"An' then the young man hurried away to some other point in the room, an' left me sittin' beside a nice-lookin' honest country lass, who could only say 'yees' an' 'noo,' as soft as poached eggs; an' that always knocks my conversational powers flatter 'n a watersoaked newspaper. I tell you, boys, well-regulated society is terrible on a man-terrible, terrible!" Here the gentleman drew his chair toward the stove, as though the far-off memory of "well - regulated society" pervaded his system with the solemn chilliness of an empty church. "Well, go ahead an' tell us how you got along with that young woman," said a red-haired man on the opposite side of the stove. "Got along with that young woman! I couldn't get along with her. There wasn't nothin' of her but bread an' butter, an' some home-made-up dry-goods. There was no intellect into her. She was a rare young female-raw, I might say. But then she might ha' done better with a less distinguished man; I'm always willin' to make allowance. I know that every person hasn't crossed the continent, nor lived on beans straight-an' such persons can't be expected to 'know beans.' "Well, then, you wound up business -twenty-five cents on the dollar-at that social party, and got away from there. Then what did you do?" queried the volunteer foreman. “O Lord! Jake, close that door." "Yes, I'll close this door soon's I get these nubs of iced snow out o' the way," answered Jake, jamming and rattling the door to force away the accumulation of soiled icy snow. "What did I do? Why, I went to that club. An' there I found a room carpeted all off nice, an' a marble mantel-piece, an' everything fine an' easy for a feller who can endure a good deal o' rest an' settin' round. There were newspapers round on the tables, an' several cases o' books standin' against the wall; an' one o' the leadin' members kept a sort o' magazine - newspaper-peanut-literary pop-shop down-stairs on the ground floor, an' he had some barrels in his cellar-sacrament wine an' medical purposes, you know!-an' these Special Literary ducks could have somethin' good when they'd a mind to call for it. Well, I was introduced in among these chaps as the 'gentleman from California,' an' I bowed round an' pranced in among 'em, an' flourished my white cambric pocket table-cloth, like a sweet young Methodist preacher at a camp-meetin'. Then I was specially introduced to Honorable Judge Ephraim Shadwell, an' we all took seats. While I was splittin' my coat-tails apart to sit down, I prospected the Honorable Ephraim Shadwell, an' says I to myself-inwardly, you know—'Old Shad, if you aint a "Smoove Eph," then it's my treat.' An' this put me in mind of it. So I remarked, 'Gentlemen, can't we have somethin'-somethin' to take?' an' I went down into my breeches'-pocket after the collateral; but there is where I missed it, an' forgot myself, an' thought I was back here again in a whisky-mill. They like somethin' to take back there's well's we do here, but they suck it more on the sly--for the sake o' the risin' generation they call it. Now, you all-most all--know that I don't like liquors—" "O no!" shouted a chorus of voices. "You aint got no talent for whisky--no place to put it! It's somebody else— man with the light red nose, perhaps." "Unless they are very choice, pure, an' well-handled." "Ah!" "An' when I strike a thing o' that kind in a gentlemanly company, I don't deny it, I am happy. I suppose it's all wrong, pernicious, pauperizing, an' all that sort o' thing, but I tumble to it naturally; an' on this occasion I was way up everything was lovely, as Ophir lively little black eyes were laughed when she booms!" "Well, as I was the distinguished stranger, of course the heft o' the talk soon came to me. They wanted to hear about California, an' I gave 'em California-now, you bet I did! I told 'em all that I thought everybody must know, an' had known, about the country, an' it seemed news to them. Then I told 'em some things about California which I think nobody knows, an' never will know. You have to do these things, you know, in good society, to make yourself interesting. Then, this young feller who had been with me at the party, and was at that moment leanin' his elbows on the back of Old Shad's high chair, which was right a-front o' me— he says, lookin' at me, 'Tell us about your trip in Nevada-that one you told at the party the other night!' 'Yes,' says Old Shad; 'that Nevada is a very strange country, by all accounts. I should, for one-and I assume to speak for all present-be much gratified to learn about that country from a gentleman so well qualified by nature and experience to represent it. Be pleased to proceed, sir.' "When Old Shad made me that little speech, and reached his hand to the table for his glass o' liquor, there was a dignity, a grace, a full. fitness about him that made me think him a born judge." "Judge o' what ?” "Of everything. An inspector of the universe. A man, sir, capable, by turns, of microscopic atomization, on the one hand, and of being a cosmographer of worlds on the other!" "H-1! don't he sling a dictionary jaw-bone?" queried a sotto voce. "Old Shad-you've seen fellers like Old Shad! but you haven't seen many, He was the most innocent and attentivelookin' middle-aged person I ever saw. His face seemed to fairly beam with attention and respect toward me! His back into his head by two circles o' wrinkles, which yet waited round the front doors to get a chance to poke 'em in the ribs if they ever came out again. He had a circular alkali- flat on top o' his head, with a little black bunch o' grease-wood in the middle of it. Then, his face was shaved clean, and he was, except his eyes, ás pretty a countenanced gentleman as ever I saw. One of those fatherly persons who never forget that all good men are twice a boy, an' forever a little youthful. He was some fatter than there was any need of, an'-he wasn't a blonde. When he said, 'Be pleased to proceed!' I proceeded. "Gentlemen,' says I, 'the Sage-brush is the Wonder-land of grown-up children. Its history is to the active intellect of North America what the reading of the Nine Books by Herodotus was to the pulse of young Athens - the stimulus to greater daring and deeper diggings. What the poet and the painter have done for the rude ages prior to gunpowder, which gave us the pictures of the battle - axe, the claymore, the scimiter, the long-oared galley, and the castle-crowned cliff, the coming American, combining in himself the artist and the artisan, must do for the long processions which followed the