 Reginald Randolph was a miner in love. He wanted his girl back East, Virginia Lee, to join him in California. So summoning his courage, he proposed marriage to her in a letter, asking her to join him in their new home -- in Bedbug. Reading this, however, cooled Virginia's ardor. "Do you expect me to spend the rest of my days at BEDBUG?" she wrote. Moved to eloquence by desperation, Randolph summoned his fellow miners to a meeting. He pleaded with them to rename their settlement something more respectable -- say, the name of a heroine in "The Last Days of Pompeii," a popular novel that Virginia was reading. Women being scarcer than three-legged chickens in those parts, Randolph's colleagues agreed. And within the year, Virginia Lee arrived at her new home -- in Ione. |