The next evening as the club gathered around the hearth, Brewster, who,
next to Harding, was the most reticent member of the party, said
apologetically to Ashley:
"It was shabby of us not to give more heed to your story last night, but
the truth with me was, I was very tired. We were cutting out a station
on the 2,300 level of the mine, yesterday; the work was hard, the
ventilation bad, and it was hot and prostrating work. But, I heard most
of your story, nevertheless. While I know nothing of your miner who
lives with his books and birds and dogs and flowers; and hence know
nothing of what storms he has breasted and what heart-aches he has
borne; and, therefore, cannot, in my own mind, fix his place, still, on
general principles, it is man's duty never to accept any rebuff of
unkind fortune as a reason for ceasing to try; but rather he should
struggle on and do the best he can; if needs be dying with the harness
on his back. Moreover, as a rule, it is the easier way. It is in harmony
with nature's first great law, and man seldom errs when he follows the
laws that were framed before the world's foundations were laid. When man
was given his two feet to stand upon; his arms to cleave out for himself
a path and a career, and his brain to be his guide; then with the rich
earth for a field, in the opinion of the Infinite Goodness, he has all
the capital that he required. The opportunities of this land, especially
this free West, with a capacity to plan and work, are enough for any
man. The trouble is, men falter too soon. On that last night of anxiety,
before the New World rose out of the sea to greet the eyes of Columbus;
when his sullen and fear-stricken crews were on the point of mutiny,
suddenly there came to the senses of the great commander, the perfume of
earthly flowers. Soon after the veil of the ocean was rent asunder, and
upon his thrilled eyes there burst a light. Columbus was not the only
man who ever discovered a new world. They are being found daily. I meet
men often on the street and know by something in their faces, that, at
that very moment, the perfume of the flowers of some glory to come is
upon them, and that the first rays of the dawn of a divine light are
commencing to fill with splendor their eyes.
"When the idea of the Alexandrian, after having been transmitted from
mortal to mortal, for more than fifty generations, at last materialized,
and the care worn man who was watching, heard the first sob of
artificial life come from a steam engine, to him was the perfume and the
light.
"When, after generations of turmoil and war, in the deadly double
struggle to assimilate various peoples, and at the same time out of
barbarism to construct a stable and enlightened government; when the
stern old English barons caught the right inspiration, and gathering
around their sovereign, asked him to recognize the rights of the men on
whose valor his throne leaned for safety and to sign Magna Charta; to
them came the perfume and the light.
"When the desire of the colonies, voiceless before, at length through
the pen of Jefferson, found expression in the words: 'We hold these
truths to be self-evident--that all men are created equal; that they are
endowed by their Creater with certain unalienable rights;' then to a
whole nation, yes to the world, came the perfume and the light.
"In public life these emotions are marked, and the world applauds. In
humble life they are generally unnoticed, but they are frequent, and the
enchantment of the perfume becomes like incense, and it is a softer
light that dawns. When the poor man, who lays aside daily but a pittance
from his earnings, finds at last, after months and years, that the sum
has increased until it is certain that he can build a little home for
his wife--a home which is to be all his own--and that he can educate his
children; then the perfume and lights of a new world entrance him, and
in his sphere he is as great as was the dark-eyed Italian.
"In the Bible we read that all the prophets were given to fasting and to
labor, in order to bring the body under subjection to the soul. This is
but typical of what a great soul must submit to, if it would catch the
perfume and the light. The world's wealth rests on labor. Whether a man
tills a garden or writes a book, the harvest will be worth gathering
just in proportion to the soil, and to the energy and intelligence of
the work performed. Columbus could never have discovered a new world by
standing on the sea shore and straining his eyes to the West. The
tempests had to be met; the raging seas outrode; the mutinous crew
controlled. There are tempests, waves and mutineers in every man's path,
and it is only over and beyond them that there comes the perfume and the
light. The lesson taught at Eden's gate is the one that must still be
learned. All that man can gain is by labor, and the sword that guards
the gate flames just as fiercely as of old.
"To the Argonauts was given a duty. They were appointed to redeem a wild
and create a sovereign state. I believe they were a brave, true race.
