55. CHAPTER LV.
I BEGAN to get tired of staying in one place so long.
There was no longer satisfying variety in going down to
Carson to report the proceedings of the legislature once a year, and
horse-races and pumpkin-shows once in three months; (they had
got to raisin pumpkins and potatoes in Washoe Valley, and of
course one of the first achievements of the legislature was to
institute a ten-thousand-dollar Agricultural Fair to show off forty
dollars' worth of those pumpkins in—however, the territorial
legislature was usually spoken of as the "asylum"). I wanted to see
San Francisco. I wanted to go somewhere. I wanted—I did not
know what I wanted.
I had the "spring fever" and wanted a change,
principally, no doubt. Besides, a convention had framed a State
Constitution; nine men out of every ten wanted an office; I
believed that these gentlemen would "treat" the moneyless and the
irresponsible among the population into adopting the constitution
and thus wellnigh killing the country (it could not well carry such a
load as a State government, since it had nothing to tax that could
stand a tax, for undeveloped mines could not, and there were not
fifty developed ones in the land, there was but little realty to tax,
and it did seem as if nobody was ever going to think of the simple
salvation of inflicting a money penalty on murder). I believed that
a State government would destroy the "flush times," and I wanted
to get away. I believed that the mining stocks I had on hand would
soon be worth $100,000, and thought if they reached that before
the Constitution was adopted, I would sell out and make myself
secure from the crash the change of government was going to
bring. I considered $100,000 sufficient to go home with decently,
though it was but a small amount compared to what I had been
expecting to return with. I felt rather down-hearted about it, but I
tried to comfort myself with the reflection that with such a sum I
could not fall into want. About this time a schoolmate of mine
whom I had not seen since boyhood, came tramping in on foot
from Reese River, a very allegory of Poverty. The son of wealthy
parents, here he was, in a strange land, hungry, bootless, mantled
in an ancient horse-blanket, roofed with a brimless hat, and so
generally and so extravagantly dilapidated that he could have
"taken the shine out of the Prodigal Son himself," as he pleasantly
remarked.
He wanted to borrow forty-six dollars—twenty-six to take him to
San Francisco, and twenty for something else; to buy some soap
with, maybe, for he needed it. I found I had but little more than
the amount wanted, in my pocket; so I stepped in and borrowed
forty-six dollars of a banker (on twenty days' time, without the
formality of a note), and gave it him, rather than walk half a block
to the office, where I had some specie laid up. If anybody had told
me that it would take me two years to pay back that forty-six
dollars to the banker (for I did not expect it of the Prodigal, and
was not disappointed), I would have felt injured. And so would
the banker.
I wanted a change. I wanted variety of some kind. It came.
Mr. Goodman went away for a week and left me the post of chief
editor. It destroyed me. The first day, I wrote my "leader" in the
forenoon. The second day, I had no subject and put it off till the
afternoon. The third day I put it off till evening, and then copied
an elaborate editorial out of the "American Cyclopedia," that
steadfast friend of the editor, all over this land. The fourth day I
"fooled around" till midnight, and then fell back on the Cyclopedia
again. The fifth day I cudgeled my brain till midnight, and then
kept the press waiting while I penned some bitter personalities on
six different people. The sixth day I labored in anguish till far into
the night and brought forth—nothing. The paper went to press
without an editorial. The seventh day I resigned. On the eighth,
Mr. Goodman returned and found six duels on his hands—my
personalities had borne fruit.
Nobody, except he has tried it, knows what it is to be an editor.
It is easy to scribble local rubbish, with the facts all before you; it
is easy to clip selections from other papers; it is easy to string out a
correspondence from any locality; but it is unspeakable hardship to
write editorials. Subjects are the
trouble—the dreary lack of them, I mean. Every day, it is
drag, drag, drag—think, and worry and suffer—all the world is a
dull blank, and yet the editorial
columns must be filled. Only give the
editor a subject, and his
work is done—it is no trouble to write it up; but fancy how
you would feel if you had to pump your brains dry every day in the
week, fifty-two weeks in the year. It makes one low spirited
simply to think of it. The matter that each editor of a daily paper
in America writes in the course of a year would fill from four to
eight bulky volumes like this book! Fancy what a library an
editor's work would make, after twenty or thirty years' service. Yet
people often marvel that Dickens, Scott, Bulwer, Dumas, etc.,
have been able to produce so many books. If these authors had
wrought as voluminously as newspaper editors do, the result would
be something to marvel at, indeed. How editors can continue this
tremendous labor, this exhausting
consumption of brain fibre (for their work is creative, and not a
mere mechanical laying-up of facts, like reporting), day after day
and year after year, is incomprehensible. Preachers take two
months' holiday in midsummer, for they find that to produce two
sermons a week is wearing, in the long run. In truth it must be so,
and is so; and therefore, how an editor can take from ten to twenty
texts and build upon them from ten to twenty painstaking
editorials a week and keep it up all the year round, is farther
beyond comprehension than ever. Ever since I survived my week
as editor, I have found at least one pleasure in any newspaper that
comes to my hand; it is in admiring the long columns of editorial,
and wondering to myself how in the mischief he did it!
