“The light that shone when hope was born.”
In the early dawn of an August day in the year of grace eighteen hundred
and ninety-two, David Morning stepped through the French window of his
bedroom out upon the broad and sheltered piazza of the railroad station
hotel at Tucson, Arizona.
A mass of straight brown hair crowned rather than shaded a broad, high
brow, over the surface of which thought and time had indented a few
lines which gave strength and meaning to the face. Eyes of sea gray hue,
as candid and as translucent as the deeps which they resembled, were
divided by a nose somewhat too thick at the base for perfect features
but running to an aquiline point, with the thin and flexible nostrils of
the racer. A short upper lip was covered with a luxuriant chestnut brown
mustache, shading a chin which, though long and resolute and firmly
upheld against the upper lip, was yet divided by a deep dimple which
quivered with sensitiveness. A thick-set but graceful and erect figure,
clothed in a suit of dark blue flannel, completed the _tout ensemble_ of
the subject of our sketch, who, with thirty-two years of human
experience behind him, had stepped five hours before from the West-bound
Pullman sleeper.
David Morning—the only child of a Connecticut father and a Knickerbocker
mother—was born and passed the days of his boyhood in the city of New
York, where he was a pupil of the public schools, and where he was
making preparation for entering upon a course at Yale, when, at sixteen
years of age, the sudden death of his father, followed within a
fortnight by that of his mother, compelled him to surrender his studies
and seek a means of livelihood.
A distant relative offered him a place as clerk in a general merchandise
store in Southern Colorado, whither the lad journeyed. For two years he
faithfully served his employer. Always of an exploring and adventurous
disposition, he had, while “geologizing”—as he called it—in the
neighboring hills, in company with a prospector who had taken a fancy to
“the kid,” discovered a quartz lode, which his companion located on
joint account, David being under age. This location was soon afterwards
sold to an Eastern company for the sum of $20,000, of which the lad
received one-half. Declining several friendly offers to invest the money
in promising mines, he wisely determined to return East and resume the
studies which had been interrupted by the death of his parents; but,
guided by his Colorado experience, and having a strong inclination for
the vocation of a mining engineer, he determined to study in special
lines which were outside of the usual collegiate course. He had not
deemed it necessary to leave his own country to obtain the necessary
instruction, and, four years later, he found himself with $5,000 left of
his capital, with no knowledge of the Greek alphabet and but small
acquaintance with Latin, yet able to speak and write fluently French,
Spanish, and German, and possessed of a good knowledge of geology,
metallurgy, chemistry, and both civil and mechanical engineering, and
with a cultivated as well as a natural taste for politico-economic
science.
At twenty-two years of age, having completed his studies, David Morning
located in Denver, adopted the profession of a civil and mining
engineer, and promptly proceeded to fall in love with the only daughter
of Professor John Thornton, the principal of the Denver public schools.
Ellen Thornton at seventeen gave abundant promise of the splendid
womanhood that was to follow. Above the middle height, slender in form,
and graceful in carriage, with a broad, low brow crowned with silky,
lustrous, dark hair, and eyes of chestnut brown, that, in moments of
inspiration, grew radiant as stars, she captivated the young engineer
and was readily captivated by him in turn. An engagement of marriage
followed, to be fulfilled as soon as the clientage of Morning should be
sufficient to warrant the union.
But business comes slowly to young men of two and twenty, and Ellen’s
mother grew impatient of the fetters which she deemed kept her charming
daughter from more advantageous arrangements. Ellen was proud-spirited
and ambitious, and, although she was earnest and conscientious, she was
not so stable of purpose as to be unaffected by the arguments and
appeals of her mother. At times she was sure that she loved David
Morning, and at other times she was not so sure that her love was of
that enduring and devoted character which a wife should feel for her
husband. Her reading had created in her mind a conception of an ideal
passion which she could not feel had as yet come into her life. She
believed that her affianced had undeveloped powers that would some day
bring him fame and fortune, and again she was not so sure that he
possessed the tact and persistence to utilize his powers to the best
advantage. This doubt would not have deterred her from fulfilling her
engagement of marriage if she had been entirely certain of her love for
him. But she was divided by doubts as to whether the affection she felt
was really the ideal and exalted passion of her dreams, or only a strong
desire for a companionship which she found to be exceedingly pleasant.
