University of Virginia Library

LITERATURE IN THE DRY DIGGINGS.

ALTHOUGH a resident of San Francisco,
I never heard much about
the “Art Union Association” of
that city until I got hold of some old newspapers
during my three months' stay in the
Big Tree region of Calaveras county. Up
there, you know, they read every thing,
because in most of those little camps they have
no libraries, and no books to speak of, except
now and then a patent office report or a prayerbook,
or literature of that kind, in a general
way, that will hang on and last a good while
when people are careful with it, like miners;
but as for novels, they pass them around and
wear them out in a week or two. Now there
was Coon, a nice, bald-headed man at the hotel
in Angels' Camp, I asked him to lend me a
book, one rainy day; he was silent a moment,
and a shade of melancholy flitted across his

fine face, and then he said: “Well, I've got
a mighty responsible old Webster Unabridged,
what there is left of it, but they started her
sloshing around and sloshing around and
sloshing around the camp before ever I got a
chance to read her myself; and next she went
to Murphy's, and from there she went to Jackass
Gulch, and now she's gone to San Andreas,
and I don't expect I'll ever see that
book again. But what makes me mad is, that
for all they're so handy about keeping her
sashshaying around from shanty to shanty and
from camp to camp, none of 'em's ever got a
good word for her. Now Coddington had her
a week, and she was too many for him—he
couldn't spell the words; he tackled some of
them regular busters, tow'rd the middle, you
know, and they throwed him; next, Dyer, he
tried her a jolt, but he couldn't pronounce 'em
—Dyer can hunt quail or play seven-up as well
as any man, understand, but he can't pronounce
worth a cuss; he used to worry along
well enough, though, till he'd flush one of them
rattlers with a clatter of syllables as long as a
string of sluice-boxes, and then he'd lose his
grip and throw up his hand; and so, finally,
Dick Stoker harnessed her, up there at his
cabin, and sweated over her and cussed over
her and rastled with her for as much as three
weeks, night and day, till he got as far as R,
and then passed her over to 'Lige Pickerell,
and said she was the all-firedest dryest reading
that ever he struck. Well, well, if she's come
back from San Andreas, you can get her,
and prospect her, but I don't reckon there's
a good deal left of her by this time, though
time was when she was as likely a book as
any in the State, and as hefty, and had an
amount of general information in her that
was astonishing, if any of these cattle had
known enough to get it out of her.” And
ex-corporal Coon proceeded cheerlessly to scout
with his brush after the straggling hairs on the
rear of his head and drum them to the front
for inspection and roll-call, as was his usual
custom before turning in for his regular afternoon
nap.