Under the Southern Cross

The same spirit in which a solicitous mamma or benevolent middle-aged friend will sometimes draw forth from the misty past some youthful misdeed, and set the faded picture up before a girl's eyes, framed in fiery retribution—for an object lesson and a terrible example—so will I, benevolent, if not middle-aged, put before the eyes of my sisters a certain experience of mine. I expect my little act of self-abasement for the instruction of my sex to have this merit: the picture I will show you is not dim with age, and not cut and cramped to fit the frame of a special case. The colours are hardly dry, and both picture and tale are quite unvarnished. I am a plain American girl of twenty. I am not so plain, as I come to think of it, as one or two others I know—not being distinguished even by unusual or commanding ugliness. I spent last winter in San Francisco with relatives, and intended returning home as I came—overland. But the invalid friend who was asked to chaperon me back to New York, was advised by her physicians to take the trip by sea via Panama, for health's sake, and I was easily induced to change my arrangements and bear her company.