The proof is, that without the restraint of pure women and without law,
they enforced order. Their energy, also, was something tremendous. After
building up California, they, in great part, made a nucleus for
civilization to gather to in each of half-a-dozen neighboring
Territories. But they had advantages which the men who settled the
Eastern States--the region beyond the Mississippi River, I mean--never
possessed. They had better food to eat, a better climate to live in. If
they did not have capital, they knew a living, at least, could be had
from the nearest gravel bank or ravine, and if they lacked the
encircling love of wife and children, they were spared the sorrow of
seeing dear women wear out lives of hardship and poverty, as has been
seen on all other frontiers in America.
"If some fell by the wayside, it was natural, for human nature is weak
and Death is everywhere; if some in the pitiless struggle failed, they
had no right to cease to try, for when men do that the hope that to them
will come the perfume or that upon their eyes will ever shine the light,
is forever closed."
"All that is good," said Carlin, "but the rule does not always hold
true. There is sometimes a limit to man's capacity to suffer, and his
heart breaks; and still after that his face gives no sign, and there is
no abatement of his energies. In such cases, however, men generally lose
the capacity to reason calmly and chase impossibilities. I saw a case
yesterday. I met a man mounted on a cheap mustang, and leading another
on which was packed a little coarse food, a pick, shovel, pan,
coffee-pot and frying pan. As he moved slowly up C. street, a
friend--himself an Argonaut--clutched me by the arm with one hand, and
with the other pointing to the man on horseback, asked me if I knew him.
Replying that I did not, he said: 'Why, that is "Prospecting Joe"; I
thought everybody knew him.' I told him I had never heard of him, when
he related his story, almost word for word, as follows:
"He came to the far West from some Eastern state in the old, old days.
He was not then more than twenty-three or twenty-four years old.
Physically he was a splendid specimen of a man, I am told. He was,
moreover, genial and generous, and drew friends around him wherever he
went. He secured a claim in the hills above Placerville. One who knew
him at that time told me, that, calling at his cabin one night, he
surprised him poring over a letter written in a fair hand, while beside
him on his rude table lay the picture of a beautiful girl. His heart
must have been warmed at the time, for picking up the picture and
handing it to my friend, he said. 'Look at her! She is my Nora, _my_
Nora. She, beautiful as she is, would in her divinity have bent and
married a coarse mold of clay like myself, and poor, too, as I was; but
her father said: 'Not yet, Joe. Go out into the world, make a struggle
for two years, then come back, and if by that time you have established
that you are man enough to be a husband to a true woman, and you and
Nora still hold to the thought that is in your hearts now, I will help
you all I can. And, mind you, I don't expect you to make a fortune in
two years; I only want you to show that the manhood which I think you
have within you is true.' 'That was square and sensible talk, and it was
not unkind. So I came away.' Then he took the picture and looked fondly
at it for a long time, and said: 'I see the delicious girl as she looked
on that summer's day, when she waved me her last good by. I shall see
her all my life, if I live a thousand years.'
"Well, Joe worked on week days; on Sundays, as miners did in those days,
he went to camp to get his mail and supplies. His claim paid him only
fairly well, but he was saving some money. In eight months he had been
able to deposit twelve hundred dollars in the local bank. One Sunday he
did not receive the expected letter from his Nora, and during the next
hour or two he drank two or three times with friends. He was about to
leave for home, when three men whom he slightly knew, and who had all
been drinking too much, met him and importuned him to drink with them.
He declined with thanks, when one of the three caught him by the arm and
said he must drink.
"At any other time he would have extricated him self without trouble and
gone on his way. But on that day he was not in good humor, so he shook
the man off roughly and shortly told him to go about his own affairs.
"The others were just sufficiently sprung with liquor to take offense at
this, and the result was a terrific street fight. Joe was badly bruised
but he whipped all three of the others. Then he was arrested and ordered
to appear next morning to answer a charge of fighting. He was of course
cleared without difficulty, but it took one-fourth of his deposit to pay
his lawyer. Then the miners gathered around him and called him a hero
and he went on his first spree.