She was not quite certain in all things of her affianced, not quite
certain of herself, not quite certain of anything, and one day, yielding
to an irresistible impulse of doubt and hesitancy, she asked to be
released from her engagement.
Morning was amazed, indignant, and almost heartbroken at her request.
Had he been of riper age and experience he would have known how to allow
for the doubts and self-questionings of a young girl in her first love
affair, but he was as unsophisticated as she, and more secure in his own
possession of himself. Frank and proud, he took her at the word, which
she regretted almost as soon as it was uttered. He neither sued nor
remonstrated, but with only a “God bless you” and a “good-by,” and
without even a request for a parting kiss, which, if given, might have
opened the way to a better understanding, he hurriedly left the house.
The next day he was on his way to Leadville, in fulfillment of a
professional engagement, and when he returned two weeks later he found
that his former affianced had accompanied her parents to Boston, where
Professor Thornton had been suddenly called by the death of a relative,
to whose large fortune he succeeded.
Our hero did not despair, and, having no natural inclination for
dissipation, did not make his rejection an excuse and an opportunity for
self-indulgence. He was of an intense and earnest nature, and he was
really in love with the girl who had discarded him, but life was not
dead of duty or achievement to him because of her loss, which he looked
upon as final, for her newly-acquired position as a wealthy heiress made
it impossible to his self-respect to seek a reconciliation. He applied
himself with assiduity and industry to his profession, and soon became
an exceedingly skillful and reliable mining expert.
Ability to comprehend the story written upon the rocks cannot always be
gained by study or experience. At last it is a “faculty,” rather than
the result of reading or training. Fire and flood, oxygen and
electricity, the tempests of the air and the volcanic throbbings of the
earth, have been busy for ages with the quartz lode, and have left their
marks upon it. It is possible sometimes to decipher these hieroglyphics
so as to answer with a degree of accuracy the ever-recurring question,
“Will it pay to work?” Yet such possibility cannot be reduced to a
science. Professors of geology and metallurgy are often wrong in their
conclusions, and even old prospectors are frequently at fault.
Go across a piece of marsh land on a spring morning accompanied by a
bull-dog and a Gordon setter. The former will flush no snipe save those
he may fairly run over as he trots along. But the fine nose of the dog
with the silky auburn coat will catch the scent of the wary bird, and
follow it here and there around tufts of marsh grass and across strips
of meadow, until the sagacious canine shall be seen outlined against
earth and sky. It is difficult to be certain of anything in this world
of human deceptions, but one may be absolutely sure under such
circumstances that the dog will not lie, and that he cannot be mistaken.
There is a snipe within a few yards of that dog in the direction in
which his nose is pointed. If the sportsman fails to secure the bird,
the fault will be with his aim or his fowling-piece—the dog has done his
part.
Some men—even among experienced miners—have the bull-dog’s obtuseness,
and some have an eye for quartz equal to the nose of a pointer for
snipe. David Morning was of this latter class, and to the thorough
training which he had received during his four years’ studies he
speedily added that practical knowledge of the rocks which, guided by
natural aptitudes and intuitions, will enable the wooer of the hills to
gain their golden favors. His honesty, good judgment, and fidelity
caused his services to be eagerly sought by the mining companies,
which—after the Leadville discoveries—abounded in Colorado, and at the
date at which our narrative opens he had acquired a fortune of about
$300,000, which was invested mainly in mortgages upon business property
in Denver. But he made no attempt at further attendance on Cupid’s
court, and, indeed, gave but little attention to society.
