[Vanished Arizona by Martha Summerhayes]@TWC D-Link book
Vanished Arizona

CHAPTER XXII
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It was some time after my arrival in San Francisco that I learned more about him.
Now, after we rounded Cape St.Lucas, we were caught in the long heavy swell of the Pacific Ocean, and it was only at intervals that my little boy and I could leave our stateroom.

The doctor often held him while I ran below to get something to eat, and I can never forget his kindness; and if, as I afterward heard in San Francisco, he really had entered the "Gate of a hundred sorrows," it would perhaps best explain his elusiveness, his general condition, and his sometimes dazed expression.
A gentle and kindly spirit, met by chance, known through the propinquity of a sixteen days' voyage, and never forgotten.
Everything comes to an end, however interminable it may seem, and at last the sharp and jagged outlines of the coast began to grow softer and we approached the Golden Gate.
The old "Newbern," with nothing in her but ballast, rolled and lurched along, through the bright green waters of the outer bar.

I stood leaning against the great mast, steadying myself as best I could, and the tears rolled down my face; for I saw the friendly green hills, and before me lay the glorious bay of San Francisco.

I had left behind me the deserts, the black rocks, the burning sun, the snakes, the scorpions, the centipedes, the Indians and the Ehrenberg graveyard; and so the tears flowed, and I did not try to stop them; they were tears of joy.
The custom officers wanted to confiscate the great bundles of Mexican cigarettes they found in my trunk, but "No," I told them, "they were for my own use." They raised their eyebrows, gave me one look, and put them back into the trunk.
My beloved California relatives met us, and took care of us for a fortnight, and when I entered a Pullman car for a nine days' journey to my old home, it seemed like the most luxurious comfort, although I had a fourteen-months-old child in my arms, and no nurse.

So does everything in this life go by comparison.
Arriving in Boston, my sister Harriet met me at the train, and as she took little Harry from my arms she cried: "Where did you get that sunbonnet?
Now the baby can't wear that in Boston!" Of course we were both thinking hard of all that had happened to me since we parted, on the morning after my wedding, two years before, and we were so overcome with the joy of meeting, that if it had not been for the baby's white sunbonnet, I do not know what kind of a scene we might have made.


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