"Next morning when he awoke and thought of as much as he could remember
of the previous day's events, he was thoroughly ashamed. As he went down
to the office of the hotel, in response to an inquiry as to how he felt,
he answered: 'Full of repentance and beer.' A friend showed him the
morning paper with a full account of the Sunday fight and his trial and
acquittal. This was embellished with taking head-lines, as is the custom
with reporters. It cut him to the heart. He knew that if the news
reached his old home of his being in a street fight on Sunday, all his
hopes would be ended. His first thought was to draw his money and take
the first steamer for Panama and New York. He went to the bank and asked
how his account stood, for he remembered to have drawn something the
previous day. He was answered that there was still to his credit $150.
The steamer fare was $275. Utterly crushed, he returned to his claim.
The fear that the news of his disgrace would reach home, haunted him
perpetually and made him afraid to write. He continued to work, but not
with the old hope.
"After some weeks, a rumor came that rich ground had been 'struck' away
to the north, somewhere in Siskiyou county. He drew what money he had,
bought a couple of ponies, one to ride and one to pack, and started for
the new field. Before starting, he confided to a friend that the
previous night he had dreamed of a mountain, the crest of which
glittered all over with gold, and he was going to find it.
"The friend told him it was but a painted devil of the brain, the child
of a distempered imagination, but he merely shook his head and went
away.
"He has pursued that dream ever since. His eyes have been ever strained
to catch the reflection from those shining heights. When he began the
search, his early home and the loving arms which were there stretched
out to him, began to recede in the distance. In a few years they
disappeared altogether. Then his hopes one by one deserted him, until
all had fled except the one false one which was, and still is, driving
him on. Youth died and was buried by the trail, but so absorbed was he
that he hardly grieved. As Time served notice after notice upon him; as
his hair blanched, his form bent and the old sprightliness went out of
his limbs, he retired more and more from the haunts of men; more and
more he drew the mantle of the mountains around him. But his eyes, now
bright with an unnatural splendor, were still strained upon the shining
height. There were but a few intervening hills and some forests that
obstructed his view. A little further on and the goal would be reached.
Last night he was in his cups and he told my friend that this time he
would 'strike it sure,' that the old man would make his showing yet,
that he would yet go back to the old home and be a Providence to those
he loved when a boy.
"Poor wretch. There is an open grave stretched directly across his
trail. On this journey or some other soon, he will, while his eyes are
still straining towards his heights of gold, drop into that grave and
disappear forever.
"Some morning as he awakens, amid the hills or out upon the desert,
there will be such a weariness upon him that he will say, 'I will sleep
a little longer,' and from that sleep he will never waken.
"Heaven grant that his vision will then become a reality and that he may
mount the shining heights at last.
"Of course it is easy to say that he was originally weak, but that is no
argument, for human nature is prone to be weak. His was a high-strung,
sensitive, generous nature. He never sought gold for the joy it would
give him, but for the happiness he dreamed it would give to those he
loved. His Nora was a queen in his eyes and he wanted to give her, every
day, the surroundings of a queen. He made one mistake and never rallied
from it. Had the letter come that fatal Sunday from Nora, as he was
expecting it, or had he left for home half an hour earlier, or had he
been of coarser clay, that day's performance would have been avoided, or
would have been passed as an incident not to be repeated, but not to be
seriously minded. But he was of different mold, and then that was a blow
from Fate. It is easy enough to say that there is nothing in that thing
called luck. Such talk will not do here on the Comstock. There is no
luck when a money lender charges five dollars for the use of a hundred
for a month and exacts good security. He gets his one hundred and five
dollars, and that is business.
"But in this lead where ore bodies lie like melons on a vine, when ore
is reported in the Belcher and in the Savage, when Brown buys stock in
the Belcher and Rogers buys in the Savage; when the streak of ore in the
Belcher runs into a bonanza and Brown wakes up rich some morning, and
when the streak of ore in the Savage runs into a Niagara of hot water
which floods the mine and Rogers's stock is sold out to meet an
assessment, it will not do to call Brown a shrewd fellow and Rogers an
idiot.
"Still, I do not object to the theory that a man should always keep
trying, even if the lack is against him, because luck may change
sometime, and if it does not, he sleeps better when he knows that with
the lights before him he has done the best he could. A man can stand
almost anything when his soul does not reproach him as he tries to go to
sleep.
