on the sides of the hills was a fine pink-brown, and when the wet places which the flood had left abounded in jack-snipe and afforded the neatest shooting in the world, I turned my back upon the ranch, where I had been very prodigal of the best of riches,—"the loose change of time." I did so with a warm feeling of regret,—a feeling somewhat tempered by the thought that I should soon be in a region of homes, constant greetings, and the morning newspapers. But after a few weeks of the morning newspapers it has been borne in upon me that a great deal is to be said for the place which does not know them.
E.C. REYNOLDS.
THE LADY LAWYER'S FIRST CLIENT
Mrs. Tarbell sat in her office, pretending to read a law-journal, but really looking at her name on the office door; and she was not without justification, perhaps, seeing that it had taken her six years to get it there. Furthermore, though it was six weeks since it had been lettered upon the glass panel, she had as yet found nothing to do but look at it. She was at last a lawyer; she had triumphed over prejudice and ridicule; and a young lawyer has three privileges,—he may write Esquire after his name, he is exempt from jury duty, and he can wait for clients. Mrs. Tarbell had always been exempt from jury duty, and her brother told her that, historically speaking, she ought to be called equestrienne, if she was to have any title: so it seemed that it was only left to her to wait for clients and contemplate her sign. The sign read,—
Ellen G. Tarbell,
Alex. H. Juddson,
Attorneys-at-Law.
Commissioner for Colorado.
Mrs. Tarbell had been a Miss Juddson before her marriage with – Tarbell, Esq. (of Hinson & Tarbell, mourning goods), and Mr. Alexander H. Juddson was her brother. When Mr. Tarbell died, his widow told her family and friends that she was going to read law.
Mrs. Tarbell had always been a woman of progressive notions, but this was going too far. Her family and some of her friends were short-sighted enough to attempt to argue the general question,—namely, ought women to have Rights? When Mrs. Tarbell proved to them that they were both unfair and illogical, they then said that, though they had no objection to other women making lawyers of themselves, they did not see the necessity in her case.
Mrs. Tarbell replied that she must get a living; and it was quite true that the late Tarbell had failed a few months before his death, leaving his widow rather poorly off; for he had not put his property in her name before making an assignment. And Mrs. Tarbell went on to say that, as she could not be a nurse, and would not be a governess or keep a boarding-house, she would read law. It was reported at the time that Mr. Juddson said he hoped his sister would go and read law, if anywhere, in Colorado, for which State it was he, of course, who was the commissioner; but, whether this report were true or not, Mrs. Tarbell stayed at home and pursued her studies under his direction.
After going through all sorts of examinations, at which she flung herself determinedly, and which she kept on passing with the greatest credit, after meeting with innumerable disappointments and delays, after being politely told by one judge after another that she was a woman, and therefore could not be a man,—hence, a fortiori, she could not be a lawyer,—after six years, I say, Mrs. Tarbell succeeded. Her name went on the list of attorneys. The court-clerk gave her a certificate, and received two dollars and sixty cents. The newspapers chronicled the circumstance. Her friends were triumphant. Judge Measy, who admitted her to the bar, was compared to Lord Mansfield and to Mr. Lincoln.
But marriage is not the only lofty undertaking attended by petty miseries. Mrs. Tarbell could bear her great misfortunes with courage and resolution: as she had great hopes, so she expected great disasters. Not Lars Porsenna of Clusium himself was more clapped on the back, and huzzahed after, and backed up by the augurs, nor more frequently told that he was the beloved of heaven, than Mrs. Tarbell had been by her soothsayers and partisans. At first this was all very well, but afterward it grew tiresome. If Mrs. Tarbell, emerging from widowhood and placing herself in the van of feminine progress, was really a pioneer in a heaven sent mission (as perhaps she was), there was no need to repeat the phrase so often. When two or three years had gone by, and it began to be apparent that Mrs. Tarbell had a long and up-hill struggle before her, she became very impatient of enthusiasm. She had never liked it, even when the female welkin (if there be such a thing) had first rung with applause for her, and now it was painfully uncomfortable. Mrs. Lucretia Pegley (authoress of "Woman's Wrongs," "The Weaker Sex?" "Eve v. Adam," etc., etc., editor of "Woman's Sphere," and chief contributor to the "Coming Era;" her friends called her a Boadicea, and denied that she had withdrawn from the study of medicine because she had fainted at her first operation),—Mrs. Pegley observed her friend's shortness of temper, and took her to task about it. "Ellen Tarbell," she said, "you surprise me very much. Do you wish to give the impression that your motives are purely personal and—forgive me, but the word is necessary—selfish? that you have no interest in the movement in which you are a pioneer? that your heart is not with the cause which after so many years of weary waiting looks to you for advancement? Mr. Botts is a most worthy and indefatigable man; perhaps a trifle too much addicted to repetition for the sake of rhetorical effect,—a thing, I admit, very trying; but it is of the highest importance (I say this between ourselves, of course, and you may imagine that I would not give publicity to such a statement),—it is of the highest importance that the feelings of our—hem—masculine colleagues should not be—"
"Yes, yes," interrupted Mrs.