Mr. Goodman's return relieved me of employment, unless I
chose to become a reporter again. I could not do that; I could not
serve in the ranks after being General of the army. So I thought I
would depart and go abroad into the world somewhere. Just at this
juncture, Dan, my associate in the reportorial department, told me,
casually, that two citizens had been trying to persuade him to go
with them to New York and aid in selling a rich silver mine which
they had discovered and secured in a new mining district in our
neighborhood. He said they offered to pay his expenses and give
him one third of the proceeds of the sale. He had refused to go. It
was the very opportunity I wanted. I abused him for keeping so
quiet about it, and not mentioning it sooner. He said it had not
occurred to him that I would like to go, and so he had
recommended them to apply to Marshall, the reporter of the other
paper. I asked Dan if it was a good, honest mine, and no swindle.
He said the men had shown him nine tons of the rock, which they
had got out to take to New York, and he could cheerfully say that
he had seen but little rock in Nevada that was richer; and
moreover, he said that they had secured a tract of valuable timber
and a mill-site, near the mine. My first idea was to kill Dan. But I
changed my mind, notwithstanding I was so angry, for I thought
maybe the chance was not yet lost. Dan said it was by no means
lost; that the men
were absent at the mine again, and would not be in Virginia to
leave for the East for some ten days; that they had requested him to
do the talking to Marshall, and he had promised that he would
either secure Marshall or somebody else for them by the time they
got back; he would now say nothing to anybody till they returned,
and then fulfil his promise by furnishing me to them.
It was splendid. I went to bed all on fire with excitement; for
nobody had yet gone East to sell a Nevada silver mine, and the
field was white for the sickle. I felt that such a mine as the one
described by Dan would bring a princely sum in New York, and
sell without delay or difficulty. I could not sleep, my fancy so
rioted through its castles in the air. It was the "blind lead" come
again.
Next day I got away, on the coach, with the usual eclat
attending departures of old citizens,—for if you have only half a
dozen friends out there they will make noise for a hundred rather
than let you seem to go away neglected and unregretted—and Dan
promised to keep strict watch for the men that had the mine to
sell.
The trip was signalized but by one little incident, and that
occurred just as we were about to start. A very seedy looking
vagabond passenger got out of the stage a moment to wait till the
usual ballast of silver bricks was thrown in. He was standing on
the pavement, when an awkward express employé,
carrying a brick weighing a hundred pounds, stumbled and let it
fall on the bummer's foot. He instantly dropped on the ground and
began to howl in the most heart-breaking way. A sympathizing
crowd gathered around and were going to pull his boot off; but he
screamed louder than ever and they desisted; then he fell to
gasping, and between the gasps ejaculated "Brandy! for Heaven's
sake, brandy!" They poured half a pint down him, and it
wonderfully restored and comforted him. Then he begged the
people to assist him to the stage, which was done. The express
people urged him to have a doctor at their expense, but he
declined, and said that if he only had a little brandy to take along
with him, to soothe
his paroxyms of pain when they came on, he would be grateful and
content. He was quickly supplied with two bottles, and we drove
off. He was so smiling and happy after that, that I could not
refrain from asking him how he could possibly be so comfortable
with a crushed foot.
"Well," said he, "I hadn't had a drink for twelve hours, and
hadn't a cent to my name. I was most perishing—and so, when that
duffer dropped that hundred-pounder on my foot, I see my chance.
Got a cork leg, you know!" and he pulled up his pantaloons and
proved it.
He was as drunk as a lord all day long, and full of chucklings
over his timely ingenuity.
One drunken man necessarily reminds one of another. I once
heard a gentleman tell about an incident which he witnessed in a
Californian bar-room. He entitled it "Ye Modest Man Taketh a
Drink." It was nothing but a bit of acting, but it seemed to me a
perfect rendering, and worthy of Toodles himself. The modest
man, tolerably far gone with beer and other matters, enters a
saloon (twenty-five cents is the price for anything and everything,
and specie the only money used) and lays down a half dollar; calls
for whiskey and drinks it;
the bar-keeper makes change and lays the quarter in a wet place on
the counter; the modest man fumbles at it with nerveless fingers,
but it slips and the water holds it; he contemplates it, and tries
again; same result; observes that people are interested in what he
is at, blushes; fumbles at the quarter again—blushes—puts his
forefinger carefully, slowly down, to make sure of his aim—pushes
the coin toward the bar-keeper, and says with a sigh:
"('ic!) Gimme a cigar!"
