"Abe sat down and the Bishop's heart sank with him.
"With a smile, one of the other gentlemen asked Abe what his plan for getting a church would be.
"'I will tell you,' said Abe, 'I move that an assessment of one thousand dollars be levied upon each of the trustees, payable immediately.'
"It was a startling proposition to the Bishop, who was just from the East and who had not become accustomed to Comstock ways. With a faltering voice he said:
"'Mr. E., I fear that I cannot at present raise $1,000.'
"'Never mind, Bishop,' said Abe, 'we will take yours out in preaching; but there is no rebate for any of the rest of you. If you are going to serve the Lord, you have got to be respectable about it. Your checks if you please, gentlemen.'
"All were wealthy men, the checks were laughingly furnished, with joking remarks that it was the first company ever formed in Virginia City where the officers really invested any money.
"'Abe took the checks, added his own to the number, begged the Bishop to excuse him, remarking as he went out that while he had every faith in the others still he was anxious to reach the bank a little in advance of them, and started up town.
"He met this man and that and demanded of each a check for from $50 to $250, as he thought they could respectively afford to pay.
"When asked how long he would want the money his reply was: 'I want it for keeps, —— it. I am building a church.' In forty minutes he had the whole sum. He took the checks to the bank and for them received a certificate of deposit in the Bishop's name. Carrying this to the Bishop's house he rang the bell.
"'The Bishop had seen his coming and answered the summons in person. Handing him the certificate Abe said:
"'Take that for a starter, Bishop. It won't be enough, for a church is like an old quartz mill. The cost always exceeds the estimates a good deal, but go ahead, and when you need more money we will levy another assessment on the infernal sinners.'"
Strong, who had been listening attentively said: "I heard the Bishop preach and pray over Abe's dead body three years ago, and watched him as he took a last, long look at Abe's still, clear-cut splendid face as it was composed in death. Abe never joined the church, and I am told that he swore a little to the last. His part in building the church was simply one of his whims, but for years he was a Providence here to scores of people. No one knew half his acts of bountiful, delicate charity, or in how many homes bitter tears were shed when he died.
"But the Bishop knew enough to know and feel as he was praying over his remains, that while it was well as a matter of form, it was quite unnecessary; that, so far as Abe was concerned, he was safe; that in the Beyond where the mansions are and where the light is born; where, over all, are forever stretched out the brooding wings of celestial peace, Abe had been received, and that, upon his coming, while the welcomes were sounding and the greetings were being made to him, flowers burst through the golden floor and blossomed at his feet.
"Among the royal ones of the earth, the soul of Abe E—— bore the sceptre of perfect sovereignty."
"I knew him," said Corrigan, "may his soul rest in peace, for he was a noble man."
"I knew him," interposed Carlin, "no words give an idea of how sterling and true a man he was."
"I knew him," added Wright. "When he died Virginia City did not realize the loss which his death entailed."
"I knew him," concluded Strong. "His heart was a banyan tree, its limbs were perpetually bending down and taking root, till it made shade for the poor of the city."
Then Carlin, opening the door to the kitchen, called Yap Sing to bring glasses. A night-cap toddy was made and as it was drank the good nights were spoken.
With the lighting of the pipes the next night Miller said:
"All your royal people so far, though not perfect men, have had redeeming traits. I once knew one who had not a single characteristic, except, perhaps, some pluck. My man was simply a royal liar. In Western parlance, 'he was a boss.' His name was Colonel Jensen.
"Now, in my judgment, lying is the very grossest of human evils. A common liar is a perpetual proof of the truth of the doctrine of original sin. By that vice more friendships are broken and more real misery is perpetrated and perpetuated in the world than comes through any other channel.
"But as genius excites admiration even when exerted for sinister purposes, so when the art of lying is reduced to an absolute science there is something almost fine about it.
"My liar, when I first knew him, seemed to be between fifty and sixty years of age; but no one ever knew what his real age was.
"But he was quite an old man, for his hair was perfectly white, and that, with a singularly striking face and fine faculty of expressing his ideas, gave him an appearance at once venerable and engaging. It was hard to look into his almost classical face and to think that if he had told the truth within twenty years, it must have been an accident; but such was the fact, nevertheless.
"He was indeed a colossal prevaricator. He was at home, too, on every theme, and there was the charm of freshness to every new falsehood, for he spoke as one who was on the spot—an actor. If it was an event that he was describing, he was a participant; if a landscape or a structure, it was from actual observation; if it chanced to be a scientific theme, he invariably reported the words of some great scientist 'just as they fell from his lips.'
"He knew and had dined with all the great men of his generation—that is, he said so. He always spoke with particularly affectionate remembrance of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, always referring to them as 'Hank' and 'Dan,' so intimate had he been with them.
"My introduction to him was on a stormy winter night, in the early years of the Washoe excitement. A few of us were conversing in a hotel. One gentleman was describing something that he had witnessed in his boyhood, in Columbus, Ohio.
"As he finished his story, a venerable gentleman, who was a stranger in Washoe, and who had, for several minutes, been slowly pacing up and down the room, suddenly stopped and inquired of the gentleman who had been talking if he was from Columbus? When answered in the affirmative, the stranger extended his hand, dropped into a convenient seat as he spoke, and expressed his pleasure at meeting a gentleman from Columbus, at the same time introducing himself as Colonel Jensen and remarking that one of the happiest recollections of his life was of a day in Columbus, on which day all his prospects in life were changed and wonderfully brightened.
"With such an exordium, the rest could do no less than to press the old gentleman to favor the company with a rehearsal of what had transpired.
"The story was as follows:
"I had just returned with the remnant of my regiment from Mexico, and had received the unanimous thanks of the Legislature of Ohio for—so the resolution was worded—"the magnificent ability and steadfast and desperate courage displayed by Colonel Jensen for twelve consecutive hours on the field of Buena Vista." I was young at the time and had not got over caring for such things. The day after this resolution of thanks was passed the Governor of the State ordered a grand review, at the capital, of the militia of the State in honor of the soldiers who had survived the war. As a mark of especial honor I was appointed Adjutant-General on the Governor's staff. My place at the review was beside the Governor—who was, of course, Commander-in-Chief—except when my particular regiment was passing.
"'There are a few things which I have never outgrown a weakness for. One is a real Kentucky blood horse. I had sent to Kentucky and paid four thousand dollars for a son of old Gray Eagle. I bought him cheap, too, because of his color. He was a dappled gray. The Boston stock of horses was just then becoming the rage, and gray was beginning to be an off color for thoroughbreds. My horse was a real beauty. He had been trained on the track, and from a dead stand would spring twenty-two feet the first bound. But he was thoroughly broken and tractable, though he had more style than a peacock, and when prancing and careering, though not pulling five pounds on the bit, he looked as though in a moment he would imitate Elijah's chariot and take to the clouds.
"'As the hour for the review approached I mounted my horse and took my position, as assigned, beside the Governor.
"'I was quietly conversing with him and with our Brigadier-General, when a runaway team, attached to an open carriage in which were two ladies, dashed past us.
