At dinner, doubtless in order to make me feel "at home," I was engaged in conversation by a stout female person rather pretentiously attired, who proved to be the housekeeper of the hotel. At least forty-five summers had added successive weight to her proportions, and the only delicate thing about her was her sensibility--and this I knew because, in effect, she told me so. It was so trying for a woman to be alone in Alaska, and how astonished her people at home would be to see what she had to put up with--one who had been reared, so to speak, in the lap of luxury. It made her homesick to hear that I was heading for New York, whose gay metropolitan life, I somehow felt I was to infer, she had enjoyed in days gone by. This engaging creature, in a softly modulated voice, quite impressively selected her words,--the longer the better,--and the fact that they were not always appropriate to the thought was absolutely immaterial so long as the sentences were rounded and sonorous. For instance, in speaking of the ability of the commissioner at Chenik, judging from her association with lawyers (and she had always known the very best), she hardly believed that he possessed a "judiciary" mind. In reply to her leads, I said that I had just come from Council, and that I was an attorney; but, in answer to her query whether I had made my "stake," with great discretion I forbore to boast of the fortune secreted about my person, remarking that in Alaska one employed his profession as an opening-wedge for mining interests, and that as yet my mines were in a state of development. This elicited the information that she felt similarly as to _her_ profession; and when I made bold to inquire what that profession might be, I was slightly staggered by the rejoinder, "The operetta." Now, if she had said _opera_, it wouldn't have been so bad, for one associates with the opera something grand, massive, and substantial; but she didn't fit in with "operetta" at all. It was a rude shock, later in the evening, when I saw "Little Casino" standing by the bar and drinking her whisky straight. Then I felt sure that the dear ones at home would have been sorrowfully, painfully astonished thus to see their little one, whom, perhaps, they fondly imagined softening and delighting with song and merriment the rugged natures of the rough miners.