Yet, while the physical Ellen Thornton thus passed out of the young
man’s life, there came into his soul instead an ideal, whose influence
was ever an inspiration to higher thinking, purer life, gentler
judgments, and loftier deeds. Well has the poet said, “’Tis better to
have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” No man can be
possessed by love for a good woman without being thereby moved upward on
all the lines of existence. Damps cannot dim the diamond; its facets and
angles of fire will never permit the fog to abide with them. From the
hour that his heart is touched with the electric passion, the lover is
in harmony with all delights.
The waters tinkle and the lark sings for him with sweeter notes, while
the sunlight is more radiant, and the hills are robed with a softer
purple. The woman who has evoked the one passion of a man’s life may
become as dead to him as the occupant of an Etruscan tomb, but the love
itself will abide with him to enrich his life, and journey with him into
the other country.
David Morning found in books the most pleasant and absorbing
companionship, and those who gained admittance to his library were
surprised to learn that there was a dreamy, speculative, poetical side
to the busy, practical mining engineer. All the great authors on mental,
moral, and political economy were well-thumbed comrades, and the covers
of the leading English and German poets and essayists were free from
dust. Especially was he a close and interested student of social
science, and he had his theories concerning changes of various natures
in society and governments which might ameliorate the condition and
elevate the lives and purposes of mankind.
In religion Morning was neither an accepter nor an agnostic. His reading
taught him that all religions inculcate the righteousness of truth,
honesty, and unselfishness, and that any form of faith in the hereafter
is better for the world than no faith at all. The Persian who bowed
devoutly to the highest material sign of Deity, the sun, was thereby
filled with a spirit which made him readier to relieve the misery of his
brother. The Egyptian who brought tribute to the priests of Isis and
Osiris, was the better for his self-denial. The Greek who believed in
Minerva was a closer student. Odin’s followers scorned a lie. Confucius
taught love of home and kindred. Mahomet prescribed temperance, and the
pure and gentle faith of Buddha in its benefactions to the human race
has been exceeded only by the benign power of the religion of Jesus.
Skeptics strengthen their scoffings by recounting the wars and
cruelties—in bygone centuries—of zealots insane with fervor. But these
are only spots upon the sun. The rusty thumbscrews of the Inquisition,
and the ashes of the fires amid which Servetus perished—fires unkindled
and dead for three hundred years—may be forgotten when one considers the
hospitals, and schools, and houses of shelter which now link their
shadows across continents.
A few days before, while attending the locomotive races in Chicago,
Morning had met an old mining friend, at whose earnest insistence he had
been induced to visit and examine, with a view of purchasing, a large
and promising ledge of copper in the Santa Catalina Mountains. It was
the pursuit of this purpose that had brought him to Tucson.
From his seat on the hotel piazza David Morning gazed into the little
triangular garden beneath, with its splashing fountain guarded by
fragrant honey locust trees, its close-knit, dark green lawn of
Australian grass, and its collection of weird and ugly cacti,
transplanted from their native sand for the edification of passing
tourists.
Then, raising his eyes, he beheld the ancient adobe pueblo, with a few
belated saloon lights blinking through the murk, which was now slowly
changing into ashen dawn. In the east a pencil line of light was
beginning to glow, and to the northward the blackish purple of the Santa
Catalina Range upreared itself against the night sky.
In yonder mountains, as tenantless, as forbidding, as inaccessible, and
almost as unexplored as when they were first upheaved from the tortured
breast of chaos, there reposed the golden power which, in the hands of
David Morning, was to change the economic and social relations of
mankind, and, possibly, the governments, the boundaries, and the history
of nations.
Nothing of these ripening purposes of Omniscience were then revealed to
the soul of our hero; none of them even rested in his dreams. Yet the
nations, weary of centuries of error, centuries of wrong, centuries of
toil and tears and martyrdom, were waiting, even as he was waiting
before commencing his work, for the light which every moment grew
brighter in its scarlet beauty against the eastern horizon—the light
which was to guide humanity to its destiny of better days.