"'What followed was instinct. I gave Gray Eagle both rein and spur. In a few seconds he was beside the running horses. I sprang from his back upon the back of the near carriage horse, gathered the inside reins of the team, drew the heads of the two horses together and brought them to a standstill only a few feet from the bluffs, which any one from that city will remember, and over which the team would have dashed in a moment more.
"'People gathered around instantly, took the horses in hand and helped the ladies from the vehicle. Being relieved, I caught and remounted my horse, took my place and the review proceeded.
"'After the review, I received a note from the Governor asking me to dine with him that evening.
"'I accepted, supposing the invitation was due to my Mexican record. Judge my surprise, then, when going to the Governor's mansion, I was shown into the parlor, and, on being presented to the Governor's wife and her beautiful unmarried sister, in a moment found myself being overwhelmed by the grateful thanks of the two ladies, learning for the first time, from their lips, that they were the ladies I had rescued.
"'Of course, after that, I was a frequent visitor at the house, and in a few months the young lady became my wife.'
"His story was told with an air of such modest candor and at the same time with such dramatic effect, that what might have seem improbable or singular about it, had it been differently related, was not thought of at the time. The old man was a real hero for a brief moment at least.
"When, later, we knew the Colonel had never been in the Mexican war or any other war; that he had never been married; that if he had ever witnessed a military review it was from a perch on a fence or tree; that he had never possessed four thousand or four hundred dollars with which to buy a horse, and that his oldest acquaintances did not believe that he had ever been on a horse's back, still, while the admiration for the man was somewhat chilled, there was no difference of opinion as to the main fact, which was that as a gigantic and dramatic liar, on merit, he was entitled to the post of honor on a day when the Ananiases of all the world were passing in review.
"Old and middle-aged men in the West will remember the delightful letters, which Lieut. B., under thenom de plumeof 'Ching Foo,' used to write to the SacramentoUnion. Once in the presence of Colonel Jensen these letters were referred to as masterpieces. The Colonel smiled significantly and said:
"'They were delicious letters, truly. Take him all in all, Ching Foo was the most intelligent Chinaman I ever saw. He cooked for me three years in California. I taught him reading and writing. I reckon he would have been with me still, but the early floods in '54 washed out my bed-rock flume in American River and I had to break up my establishment. I had a ton of gold in sight in the river bed, but next morning the works were all gone and with them $125,000 which I had used in turning the river.'
"One day an Ohio man and a Tennessee man engaged in a warm dispute over the relative excellencies of the respective State houses in Ohio and Tennessee. Finally they appealed to Colonel Jensen for an opinion. The Colonel, with his sovereign air, said to the Ohio man:
"'You are wrong, Tom. I had just completed the State house at Columbus, when I was sent for to go and make the plans and superintend the construction of the State house at Nashville. It would have been strange if I had not made a great many improvements over the Ohio structure, in preparing plans for the one to be erected in Tennessee.'
"The Colonel was a bungling carpenter by trade, and never built anything more complicated or imposing than a miner's cabin.
"One more anecdote and I will positively stop. Two neighbors had a law suit in Washoe City. One was an honest man, the other a scoundrel. As is the rule in Nevada, both the plaintiff and defendant testified. The defendant denied point blank the testimony of the plaintiff. It was plain that one or the other had committed terrible perjury. Some other witnesses were called, the case was closed and the jury retired to consider upon a verdict. But how to decide was the question. Which was the honest man and which the scoundrel?
"At last one juror hit upon a happy thought. He said:
"Gentlemen, did you notice closely the last witness for the defendant? His hair was white as snow, his body bent, his steps were feeble and tottering. That man has already one foot in the grave; he will not survive another month. Surely a man in his condition would tell the truth.' The argument seemed logical and the reasoning sound. The verdict was unanimous for the defendant.
"No case ever showed clearer the 'infallibility' of a jury. The witness was Colonel Jensen. The defendant was the perjurer, and all the Colonel knew of the case was what the defendant had, that morning, out behind a hay corral, drilled him to know and to swear to, for a five-dollar piece.
"The Colonel has gone now to join his ancestors on the other side. In the old orthodox days there would not have been the slightest doubt as to who his original ancestor was, or of the temperature of his present quarters, but who knows?
"I only know that, while upon the earth, he was one of the few men whom I have known that I believed was a native genius; a very Shakespeare (or Bacon) in language; a Michael Angelo in coloring; a colossal, all-embracing, magnificent, measureless liar."
"He was a good one, sure," said Carlin.
"He was a bad one, sure," remarked Ashley.
Then Brewster, taking up the theme, said: "He had a chronic disease, that was all. He was as much of an inebriate in his way as ever was drunkard a slave to alcohol. He had great vanity and self-esteem and a flowery imagination. These were chastened or disciplined by no moral attributes. He could no more help being what he was than can the raven avoid being black."
"There was bad stock in the mon," said Corrigan. "He should have been strangled in his cradle; for sich a mon is forever making bitterness in a neighborhood, and is not fit to live."
"Boys," asked the Colonel, "do you believe that lying is ever justifiable?"
Brewster, Harding and Ashley simultaneously answered "No."
"It depends," said Carlin.
"Hardly iver," said Corrigan.
Miller thought it might be necessary.
"For one's self, no; for another, perhaps yes," said the Professor.
"That is just the point," remarked the Colonel. "Let me tell you about a case which transpired right here in this city. There were two men whose first names were the same, while their surnames were similar. Their given names were Frank and their surnames were, we will say, Cady and Carey, respectively. Cady was a young married man. He had a beautiful wife, a lovely little girl three years of age and a baby boy a year old at the time I am speaking of. Carey was five or six years younger and single. They were great friends, notwithstanding that Cady was pretty fast while Carey was as pure-hearted a young man as ever came here. More, he was devotedly attached to a young lady who was a close friend of the wife of Cady. The young couple were expecting to be married in a few weeks at the time the incident happened which I am going to relate.
"Cady was wealthy, while Carey was poor and a clerk in a mercantile establishment. One day Cady said to his friend: 'Carey, I bought some Con. Virginia stock to-day at $55. I have set aside eighty shares for you. Some people think it is going to advance before long. If it does and there is anything made on the eighty shares it shall be yours.' Sixty days later the stock struck $463, when it was sold and the bank notified Carey that there was a deposit of $32,000 to his credit. When this stroke of good fortune came the youth hastened to tell the good news to the girl of his heart, and before they separated their troth was plighted and the marriage day fixed.
"During this delicious period, one morning Carey stepped into the outer office of Cady and was horrified to hear from behind the glass screen which separated the inner office from the main office the wife of Cady upbrading her husband in a most violent manner. Her back was to the front of the building. She was holding a letter in her hand, and as Carey entered the building she began and read the letter through, and wound up by crying: 'Who is this Marie who is writing to you and directing the letters simply to Frank, Postoffice box 409? You are keeping a private box, are you? But you are too careless by half; you left this letter in your overcoat pocket, and when I went to sew a button on the coat this morning it fell out, so I could not help but see it.'
"Just then Cady looked up and saw Carey through the glass petition. The latter with a swift motion touched a finger to his lips and shook his head, which in perfect pantomime said: 'Don't give yourself away,' then in a flash slipped noiselessly from the building.