"Then, too, man is notoriously a lazy animal, and unless he has the
nerve to spur himself to work, even when unfortunate, he is liable to
fail and get the dry rot, which is worse than death.
"But my heart goes out in sympathy when I think of the glorified
spirits, which on this coast have failed and are failing every day,
because from the first an iron fortune has hedged them round and baffled
their every effort, struggle as they would."
Carlin ceased speaking, and the silence which prevailed in the Club for
a moment was broken by Miller, who said: "Don't worry about them,
Carlin. If they do fail they have lots of fun in trying."
"I would grave more for your mon Joe," interposed Corrigan, "did I not
remember Mrs. Dougherty, who married the gintleman of properthy, and
thin your Joe war a fraud onyway. What war there in a bit of a scrap to
make a mon grave himself into craziness over it?"
"Your stock-buying illustration is not fair, Carlin, for that is only a
form of gambling at best," suggested Brewster.
The club winced under this a little, for every member dabbled in stocks
sometimes, except Brewster and Harding.
For two evenings Harding had been scribbling away behind the table, and
during a lull in the conversation Ashley asked him what he had been
writing. "Letters?" suggested Ashley.
"No, not letters," answered Harding, sententiously.
"What is it, then," asked Miller; "won't you read it to us?"
"Yes, rade it, rade it," said Corrigan, and the rest all joined in the
request.
"You won't laugh?" said Harding, inquiringly.
They all promised, and Harding read as follows:
THE PROSPECTOR.
How strangely to-night my memory flings
From the face of the past its shadowy wings,
And I see far back through the mist and tears
Which make the record of twenty years;
From the beautiful days in the Golden State,
When life seemed sure by long leases from Fate;
From the wondrous visions of "long ago"
To the naked shade that we call "now."
Those halcyon days! There were four with me then--
Ernest and Ned, Wild Tom and Ben.
Now all are gone; Tom was first to die.
I held his hands, closed his glazed eye;
And many a tear o'er his grave we shed
As we tenderly pillowed his curly head
In the shadows deep of the pines, that stand
Forever solemn, forever fanned
By the winds that steal through the Golden Gate
And spread their balm o'er the Golden State.
And the others, too, they all are dead.
By the turbid Gila perished Ned;
Brave, noble Ernest, he was lost
Amid Montana's ice and frost;
And out upon a desert trail
Our Bennie met the spectre pale.
And I am left--the last of all--
And as to-night the white snows fall,
As barbarous winds around me roar,
I think the long past o'er and o'er--
What I have hoped and suffered, all,
From twenty years rolls back the pall,
From the dusty, thorny, weary track,
As the tortuous path I follow back.
In my childhood's home they think me, there,
A failure, or lost, till my name in the prayer
At eve is forgot. Well, they cannot know
That my toil through heat, through tempest and snow,
While it seemed for naught but a struggle for pelf,
Was more for them, far more, than myself.
Ah, well! As my hair turns slowly to snow
The places of childhood more distantly grow;
And my dreams are changing. 'Tis home no more,
For shadowy hands from the other shore
Stretch nightly down, and it seems as when
I lived with Tom, Ned, Ernest and Ben.
And the mountains of Earth seem dwindling down,
And the hills of Eden, with golden crown,
Rise up, and I think, in the last great day,
Will my claim above bear a fire assay?
From the slag of earth, and the baser strains,
Will the crucible show of precious grains
Enough to give me a standing above,
Where in temples of Peace rock the cradles of Love?
"That is good, but it is too serious by half," Miller said, critically.
"What is a young fellow like you doing with such a melancholy view of
things?"
"It's a heap better to write such things for pleasure in boyhood than to
have to feel them for a fact in old age," said Wright.
"I say, Harding, have you measured all the faet in that poem?" remarked
Corrigan, good-naturedly.
"We have been talking too seriously for two or three evenings and it is
influencing Harding," was Miller's comment.
Brewster thought it was a good way for Sammie to spend his evenings. It
would give him discipline, which would help him in writing all his life.