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 raising 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 well-nigh 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
employee, 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!
