The Elko independent. [volume] (Elko, Nev.) 1869-1872, 1869-08-07
THE LKO.IN.DEPENDENT.
SATURDAY, AUGUST =. 1855.
TAs Sch oolnarms At Yo..mit..

he Sch oolnarms 1t Yosemite.
The inimitahle Prentice Milford is writing
letters to the Chronicle from Yosemite Dur
ing the vacation of the public school, about
forty San francisco -sehoolmarms'' are rus
ticating IN that paradise Of wonders; Prentice
has seen tham, and says:
Bob (the guide) and myself had travelled
through watery purgatory, and had become
comfortably dried in the sunny nook which
the exhausted traveller meets above. We were
gazing at the cloud of mist and spray through
which we had passed, shutting out from view
the lower part Of the canyon, when something
like q round. smooth, black ball was seen to
appear and disappear and reappear again in
the driving mist, now above projecting angle
of rock. then sinking below IL. 1t came nearer.
It had a human face and bare black hair,
shining wet in the sun. Nearer yet, and there
proved to be a body attached, clad in a light,
straw-colored bloomer suit. And, finally, the
whole thing came clean and clear from the
fog. The face was fresh, rudy and clear and
the feet and legs to within five and a quarter
inches of the knee were bare. The limbs were
very shapely, and the clear tint of the skin,
little flushed by the action of the driving wind
and spray, was brought the more strongly in
relief, from the occasional blotches of black
mud with which they we're splashed. The
figure trudged resolutely by us. 1t had prob
ably taken off its CATERS to save them from
destruction on that boggy and rocky path.
1T is boy" said /.
at is n GIRL" said Bob Che is a married
MANI; "a girl schoolmar1u. 1t is the advance
guard Of the battalion of lady teachers from
San Francisco, coming up to the Nevada
Falls"
And to this day cannot prove what it was.
1t passed on ont of our sight-cut of our sight
perhaps forevoT-bloomer costume, blooner
hat, black hair, black eyes, rudy cheeks, gem
eral daredevil air, fine ankles, generous calf,
little toes, big toes, toe nails and all; perhaps
a maid of the mist-perhaps not.
And then, one after another, saturated and
exhausted, feminines emerged from the storm
and threw themselves painting on the grass.
Lady teachers in bloomer, in hoops, in panta-
looms; lady teachers hmpy, dishevele6, dis
consulate and forlorn; lady teachers scrubbed,
washed, beaten, banged and wrung out, came
slipping stumbling, and suppose, swearing
hard inside. The little green space was soon
filled with this portion of the Public School
Department, done up in wet bundles of old
clothes thus spread out to dry.
1t was sight enough for one day. Again on
our way down Bob and myself plunged into
the storm. All the way we met lady teachers
struggling up in various stages of dampness
and encouragement. Some seemed wet clean
through, and needed to be played on for a few
minutes by twelye-ineh stream of water with
forty feet of fall through q two-inch nozzle to
be hydrauliced into the MERGED, dissolved as
fine as -four. Lower down, the trail was part
ly obstructed by dry schoolmistressses, gazing
half in wonderInent, half in terror at the fog
in which their companions had disappeared
Lake Baptist converts waiting their turn to be
dipped in winter through a hole cut in the
ice, they tremblingly awaited the return of the
guide to take them through the initiatory cere-
monies.
To this day Bob maintains that the figure
first seen was n girl; a girl, moreover, he says
would be mad, hopping mad, at any man who
wouldn't turn second time with an admiring
gaze at the proportions of her ankle and the
adjoining swell back of the tibula and fbula
bones and below the patelia. Yet have my
doubts.
There is such a thing as having too much
beauty and majesty confined in too narrow
limits By itself the Yosemite valley is enough
to fill with awe the soul of any ordinary be-
holder But when, in addition to its marvels,
one is at the same time obliged to contemplate
Professor Knowlton, J. W. Simonton, of the
Bulletin, and fourteen schoolmarms from San
Francisco, the capacity of the ordinary soul
gives ont, and one only realizes fragmentary
sensations Of wonder, JOY and awe, as the case
may be.