"Once outside, he hastily, on a leaf of his memorandum book, wrote to the postmaster that if he called with a lady and asked what his postoffice box was to answer 409; to at once take out anything that might be in the box, and if he had time to seal and stamp an envelope, direct it to him and put it in 409, and he added: 'Don't delay a moment.'
"Calling a bootblack who was standing near, he gave him the note and a silver dollar, bade him run with the letter to the postoffice and to be sure to deliver the note only to some of the responsible men there, to the postmaster himself if possible.
"Then, with a good deal of noise, he rushed into his friend's place of business again.
"As he entered he heard his friend's wife, through her sobs, saying: 'Oh, Frank! I should have thought that respect for our children would have prevented this, even if you have no more love for me.'
"Carey dashed through the sash door, seemed taken all aback at seeing Cady's wife in the office. In great apparent confusion he advanced and said: 'Excuse me, Cady, but I am in a little trouble this morning. I was expecting a letter last night directed simply to my first name and my postoffice box. It has not come, and as you and myself have the same first name, I did not know but the mistake might have been made at the postoffice.' He was apparently greatly agitated and unstrung and seemed particularly anxious about the letter.
"Cady replied: 'With my mail last night a letter came directed as you say. I opened and glanced over it, thought it was some joke, put it in my pocket and thought no more about it until my wife brought it in this morning. Somehow she does not seem satisfied at my explanation.'
"At this the lady sprang up, and, confronting the young man, said: 'Frank Carey, what is the number of your box in the postoffice?'
"With steady eyes and voice he answered; '409.' The woman was dumfounded for a moment, but she quickly rallied.
"'Come with me,' she said. The young man obeyed. She took her way directly to the postoffice. Arriving, she tapped at the delivery window and asked if she could see the postmaster in person. The boy delivered the message and in a moment the door opened and the pair were ushered into the private office of the postmaster. Hardly were they seated when the lady said abruptly: 'We have come, Judge, on a serious business. Will you be kind enough to tell me the number of this gentleman's postoffice box?'
"The postmaster looked inquiringly at Carey, who nodded assent. Then in response to the lady, he replied: 'I do not exactly remember. I will have to look at the books.'
"He passed into the main office, but returned in a moment with a petty ledger containing an alphabetical index. He opened at the 'C's' and read: 'Frank Carey, box 409; paid for one quarter from Jan——' Continuing, he said: 'I remember now, Frank, you hired the box about the time you realized on Con. Virginia, and the quarter has about a month more to run.'
"This he said with an imperturbable, and incorruptible face, and with an air of mingled candor and business which it was charming to behold.
"The lady was nearly paralyzed, but she made one more effort.
"'There can be no possible mistake in what you have told me, Judge?' she asked.
"'I think not the least in the world,' was the reply, and, rising, he continued: 'Please step this way.' He led the way to the boxes, and there over 409 was the name of Frank Carey. More, there was a sprinkle of dust over it, showing that it had been there for some time.
"'By the way,' said the postmaster, you have a letter, Frank. It must be a drop letter, as no mail has been received this morning.' He took the letter from the box in a manner so awkward that the lady could not help seeing that it had evidently been directed in a disguised female hand, and that the superscription was simply 'Frank, P. O. Box 409.'
"Arrived again in the private office, the lady said to the young man, in a latitude 78-degree north tone, 'I see, sir, you have a very extensive, and I have no doubt, veryselectcorrespondence.'
"At the same time she caught up her skirts—the ladies wore long skirts that year—and, with a 'I thank you, Judge; good morning,' started toward the door. As she passed Carey she drew close to the wall, as though for her robes to touch the hem of his garments would be contamination, and passed haughtily into the street.
"When she had disappeared Carey sank into a chair and drew a long breath of relief, while the grave face of the ancient 'Nasby' unlimbered and warmed into a smile which shone like virtue's own reward.
"'Lord! Lord!' he said, 'but it was a close shave. I had just got things fixed when you came. And was not she mad though? She looked like the prospectus of a cyclone. But tell me, Carey, am I not rather an impressive liar, when, in the best interests of domestic peace, my duty leads me into that channel?'
"Frank answered, 'As Mark Twain told those wild friends of his who perpetrated the bogus robbery upon him, "You did a marvelous sight too well for a mere amateur." But now, Judge, mum is the word about this business.'
"'Mum is the word,' was the reply.
"That evening Carey called at the home of his betrothed. A servant showed him into the parlor, but for the first time the young lady did not put in an appearance. In her stead her mother came. The elder lady, without sitting, in a severe tone said: 'Mr. Carey, my daughter has heard something to-day from Mrs. Cady. Until you explain that matter to my satisfaction my daughter will beg to decline to see you.'
"Carey replied: 'Since your daughter has heard of the matter, it does concernher, and I shall very gladly explain to her; but I cannot to any one else, not even to you.'
"'You could easily impose upon a silly girl who is in love, but I am no silly girl, and am not in love, especially not withyou, and you will have to explain tome,' said the lady.
"'My dear madam,' said Carey, mildly, 'in one sense there is nothing in all that gossip. In another sense so much is involved that I would not under the rack whisper a word of it to any soul on earth save she who has promised to give her happiness into my keeping. When your daughter becomes my wife your authority as mother in our home shall never be questioned by me. Until then my business is not with you.'
"'It is not worth while to prolong this discussion,' said the old lady, excitedly. 'If you have nothing more to say, I will bid you good evening.'
"'Good evening, madam,' said Carey, and went out into the night.
"A year later the young lady married the wildest rake on the Comstock, but Carey never married, and died last year.
"When Cady saw how things were going, he went to Carey and said: 'Carey, let me go and explain to those ladies. It kills me to see you as your are.'
"'It will never do,' was the reply. 'They would not keep the secret, especially the elder one never would. It would kill her not to get even with your wife. It worried me a little at first, for I feared that —— might grieve some and be disappointed; but she is all right. I watched her covertly at the play last night. She will forget me in a month. She will be married within the year. We will take no chance of having your home made unhappy. Dear friend, it is all just as I would have it.'"
"It was too bad," said Harding.
"That Carey was a right noble fellow," was Wright's comment.
Miller thought if he had been right game he would have seen that girl, old woman or no old woman.
"He was punished for his falsehood. He had to atone for his own and his friend's sins," was Brewster's conclusion.
"O, murther! I think he had a happy deliverance from the whole family intoirely," said Corrigan.
Carlin, addressing Brewster, said: "You say he was punished for the sins of himself and his friend; how do you dispose of the wickedness of the postmaster?"
"Possibly," was the response, "he is wicked by habit, and it may be he is being reserved for some particular judgment."
"All that I see remarkable about Carey's case," said Ashley, "is that he made the money in the first place. Had that stock been carried for me, the mine would have been flooded the next week and my work would have been mortgaged for a year to come to make good the loss."
"It was a hard case, no doubt," said Strong, "but I think with Corrigan, that the punishment was not without its compensations."
"He had his mirage and it was worse than wild Injuns, was it not, Wright?" asked Corrigan.
"Or worse, Barney," said Wright, "than a blacksmith, a foine mon and a mon of property."
"O, murther, Wright," said Corrigan; "stop that. There go the whistles. Let us say good night."
