Bret Harte has a story of how a baby came to a mining camp and transformed that camp.

A poor woman with a questionable reputation, the only woman in the whole camp, died. She left behind a small baby and the men of the camp had to take care of it.

The baby was lying in a box. The men felt that a box was not fit for a baby’s crib. So they sent one of their members eighty miles on a mule to Sacramento to get a rosewood cradle. When the cradle came, the rags on which the baby was sleeping seemed out of place. So the man was sent back to Sacramento to purchase some clothes ”lacy, frilly, clothes. When the baby was dressed in its lovely garments and placed in the rosewood cradle, the men observed for the first time that the floor was dirty. So they scrubbed it clean. Then they noticed that th…