Naturally, another gentleman present told about another
drunken man. He said he reeled toward home late at night; made a
mistake and entered the wrong gate; thought he saw a dog on the
stoop; and it was—an iron one.
He stopped and considered; wondered if it was a dangerous dog;
ventured to say "Be (hic) begone!" No effect. Then he approached
warily, and adopted conciliation; pursed up his lips and tried to
whistle, but failed; still approached, saying, "Poor dog!—doggy,
doggy, doggy!—poor doggy-dog!" Got up on the stoop, still petting
with fond names; till master of the advantages; then exclaimed,
"Leave, you thief!"—planted a vindictive kick in his ribs, and went
head-over-heels overboard, of course. A pause; a sigh or two of
pain, and then a remark in a reflective voice:
"Awful solid dog. What could he ben eating? ('ic!) Rocks,
p'raps. Such animals is dangerous.-' At's
what I say—they're dangerous.
If a man—('ic!)—if a man wants to feed a
dog on rocks, let him feed him
on rocks; 'at's all right;
but let him keep him at
home—not
have him layin' round promiscuous, where ('ic!) where
people's liable to stumble over him when they ain't noticin'!"
It was not without regret that I took a last look at the tiny flag
(it was thirty-five feet long and ten feet wide) fluttering like a
lady's handkerchief from the topmost peak of Mount Davidson,
two thousand feet above Virginia's roofs, and felt that doubtless I
was bidding a permanent farewell to a city which had afforded me
the most vigorous enjoyment of life I had ever experienced. And
this reminds me of an incident which the dullest memory Virginia
could boast at the time it happened must vividly recall, at times,
till its possessor dies. Late one summer afternoon we had a rain
shower. That was astonishing enough, in itself, to set the whole
town buzzing, for it only rains (during a week or two weeks) in the
winter in Nevada, and even then not enough at a time to make it
worth while for any merchant to keep umbrellas for sale. But the
rain was not the chief wonder. It only lasted five or ten minutes;
while the people were still talking about it all the heavens gathered
to themselves a dense blackness as of midnight. All the vast
eastern front of Mount Davidson, over-looking the city, put on
such a funereal gloom that only the nearness and solidity of the
mountain made its outlines even faintly distinguishable from the
dead blackness of the heavens they rested against. This
unaccustomed sight turned all eyes toward the mountain; and as
they looked, a little tongue of rich golden flame was seen waving
and quivering in the heart of the midnight, away up on the extreme
summit! In a few minutes the streets were packed with people,
gazing with hardly an uttered word, at the one brilliant mote in the
brooding world of darkness. It flicked like a candle-flame, and
looked no larger; but with such a background it was wonderfully
bright, small as it was. It was the flag!—though no one suspected it
at first, it seemed so like a supernatural visitor of some kind—a
mysterious messenger of good tidings, some were fain to believe.
It was the nation's emblem transfigured by the departing rays of a
sun that was entirely palled from
view; and on no other object did the glory fall, in all the broad
panorama of mountain ranges and deserts. Not even upon the staff
of the flag—for that, a needle in the distance at any time, was now
untouched by the light and undistinguishable in the gloom. For a
whole hour the weird visitor winked and burned in its lofty
solitude, and still the thousands of uplifted eyes watched it with
fascinated interest. How the people were wrought up! The
superstition grew apace that this was a mystic courier come with
great news from the war—the poetry of the idea excusing and
commending it—and on it spread, from heart to heart, from lip to
lip and from street to street, till there was a general impulse to
have out the military and welcome the bright waif with a salvo of
artillery!
And all that time one sorely tried man, the telegraph operator
sworn to official secrecy, had to lock his lips and chain his tongue
with a silence that was like to rend them; for he, and he only, of all
the speculating multitude, knew the great
things this sinking sun had seen that day in the east—Vicksburg
fallen, and the Union arms victorious at Gettysburg!
But for the journalistic monopoly that forbade the slightest
revealment of eastern news till a day after its publication in the
California papers, the glorified flag on Mount Davidson would
have been saluted and re-saluted, that memorable evening, as long
as there was a charge of powder to thunder with; the city would
have been illuminated, and every man that had any respect for
himself would have got drunk,—as was the custom of the country
on all occasions of public moment. Even at this distant day I
cannot think of this needlessly marred supreme opportunity
without regret. What a time we might have had!