About this time Virginia City was visited one day by a heavy rain storm accompanied with thunder. But as the sun was disappearing behind Mount Davidson, the clouds broke and rolled away from the west, while at the same time a faint rainbow appeared in the East, making one of those beautiful spectacles common to mountainous regions.
At the same time the flag on Mount Davidson caught the beams from the setting sun and stood out a banner of fire. This, too, is not an unfrequent spectacle in Virginia City, and long ago inspired a most gifted lady to write a very beautiful poem, "The Flag on Fire."
The storm and the sunset turned the minds of the Club to other beautiful displays of nature which they had seen. Said Miller, "I never saw anything finer than a sunset which I witnessed once at sea down off the Mexican coast.
"We were in a tub of a steamship, the old "Jonathan." We had been in a storm for four days, three of which the steamer had been thrown up into the wind, the machinery working slowly, just sufficient to keep steerageway on the ship.
"There were 600 passengers on board, with an unusual number of women and children, and we had been miserable past expression. But at last, with the coming of the dawn, the wind ceased; as soon as the waves ran down so that it was safe to swing the ship, she was turned about and put upon her course.
"In a few hours the sea grew comparatively smooth, and the passengers by hundreds sought the deck.
"All the afternoon the Mexican coast was in full view, blue and rock-bound and not many miles away.
"Just before the sun set its bended rays struck those blue head-lands and transfigured them. They took on the forms of walls and battlements and shone like a city of gold rising out of the sea in the crimson East, and looked as perhaps the swinging gardens of Semiramis did from within the walls of Babylon. In the West the disc of the sun, unnaturally large, blazed in insufferable splendor, while in glory this seeming city shone in the East. Between the two pictures the ship was plunging on her course and we could feel the pulses of the deep sea as they throbbed beneath us. The multitude upon the deck hardly made a sound; all that broke the stillness was the heavy respirations of the engines and the beating of the paddles upon the water. The spell lasted but a few minutes, for when the sun plunged beneath the sea, the darkness all at once began as is common in those latitudes, but while it lasted it was sublime.
"Speaking of Nature's pictures, in my judgment about the most impressive sight that is made in this world, is a storm at sea. I mean a real storm in which a three thousand ton ship is tossed about like a cork, when the roar of the storm makes human voices of no avail, and when the billows give notice that 'deep is answering unto deep.'
"When a boy I often went down under the overhanging rock over which the current of Niagara pours. As I listened to the roar and tried to compute the energy which had kept those thunders booming for, heaven only knows how many thousands of years, it used to make me feel small enough; but it never influenced me as does an ocean storm. When all the world that is in sight goes into the business of making Niagaras, and turns out a hundred of them every minute, I tell you about all an ordinary landsman can do is to sit still and watch the display.
"A real ocean storm—a shore shaker—is about the biggest free show that this world has yet invented."
Corrigan spoke next; said he: "Spakin' of storms, did you iver watch the phenomenon of a ragin' snow storm high up in the Sierras? When it is approaching there is a roar in the forest such as comes up a headland when the sea is bating upon its base. This will last for hours, the pines rocking like auld women at a wake, and thin comes the snow. Its no quiet, respectable snow such as you see in civilized countries, but it just piles down as though a new glacial period had descinded upon the worreld. As it falls all the voices of the smaller streams grow still and the wind itself grows muffled as though it had a could in the head. The trees up there are no shrubs you know. They grow three hundred feet high and have branches in proportion, and whin they git to roarin' and rockin', it is as though all the armies of the mountains were presentin' arms.
"When the storm dies away, thin it is you see a picture, if the weather is not too cold. The snow masses itself upon the branches, and thin you stand in a temple miles in extent, the floor of which is white like alabaster while the columns that support it are wrought in a lace-work of emerald and of frost more lofty and dilicate than iver was traced out by the patient hand of mortal in grand cathadrals."
Here Carlin interrupted.
"Say, Barney, is there not a great deal of frieze to one of those Sierra temples?"
"It might same so, lookin' from the standpoint of the nave," was Barney's quick reply.
Groans followed this outbreak, from various members of the Club. They were the first puns that had been fired into that peaceful company and they were hailed as omens of approaching trouble.
The gentle voice of Brewster next broke the silence.
"I saw," he said, "in Salt Lake City, three years ago on a summer evening, a sunset scene which I thought was very beautiful. The electric conditions had been strangely disturbed for several days; there had been clouds and a good deal of thunder and lightning. You know Salt Lake City lies at the western base of the Wasatch range. On this day toward evening the sky to the west had grown of a sapphire clearness, but in the east beyond the first high hills of the range a great electric storm was raging. The clouds of inky blackness which shrouded the more distant heights, and through which the lightnings were incessantly zigzaging, were in full view from the city, though the thunders were caught and tied in the deep caverns of the intervening hills. To the southeast the range with its imposing peaks was snow-crowned and under a clear sky. In the southwest the Oquirrh range was blue and beautiful. Just then from beyond the great lake the setting sun threw out his shafts of fire, and the whole firmament turned to glory. The sun blazed from beyond the waters in the west, the lightnings blazed beyond the nearer hills in the east, the snowy heights in the southeast were turned to purple, while in the city every spire, every pane of glass which faced the west, every speck of metal on house and temple in a moment grew radiant as burnished gold, and there was a shimmer of splendor in all the air. Then suddenly over the great range to the east and apparently against the black clouds in which the lightnings were blazing the glorious arch of a magnificent rainbow was upreared. All the colors were deep-dyed and perfectly distinct. There was neither break nor dimness in all the mighty arch. There it stood, poised in indescribable splendor for quite five minutes. So wonderful was the display that houses were deserted: men and women came out into the open air and watched the spectacle in silence and with uncovered heads.
"No one stopped to think that the glory which shone on high was made merely by sunlight shining through falling water; the cold explanation made by science was forgotten, and hundreds of eyes furtively watched, half expecting to catch glimpses of a divine hand and brush, for the pictures were rare enough to be the perfect work of celestial beings sent to sketch for mortals a splendor which should kindle within them dim conceptions of the glories which fill the spheres where light is born.
"Salt Lake City is famous for its sunsets, but to this one was added new and unusual enchantments by the storm which was wheeling its sable squadrons in the adjacent mountains.
"As I watched that display I realized for the first time how it was that before books were made men learned to be devout and to pray; for the picture was as I fancy Sinai must have appeared, when all the elements combined to make a spectacle to awe the multitude before the mountain; and when they were told that the terrible cloud on the mountain's crest was the robe which the infinite God had drawn around Himself in mercy, lest at a glimpse of His unapproachable brightness they should perish, it was not strange if they believed it."
It was not often that Brewster talked, but when he did there was about him a grave and earnest manner which impressed all who heard him with the perfect sincerity of the man.
After he ceased speaking the room was still for several seconds. At length the Colonel broke the silence:
"Brewster, you spoke of Sinai. What think you of that story; of the Red Sea affair; of the Sinai incident, and the golden calf business?"
