Beautiful but Poor — page 128: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

BEAUTIFUL BUT POOR. 119 hills the young man was prepared to find the food which is so plentiful there, and was not dependent on the far-away stores of Oroville, Marysville, or Sacramento, from which many of the miners drew supplies. Though this man was young—not over five-and- twenty years of age—there was a weary look in his pale, handsome face, which made him look older. Light-brown hair curled in heavy masses on his shapely head and fell far down on his shoulders, and his beard, a soft, silken brown, not heavy, but long, told that no tonsorial hand had touched it for many months. “It will be three years to-morrow,’ he said. “Three years to-morrow since I looked upon her in her glorious pride and beauty—three years to-mor- row since the hour when, madly disgraced by my own folly and the wild passion for strong drink, which has ruined millions of. better men than I, I stood before her to hear my sentence, to be told to oo from her presence and néver t» return till she-re- called me, which she would only do v-hen she knew I had forever conquered an appetite that had de- based my manhood and froze ait tl.. love she had given me—a love, oh, so precious, so priceless, so pure! “Wild with ras~ and disappointment, I tore my- self away an” fled with the adventurous throng to this El Dorado, but ! dared not stav where men were | and strong drink abouncrd. I wandered on and on until I could go no farther, and here. the highest claim upon this mad river, I fixed my home. Here have I toile#month after month, year after year, | increasing my golden store slowly and surely, but, best of all, conquering that base appetite which lost oe . K ee id So ary ape “comicbool aes: e- - = _ i? ° g? >. Vv ~ : i>) 7” ; i 5 . . , is » 4 P Oe tye : eee Sy ae ~ Bi me p > wh. » Se". a a , = f - ¢ - nd % S feo) \ enn “> 2: tee,