Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 August 1883 — A FIRST WOMAN. [ARTICLE]

A FIRST WOMAN.

Welcomed to a Mining Camp <* t*e FWr Wett. ' •• It was a day of jollification at Carbondale, Col., being the advent of the first wagon, the first woman, and the first board from the mill It would have been interesting to the reader to have witnessed the electrifying effect on the men in the camp when word was passed along the line that a woman was coming. Long before she

was within a mile of the camp knots of men were gathered here and there watching, looking in the direction from whence the wagon was to come. As she hove in sight, each one gathered around his or their camp as when an alarm had been sounded in a prairiedog town. Within a few yards of the outside habitation the woman alighted, and accompanied by her husband proceeded toward the County Clerk’s office. (It had been advertised that the donation of a town lot would be given the first woman who came in.) Curious eyes were watching her every step as she approached the Clerk’s quarters. But the crowd which had gathered around the office for mail receded respectfully from each side of the entrance. As she passed in, Col. Ferguson serenely loomed up, and, sailing out among the boys, agitated a reception.

Seized by the inspiration a hundred hats were removed from heads of noble structure and design, siluriated somewhat, perhaps, and a hundred horny palms passed over the unkempt locks to smooth them down, vests were pulled down, and a hundred pair of eyes ran down the respective owner’s “digging clothes,” proudly inspecting the inevitable “ball stitch” which rejoined the dismembered seam or held in place the patch of conspicuous dimensions. By a look of common consent the Colonel was the man selected to make the reception speech. Uneasily pluming his mustache with carbonate-stained fingers, the Colonel approached her and, followed by the uncovered heads, he inadvertently yanked a frog from his throat and began:

THE SPEECH OF WELCOME. “Respected Madam”—and a hundred heads nodded assent Appealing again to bis mustache for the needed inspiration the Colonel resumed again: “Respected Madam—the illuminating specter of this most fascinating occasion—” And a hundred heads bobbed serenely again in assent Pluming again the source of inspiration, the halting Colonel staggered on: “Foot prints of thine, which have first fallen on our carboniferous soil, we welcome thee. Mercury in her aerial flight trails through the starry architraves of heaven, to trail over the Silurian outcrops of Garfield county, which has become sacred to us from toil, vicissitudes and privations. It is ours by right of discovery, and you are welcome. We are conversant with your sex and some of us have been victimized. We have learned to love and cherish in memory the tiny fingers which were rubbed over our biscuits in other days and we languish for the sama The delicacy of sewing on bottons (thimbleless) is ours, and our toil-stained robes bear the traces of the Silurian outcrop. For months we have been here surrounded by the beautiful crystalline pearls of heaven, which have banked about and around us and our only solace has been the chirp of the camp bird and the weird wailings of the metamorphic blasts. We have long anticipated the daisy, struggling through the snowy depths to comfort us, as the day drew near when we laid by our snow-shoes on the limestone ledges, but this occasion is most sublime, undreamed of and unprecedented in the history of our new country. Thou hast come upon us like a perfumefreighted breath of the gentle siring time, and thou art the shrine to which we bow and bring tribute, and in behalf of these, my partners in the struggle, who stand before you with uncovered heads, some of them glistening like a burnished disc in the Silurian sunlight, heads which have been robbed of capillary traces from inevitable contact, I again say, welcome.” And she dropped.— Denver News.