"Believed literally," Brewster continued, "it is the most impressive of earthly literature; looked upon allegorically, still it is sublime. Its lesson is, that when in bondage to sorrow and to care, if we but bravely and patiently struggle on, the sea of trouble around us will at length roll back its waves into walls and leave for us a path. Unless we keep straining onward and upward, no voice of Hope, which is the voice of God, will descend to comfort us. If we are thirsty we must smite the rock for water; that is, for what we have we must work, and if we cease our struggle and go into camp, we not only will not hold our own, but in a little while we will be bestowing our jewels upon some idol of our own creation. If we toil and never falter, before we die we shall climb Pisgah and behold the Promised Land; that is, we shall be disciplined until we can look every fate calmly in the face and turn a smiling brow to the inevitable.
"I found a man once, living upon almost nothing, in a hut that had not one comfort. He had graded out a sharp hillside, set some rude poles up against the bank, covered them with brush, and in that den on a bleak mountain's crest he had lived through a rough winter. I asked him how he managed to exist without becoming an idiot or a lunatic. His answer was worthy of an old Roman. 'Because,' said he, 'I at last am superior to distress.'
"He had reached the point that Moses reached when he gained the last mountain crest. After that the Promised Land was forever in sight."
"Suppose," asked Savage, "you buy stocks when they are high and sell them, or have them sold for you, when they are low, where does the Promised Land come in?"
"What becomes of the 'superior to distress' theory," asked Carlin, "when a man in his fight against fate gets along just as the men do in the Bullion shaft, finding nothing but barren rock, and all the time the air grows hotter and there is more and more hot water?"
"Oh, bother the stocks and the hot water," said Strong. "Professor, we have heard about the Wasatch Range and Mount Sinai, shake up your memory and tell us about old Mount Shasta! I heard you describe it once. It is a grand mountain, is it not?"
"The grandest in America, so far as I have seen," was the reply. "It is said that Whitney is higher, but Whitney has for its base the Sierras, and the peaks around it dwarf its own tremendous height. But Shasta rises from the plain a single mountain, and while all the year around the lambs gambol at its base, its crown is eternal snow. Men of the North tell me that it is rivaled by Tacoma, but I never saw Tacoma. In the hot summer days as the farmers at Shasta's base gather their harvests, they can see where the wild wind is heaping the snow drifts about his crest. The mountain is one of Winter's stations, and from his forts of snow upon its top he never withdraws his garrison. There are the bastions of ice, the frosty battlements; there his old bugler, the wind, is daily sounding the advance and the retreat of the storm. The mountain holds all latitudes and all seasons at the same time in its grasp. Flowers bloom at its base, further up the forest trees wave their ample arms; further still the brown of autumn is upon the slopes and over all hangs the white mantle of eternal winter.
"Standing close to its base, the human mind fails to grasp the immensity of the butte. But as one from a distance looks back upon it, or from some height twenty miles away views it, he discovers how magnificent are its proportions.
"For days will the mountain fold the mist about its crest like a vail and remain hidden from mortal sight, and then suddenly as if in deference to a rising or setting sun, the vapors will be rolled back and the watcher in the valley below will behold gems of topaz and of ruby made of sunbeams, set in the diadem of white, and towards the sentinel mountain, from a hundred miles around, men will turn their eyes in admiration. In its presence one feels the near presence of God, and as before Babel the tongues of the people became confused, so before this infinitely more august tower man's littleness oppresses him, and he can no more give fitting expression to his thoughts.
"It frowns and smiles alternately through the years; it hails the outgoing and the incoming centuries, changeless amid the mutations of ages, forever austere, forever cold and pure. The mountain eagle strains hopelessly toward its crest; the storms and the sunbeams beat upon it in vain; the rolling years cannot inscribe their numbers on its naked breast.
"Of all the mountains that I have seen it has the most sovereign look; it leans on no other height; it associates with no other mountain; it builds its own pedestal in the valley and never doffs its icy crown.
"The savage in the long ago, with awe and trembling, strained his eyes to the height and his clouded imagination pictured it as the throne of a Deity who issued the snow, the hoar frost and the wild winds from their brewing place on the mountain's top.
"The white man, with equal awe, strains his eye upward to where the sunlight points with ruby silver and gold the mimic glaciers of the butte, and is not much wiser than the unlettered savage in trying to comprehend how and why the mighty mass was upreared.
"It is a blessing as well as a splendor. With its cold it seizes the clouds and compresses them until their contents are rained upon the thirsty fields beneath; from its base the Sacramento starts, babbling on its way to the sea; despite its frowns it is a merciful agent to mankind, and on the minds of those who see it in all its splendor and power a picture is painted, the sheen and the enchantment of which will linger while memory and the gift to admire magnificence is left."
"That is good, Professor," said Corrigan; "but to me there is insupportable loneliness about an isolated mountain. It sames always to me like a gravestone set up above the grave of a dead worreld. But spakin' of beautiful things, did yees iver sae Lake Tahoe in her glory?
"I was up there last fall, and one day, in anticipation of the winter, I suppose, she wint to her wardrobe, took out all her winter white caps and tied them on; and she was a daisy.
"Her natural face is bluer than that of a stock sharp in a falling market; but whin the wind 'comes a wooin' and she dons her foamy lace, powders her face with spray and fastens upon her swellin' breast a thousand diamonds of sunlight, O, but she is a winsome looking beauty, to be sure. Thin, too, she sings her old sintimintal song to her shores, and the great overhanging pines sway their mighty arms as though keeping time, joining with hers their deep murmurs to make a refrain; and thus the lake sings to the shore and the shore answers back to the song all the day long. Tahoe, in her frame of blue and grane, is a fairer picture than iver glittered on cathadral wall; older, fairer and fresher than ancient master iver painted tints immortal upon. There in the strong arms of the mountains it is rocked, and whin the winds ruffle the azure plumage of the beautiful wathers, upon wather and upon shore a splendor rists such as might come were an angel to descend to earth and sketch for mortals a sane from Summer Land."
"You are right, Corrigan," said Ashley. "If the thirst for money does not denude the shores of their trees, and thus spoil the frame of your wonderful picture, Lake Tahoe will be a growing object of interest until its fame will be as wide as the world.
"But while on grand themes, have you ever seen the Columbia River? To me it is the glory of the earth. It is a great river fourteen hundred miles above its mouth, and from thence on it rolls to the sea with increasing grandeur all the way. Where it hews its way through the Cascades a new and gorgeous picture is every moment painted, and when the mountain walls are pierced, with perfect purity and with mighty volume it sweeps on toward the ocean. It is, through its last one hundred and fifty miles, watched over by great forests and magnificent mountains. There are Hood and St. Helens and the rest, and where, upon the furious bar, the river joins the sea, there is an everlasting war of waters as beautiful as it is terrible.
"It makes a man a better American to go up the Columbia to the Cascades and look about him. He is not only impressed with the majesty of the scene, but thoughts of empire, of dominion and of the glory of the land over which his country's flag bears sovereignty, take possession of him. He looks down upon the rolling river and up at Mount Hood, and to both he whispers, 'We are in accord; I have an interest in you,' and the great pines nod approvingly, and the waterfalls babble more loud.
"The Mississippi has greater volume than the Oregon, the Hudson makes rival pictures which perhaps are as beautiful as any painted in the Cascades; but there is a power, a beauty, a purity and a wildness about the river of the West which is all its own and which is unapproachable in its charms.
