because you are a woman, but I’ve seen it happen over and over again both with men and women.  After a little while they get tired of roving and come home.

“You may not believe it, but, after all, that’s the great moment in their lives—­you just take it from me who have seen more than you might think and who have had a good deal of time to think things out.  I do wish you had seen your way to come out here.  There are any number of matters I would like to talk over with you.

“You mustn’t think me impudent for writing in this familiar way.  I write frankly because I’m sure you’ll understand, and the conventionalities have been cast aside because in this case they seem so immaterial.  I can assure you that I’m not impudent—­not where women are concerned, at any rate.  I’m a born lover of women, though I have been no woman’s lover.  I haven’t seen much of them.  Sometimes I’ve gone a year without seeing one, not even a squaw.  But I judge them by my mother, who made every one happy who came near her, and by some others I have known; I judge them by you, though I saw you only a minute.  I suppose you will think me crazy or insincere in saying that.  I’m both sane and honest—­ask Honora.

“You speak of my Italians.  They are making me trouble.  We have been good friends and they have been happy here.  I gave them lots to build on if they would put up homes; and I advanced the capital for the cottages and let them pay me four per cent—­the lowest possible interest.  I got a school for their children and good teachers, and I interested the church down in Denver to send a priest out here and establish a mission.  I thought we understood each other, and that they comprehended that their prosperity and mine were bound up together.  But an agitator came here the other day,—­sent by the unions, of course,—­and there’s discontent.  They have lost the friendly look from their eyes, and the men turn out of their way to avoid speaking to me.  Since I’ve been laid up here, things have been going badly.  There have been meetings and a good deal of hard talk.  I suppose I’m in for a fight, and I tell you it hurts.  I feel like a man at war with his children.  As I feel just now, I’d throw up the whole thing rather than row with them, but the money of other men is invested in these mines and I’m the custodian of it.  So I’ve no choice in the matter.  Perhaps, too, it’s for their own good that they should be made to see reason.  What do you say?

     “Faithfully,

     “WANDER.”

Honora wrote the same day and to her quiet report of improved nights and endurable days she added:—­