"More than that. To me the river is the emblem of a perfect life. Through all the morning of its career it fights its way, blazing an azure trail through the desert. There is no green upon its banks, hardly does a bird sing as it struggles on. But it bears right on, and so austere is its face that the desert is impotent to soil it. Then it meets a rocky wall and breaks through it, roaring on its way. Then it takes the Willamette to its own ample breast, and it bears it on until it meets the inevitable, and then undaunted goes down to its grave.
"It fights its way, it bears its burdens, it remains pure and brave to the last. That is all the best man that ever lived could do."
As Ashley concluded Strong said: "Why, Ashley! that is good. Why do you not give up mining and devote yourself to writing?"
Ashley laughed low, and said: "Because I have had what repentant sinners are said to have had, my experience. Let me tell you about it.
"It was in Belmont in Eastern Nevada, during that winter when the small pox was bad. It took an epidemic form in Belmont, and a good many died.
"Among the victims was Harlow Reed. Harlow was a young and handsome fellow, a generous, happy-hearted fellow, too, and when he was stricken down, a 'soiled dove,' hearing of his illness, went and watched over him until he died.
"The morning after his death, Billy S. came to me, and handing me a slip of paper on which was Reed's name, age, etc., asked me to prepare a notice for publication. I fixed it as nearly as I could, as I had seen such things in newspapers. It read:
DIED—In Belmont, Dec. 17, Harlow Reed, a native of New Jersey aged twenty-three years.
DIED—In Belmont, Dec. 17, Harlow Reed, a native of New Jersey aged twenty-three years.
"Billie glanced at the paper and then said: 'Harlow was a good fellow and a good friend of ours, can you not add something to this notice?'
"In response I sat down and wrote a brief eulogy of the boy, and closed the article in these words:
And for her, the poor woman, who braving the dangers of the pestilence, went and sat at the feet of the man she loved, until he died; for her, though before her garments were soiled, we know that this morning, in the Recording Angel's book it is written "her robes are white as snow."
And for her, the poor woman, who braving the dangers of the pestilence, went and sat at the feet of the man she loved, until he died; for her, though before her garments were soiled, we know that this morning, in the Recording Angel's book it is written "her robes are white as snow."
"Billie took the paper to the publisher, and as he went away, I had a secret thought that, all things being considered, the notice was not bad.
"Next morning I went into a restaurant for breakfast and took a seat at a small table on one side of the narrow room. Directly opposite me were two short-card sharps. One was eating his breakfast, while the other, leaning back to catch the light, was reading the morning paper. Suddenly he stopped, and peering over his paper, though with chair still tilted back, said to his companion: 'Did you see this notice about that woman who took care of Harlow Reed while he was sick?'
"'No,' was the reply. 'What is it?' asked the companion.
"'It's away up,' said the first speaker. 'But what is it?' asked the other.
"The first speaker then threw down the paper, leaned forward, and, seizing his knife and fork, said shortly:
"'Oh, it's no great shakes after all. It says the woman while taking care of Harlow got her clothes dirty, but after he died she changed her clothes and she's all right now.'
"Since then I have never thought that I had better undertake a literary career so long as I could get four honest dollars a day for swinging a hammer in a mine; but I have always been about half sorry that I did not kill that fellow, notwithstanding the lesson that he taught me."
There was a hearty laugh at Ashley's expense, and then Strong roused himself and said:
"The Columbia is very grand, but you must follow it up to its chief tributary if you would find perfect glory—follow it into the very desert. You have heard of the lava beds of Idaho. They were once a river of molten fire from 300 feet to 900 feet in depth, which burned its way through the desert for hundreds of miles. To the east of the source of this lava flow, the Snake River bursts out of the hills, becoming almost at once a sovereign river, and flowing at first south-westerly, and then bending westerly, cuts its way through this lava bed, and, continuing its way with many bends, finally, far to the north merges with the Columbia. On this river are several falls. First, the American Falls, are very beautiful. Sixty miles below are the Twin Falls, where the river, divided into two nearly equal parts, falls one hundred and eighty feet. They are magnificent. Three miles below are the Shoshone Falls, and a few miles lower down the Salmon Falls. It was of the Shoshone Falls that I began to speak.
"They are real rivals of Niagara. Never anywhere else was there such a scene; never anywhere else was so beautiful a picture hung in so rude a frame; never anywhere else on a background so forbidding and weird were so many glories clustered.
"Around and beyond there is nothing but the desert, sere, silent, lifeless, as though Desolation had builded there everlasting thrones to Sorrow and Despair.
"Away back in remote ages, over the withered breast of the desert, a river of fire one hundred miles wide and four hundred miles long, was turned. As the fiery mass cooled, its red waves became transfixed and turned black, giving to the double desert an indescribably blasted and forbidding face.
"But while this river of fire was in flow, a river of water was fighting its way across it, or has since made the war and forged out for itself a channel through the mass. This channel looks like the grave of a volcano that has been robbed of its dead.
"But right between its crumbling and repellant walls a transfiguration appears. And such a picture! A river as lordly as the Hudson or the Ohio, springing from the distant snow-crested Tetons, with waters transparent as glass, but green as emerald, with majestic flow and ever-increasing volume, sweeps on until it reaches this point where the august display begins.
"Suddenly, in different places in the river bed, jagged, rocky reefs are upraised, dividing the current into four rivers, and these, in a mighty plunge of eighty feet downward, dash on their way. Of course, the waters are churned into foam and roll over the precipice white as are the garments of the morning when no cloud obscures the sun. The loveliest of these falls is called "The Bridal Veil," because it is made of the lace which is woven with a warp of falling waters and a woof of sunlight. Above this and near the right bank is a long trail of foam, and this is called "The Bridal Train." The other channels are not so fair as the one called "The Bridal Veil," but they are more fierce and wild, and carry in their furious sweep more power.
"One of the reefs which divides the river in mid-channel runs up to a peak, and on this a family of eagles have, through the years, may be through the centuries, made their home and reared their young, on the very verge of the abyss and amid the full echoes of the resounding boom of the falls. Surely the eagle is a fitting symbol of perfect fearlessness and of that exultation which comes with battle clamors.
"But these first falls are but a beginning. The greater splendor succeeds. With swifter flow the startled waters dash on and within a few feet take their second plunge in a solid crescent, over a sheer precipice, two hundred and ten feet to the abyss below. On the brink there is a rolling crest of white, dotted here and there, in sharp contrast, with shining eddies of green, as might a necklace of emerald shimmer on a throat of snow, and then the leap and fall.
"Here more than foam is made. Here the waters are shivered into fleecy spray, whiter and finer than any miracle that ever fell from India loom, while from the depths below an everlasting vapor rises—the incense of the waters to the water's God. Finally, through the long, unclouded days, the sun sends down his beams, and to give the startling scene its crowning splendor, wreaths the terror and the glory in a rainbow halo. On either sullen bank the extremities of its arc are anchored, and there in its many-colored robes of light it stands outstretched above the abyss like wreaths of flowers above a sepulcher. Up through the glory and the terror an everlasting roar ascends, deep-toned as is the voice of Fate, a diapason like that the rolling ocean chants when his eager surges come rushing in to greet and fiercely woo an irresponsive promontory.
"But to feel all the awe and to mark all the splendor and power that comes of the mighty display, one must climb down the steep descent to the river's brink below, and, pressing up as nearly as possible to the falls, contemplate the tremendous picture. There something of the energy that creates that endless panorama is comprehended; all the deep throbbings of the mighty river's pulses are felt; all the magnificence is seen.
"In the reverberations that come of the war of waters one hears something like God's voice; something like the splendor of God is before his eyes; something akin to God's power is manifesting itself before him, and his soul shrinks within itself, conscious as never before of its own littleness and helplessness in the presence of the workings of Nature's immeasurable forces.
"Not quite so massive is the picture as is Niagara, but it has more lights and shades and loveliness, as though a hand more divinely skilled had mixed the tints, and with more delicate art had transfixed them upon that picture suspended there in its rugged and sombre frame.
"As one watches it is not difficult to fancy that away back in the immemorial and unrecorded past, the Angel of Love bewailed the fact that mortals were to be given existence in a spot so forbidding, a spot that apparently was never to be warmed with God's smile, which was never to make a sign through which God's mercy was to be discerned; that then Omnipotence was touched, that with His hand He smote the hills and started the great river in its flow; that with His finger He traced out the channel across the corpse of that other river that had been fire, mingled the sunbeams with the raging waters and made it possible in that fire-blasted frame of scoria to swing a picture which should be, first to the red man and later to the pale races, a certain sign of the existence, the power and the unapproachable splendor of the Great First Cause.
"And as the red man through the centuries watched the spectacle, comprehending nothing except that an infinite voice was smiting his ears, and insufferable glories were blazing before his eyes; so through the centuries to come the pale races will stand upon the shuddering shore and watch, experiencing a mighty impulse to put off the sandals from their feet, under an overmastering consciousness that the spot on which they are standing is holy ground.
"There is nothing elsewhere like it; nothing half so weird, so wild, so beautiful, so clothed in majesty, so draped with terror; nothing else that awakens impressions at once so startling, so winsome, so profound. While journeying through the desert to come suddenly upon it, the spectacle gives one something of the emotions that would be experienced to behold a resurrection from the dead. In the midst of what seems like a dead world, suddenly there springs into irrepressible life something so marvelous, so grand, so caparisoned with loveliness and irresistible might, that the head is bowed, the strained heart throbs tumultuously and the awed soul sinks to its knees."
The whistles had sounded while Strong was speaking, and as he finished the good nights were spoken and the lights put out.
With the lighting of the pipes one evening, the conversation of the Club turned upon what constituted courage and a high sense of honor; whether they were native or acquired gifts. A good deal of talk ensued, until at last Wright's opinion was asked:
"You are all right," said he, "and all wrong. Some men are born insensible to fear, and some have a high sense of honor through instinct. But this, I take it, is not the rule and comes, I think, mostly as an hereditary gift, through long generations of proud ancestors. In my judgment, no gift to mortals is as noble as a lofty, honest pride. I do not mean that spurious article which we see so much of, but the pride which will not permit a man or woman to have an unworthy thought, because of the sense of degradation which it brings to the breast that entertains it. This, I believe, is more common in women than in men, and I suppose that it was this divine trait, manifesting itself in a brutal age, which gave birth to the chivalry of the Middle Ages.
"I have known a few men who, I believe, were born without the instinct of fear. Charley Fairfax was one of these. He was a dead shot with a pistol. He had some words with a man one day on the street in Sacramento, and the man being very threatening, Fairfax drew and cocked his Derringer. At the same moment the man drove the blade of a sword cane through one of the lungs of Fairfax, making a wound which eventually proved fatal. Fairfax raised his Derringer and took a quick aim at the heart of the murderer, but suddenly dropped the weapon and said: 'You have killed me, but you have a wife and children; for their sakes I give you your life,' and sank fainting and, as he thought, dying, into the arms of a friend who caught him as he was falling.
"There are other men as generous as Fairfax was, but to do what he did, when smarting under a fatal wound, requires the coolness and the nerve of absolute self-possession.
"Not one man in a million under such circumstances could command himself enough to think to be generous. Many a man has, for his courage, had a statue raised to his memory who never did and never could have given any such proof of a manhood absolutely self-contained as did Fairfax on that occasion.
"But, as a rule, we are all mere creatures of education. A friend of mine came 'round the Horn in a clipper ship. He told me that when off the cape they encountered a gale which drove the ship far to the southward; that the weather was so dreadfully cold that the ship's rigging was sheeted with ice from sleet and frozen spray.
"One evening the gale slackened a little and some sails were bent on, but toward the turn of the night the wind came on again and the sails had to be taken in. Said my friend: 'The men went up those swaying masts and out upon those icy yards apparently without a thought of danger, while I stood upon the deck fairly trembling with terror merely watching them.' After awhile the storm was weathered, the cape was rounded and the ship put into Valparaiso for fresh supplies.
"The sailors were given a holiday. They went ashore and hired saddle horses to visit some resort a few miles out of town. They mounted and started away, but within three minutes half of them returned leading their horses, and one spoke for all when he said: 'The brute is crank; I am afraid he will broach to and capsize.'
"The men who rode the icy spars off Cape Horn on that inky midnight were afraid to ride those gentle mustangs.
"There are, I suppose, in this city to-night one hundred men who, with knife or pistol, would fight anybody and not think much about it. But what would they do were they placed where I saw Corrigan unconcernedly working to-day?
"He was sitting on a narrow plank which had been laid across a shaft at the eight hundred-foot level, repairing a pump column. He was eight hundred feet from the surface, and there was only that plank between him and the bottom of that shaft nine hundred feet below. Put the ordinary ruffian who cuts and shoots on that plank and he would faint and fall off through sheer fright."
"I guess you are right," interposed Carlin. "There is the Mexican who lives across the street from us. If I were to take a revolver and go over there in the morning and attack him, the chances are I would scare him to death; were I to try the same experiment with a bowie knife the chances are more than even that he would give me more of a game than I would want, and simply because he is accustomed to a knife and not to a pistol.
"So the mountain trapper will attack a grizzly bear with perfect coolness, or cross the swiftest stream in a canoe without any fear, but bring the same man for the first time here to the mine and ask him to get on a cage with you and go down a shaft, and he will grow pale and tremble like a girl."
"An Indian," suggested the Professor, "at the side of a white man will go into a desperate battle and never flinch; so long as the white man lives he will fight even unto death. But let a white man engage in a hand to hand fight with two or three Indians, and if he has the nerve to hold him up to the fight for two or three minutes he will conquer, because an hereditary fear overcomes the savage that the pale face will conquer in the end. That is really the cowardice which Falstaff assumed to feel, the cowardice of instinct in the presence of the true prince, and is the mark which the Indian mothers have impressed upon their babes for ten generations.
"The rule is that we follow our trades!"
"Then some men are brave at one time and cowardly at another," said the Colonel. "Men who will fight without shrinking, by day, are often completely demoralized by a night attack. With such men the trouble is, they cannot see to estimate their danger, and their imaginations multiply and magnify it a hundred fold. I know a man in this city who has been in a hundred fights, many of them most desperate encounters. He told me once that he believed it would frighten him to death to be awakened at night by a burglar in his room.
"This is the fear, too, which paralyzes men in the presence of an earthquake. The sky may be clear and the air still, but the thought that in a moment chaos may come is too much for the ordinary nerves of mortals."
"The bravest act I ever witnessed was on C street in this city," responded Strong. "It was a little Hebrew dunning a desperado for the balance due on a pair of pantaloons. The amount was six dollars and fifty cents. I would not have asked the fighter for the money for six times the sum, but the little chap not only asked for it, but when the fighter tried to evade him, he seized him by the arm with one hand and putting the forefinger of his other hand alongside his own nose, in the most insulting tone possible said: 'You does not get avay. Der man vot does not bay for his glose is, vots yer call him? one d——d loafer. I vants my monish.'
"The fighter could no more escape from that eye than a chicken hawk can from the spell of the eye of the black snake, and so he settled.
"That was the courage which it required the hardships and persecutions of one hundred generations of suffering men to acquire, and I tell you there was something thrilling in the way it was manifested."
"So, too, men's ideas of honor are often warped strangely by education," Miller said. "Do you remember there was a Frenchman hanged in this city a few years ago? On the scaffold, with a grandiloquent air, just before the cap was drawn over his face, he said: 'Zey can hang me, but zey cannot hang Frawnce.' He had from childhood entertained the belief that there was but one entirely invincible nation on this earth, and that was France; and the thought that to the last France must be honored possessed him.
"That man had murdered a poor woman of the town for her money."
"I should say there were some queer ideas of honor in this country," chipped in the Colonel. "I believe the rule among some or all sporting men is, that it is entirely legitimate to practice any advantage on an opponent in a game, so long as the same idea controls the opponent. Still those men have most tenacious ideas of honor. Indeed they have a code of their own. If one borrows money of another he pays it if he has to rob someone to do it. If one stakes another—that is gives him money to play—and a winning is made, the profits are scrupulously divided. If one loses more at night than he has money to pay, he must have it early next morning or go into disgrace.
"A friend of mine who lived on Treasure Hill during that first fearful winter, told me that during that season a faro game was running, and the owners of the bank had won some thirty-five hundred dollars. The dealer's habit was to lock up his place in the forenoon and not return until evening. The interval was his only time for sleep, as the game frequently ran all night.
"Three or four 'sports' who lived together in a house, had lost heavily at this game. One morning, one of them said that if he could only get that dealer's cards for half an hour he believed he could 'fix' them so that the luck of the boys would change.
"They had for a cook and servant a young man who had confessed that he left the East without any extensive or extended preparations, and that he did it to avoid paying a penalty for picking a lock and robbing a till.
"He was called up, it was explained to him what was wanted and for what reason, and asked if it was not possible for him to procure those cards.
"The youth took kindly to the proposition, went away, and in a few minutes returned—not with the cards—but with the dealer's sack of coin, saying as he laid down the sack: 'As I picked the lock of the drawer I found the sack and the cards lying side by side. I thought it would be easier to take the coin than to fool with the cards, and here it is.'
"Instantly there was a commotion, and a perfect storm of imprecations was poured out upon the thief. On every side were shouts of: 'Take back that money! you miserable New York thief! What do you take us for? Take back that sack or we will sell you for headcheese before night!'
"The youth carried back the coin and brought the cards. They were found to be 'fixed'; they were 'fixed' over and returned, and that night 'on the dead square,' the bank was broken. The boys had the sack for the second time, but this time the transaction, according to their code, was entirely legitimate.
"By the operation the professional thief obtained new ideas of the nice distinctions which are made in the gamblers' code of honor."
"I once in Idaho knew a most conscientious judge," said Miller. "In his court a suit involving the title of some mining ground was pending between two companies. In another part of the district the Judge had some claims which were looked upon as mere 'wild cat.'
"He had for a year been trying to raise money to open his claims, but without avail. He had incorporated with 40,000 shares and held his shares at one dollar, with the understanding that twenty per cent. of the stock should be set aside as a working capital. But no one could see the ground with the sanguine eyes of the Judge, so he still had all his stock.
"But one night quite late the Judge heard a soft knock on the door. In answer to his 'come in,' the president of the company that was plaintiff in the mining suit entered, when this conversation ensued:
"'I was looking at your claims over on the east side to-day,' said the President, 'and I believe they are good and would like some of the stock.'
"There is some of it for sale at one dollar,' was the reply.
"'I will take ten thousand shares,' said the President. 'If you please, have the stock ready and I will call at nine o'clock to-morrow morning with the money.'
"'I suppose this transaction had better be kept secret at present,' suggested the Judge.
"'Oh, yes. It is a private speculation of my own and I would rather my company would not hear of it.'
"'Very well, the stock will be ready.'
"The money was promptly paid and the stock delivered.
"The day of trial drew near, when one day the Judge met the superintendent of the company which was defendant in the suit. The Judge told the superintendent that he had some promising claims, and added impressively that if he could afford to purchase about 10,000 shares he felt sure that he would do well. The superintendent admitted that he had examined the claims with considerable care, and believed with the Judge, that there was promise in them. The result was that the next day another ten thousand dollars was paid to the Judge and ten thousand more shares delivered. The Judge deposited sixteen thousand dollars to his own account and four thousand dollars to the credit of the company. With the four thousand dollars he let a contract for work on the mine.
"In due time the case in court came on and was decided in favor of the plaintiff and an appeal provided for. The plaintiff kept still about the stock transaction, but the superintendent of the defendant company did not hesitate to declare that the Judge was a thief. So matters ran along for some months, when one day the aforesaid president and superintendent each received a note asking them to call at the office of the Judge at a certain hour. Both responded, and each was greatly surprised to see the other.
"The Judge opened the business by saying that a grand deposit of ore had been struck on one of the claims from which enough ore had already been taken to enable the company to pay a dollar per share dividend on the capital stock, upon which he pushed a check for ten thousand dollars to each of the men. He then went on to say that he had that morning received an offer of two hundred thousand dollars for the property, which he thought was a fair price, and asked the opinion of the others. They thought so too, and in a few days the money was paid over and each of the two received fifty thousand dollars.
"'Now,' said the Judge, 'let me give you some advice. Settle up that foolish lawsuit outside of court. The claim is not worth what either one of you will pay out in attorneys' fees if you fight it out in the courts.'
"By this time the three men had grown familiar, so the superintendent ventured to say:
"'Judge, will you tell me what caused you to urge me to buy those shares?'
"'I thought it was a good investment,' was the reply.
"'But was not there something else?' asked the superintendent.
"'To tell you the truth,' replied the Judge, 'I had received ten thousand dollars from the President here, and I was afraid if the matter went that way into the court I might be prejudiced, so I sold you a like amount that I might go upon the bench, to try the case,entirely unbiased.'"
"He was a good judge, no doubt, but he ividently had a leaning toward the east side," said Corrigan.
"That was one case where the only justification was success," said Brewster.
"He took his chances, that was all," Miller remarked, "and that is the corner-stone on which every fortune on the coast has been builded. I mean every fortune in mining."