sun by day and watched with the stars by night, among the great rocks and dim vistas of the weird mirage - haunted wilderness. The rough-forged long barrel of the immortal sharp-shooter-that aspiring swamp-blackbird, from whose sweet throat Liberty first warbled and Freedom learned to whistle-and the wand coiled round with the detonating taper of the ox-driver's whip, must be inwoven with our heraldic designs, until after ages, sir, shall learn that the sacred is the true and tried-the useful still the holiest." "You was puttin' it up pretty steep, wasn't you?" inquired the foreman. "I should say I was! Old Shad's face was bewitchin' me with the rosy dawn of unborn compliment. It wasn't often I got an audience like that. I was talkin' then, not about California, but about Nevada, an' it seemed like I was called upon to speak a piece for the 'Gal I left behind me,' an' I waltzed in with all the fine points I'd ever heard of— an' could remember at the time. But I held myself right down to the cold truth-only flushing it occasionally, like the top of a snowy sunset mountain with the roseate alpenglow of our rarified atmosphere. "Gentlemen,' I continued, 'when our remotest pre-historic ancestors hacked their wild mysterious story in the ragged yet regular edges of the world-wide scattered flinty arrow-heads, they little knew that unborn ages of a quickened intellectuality would prospect among their 'float' for the after-thought of the soul's immortal longings. And when the ancestral fathers of this young republic, sitting upon the ragged edge of the new-born constitutional conscience, dared to weigh down our infant treasury to purchase from "The Man of Destiny" that mystery of empire known as Louisiana, little they dreamed that an after-time of quicker intellect would prospect amid the drifting snows and whirling dusts of an arid waste, and find—find what? Ah, gentlemen, the rock-ribbed coffers of a world-the treasury of nations now that are, and of others yet to come! "Gentlemen,' says I, 'permit me. We'll drink. Here's to the boys at the front-THE PROSPECTORS! "Now, gentlemen,' says I, after we drank and were seated, 'these men who have discovered these great mines and bonanzas have fought a battle no less glorious than that fought by the classic youth who dressed their hair in the mountain-gorge, where still the hotsprings bubble up, whispering to heroic hearts, "This is Thermopyla!" "But, alas! these modern heroes in the mountain-passes of the Desert-land did not need to dress their hair in the throat of death, because they were sure of having it lifted and dressed after death, with all the honors of barbaric pomp, while their bones were left to be dragged to the galloping midnight music of the prairie-wolf, into the distant waste behind the veil of the night's dim circle. Not the "untutored" was their only foe, for him they tutored after awhile-but want and storm, and houseless, homeless loneliness, and unrequited waiting; and sometimes Death came softly down upon his black wings with the glances of the sweet-faced moon, and made the lonely sleeper's dream eternal in the sage. "Gentlemen,' I continued, 'to give you an idea of the vicissitudes of climate, and the houseless hardships of the earlier days in Nevada, before the peculiarities of the climate were understood, I will relate, now, the simple and truthful tale which my young friend has asked for, in which request he has been kindly joined by your honor and the entire company. "It was, if I remember right, in the winter of 1866–7, or 1867-8, I'll not be sure which—but no matter, it was one time or the other-I found myself in B., which then was a new and active mining-camp, and is now, though no longer new, still active. The mud in the town, owing to the late rains, the stirring people and newly broken earth, was disagreeably deep. I met Johnson. 'Johnse,' said I, 'what are you on, an' where are you bound for?' "I'm on the prospect,' says he, 'an' I'm bound for Reveille.' "How?' says I. "So next morning we harnessed up his two little mules to a light wagon and started through the mud.' "Heavy rolling in the mud, I suppose?' asked the judge, very politely. "Very much so, indeed,' I responded, about as politely. "Johnse's team was willing, but it was small, and though that wagon had nothing in it but our blankets and two or three hundred pounds of grub, etc., we were all day and until midnight going sixteen miles; and when we camped the old snow was so deep and crusted that the little mules wouldn't move another step -so there we hung up, in the deep snow.' "How far did you say that was from where you started?' asked a member, who seemed to be takin' notes in the fly-leaves of a book. "About sixteen miles.' "Mules are no better in the snow than in the mud,' said the judge, with his lit tle black eyes twinklin' at me. "About the same. Well, we staid there till morning-mules not a thing to eat but a lick or two of flour, and we a bite of raw fat bacon. In the morning, however, the night-frost having left the snow crusted, we rolled out on solid footing. In about two hours we got to some good grazing and water, and camped, to let the animals feed and to cook something for ourselves. Then we rolled along in first-rate style to another camp at H. After we got out of that snow we had no trouble with anything that day but the dust.' "Dust!' exclaimed the judge, drawin' his chair up closer to me, and glowin' upon me with admiration. wagon just rolling the dust into his face.' "Heavy dust?' from the judge. "'Yes; the dust was piling on to him. Each side of his nose was all filled up level with his eyebrows-all smooth.' "Singular country!' remarked the judge. “Most remarkable climate on earth,' says I. "One would think so,' said the feller who was takin' notes. “Well, we staid all night at H., and next morning we started by the valley trail for Reveille, intending to get there that night—but we didn't make it.' "Why so? more mud?' asked the judge. "No, no more mud; but about noon the sun came down so hot that the little mules fairly melted on their feet, and there was no go in them—so we hung up for the night at the Springs.' "How far were you from B., at the Springs?' asked the feller who was takin' notes. "Let me see,' says I; 'thirty-four an' twenty-four is fifty-eight-yes, fiftyeight miles.' "The next day you proceeded to Reveille?' queried the judge. "❝O, no. That night they brought an ox-driver into camp, with his feet frozen.' ""Frozen!' shouted a member who had not spoken before. "Yes, sir; frozen, and badly frozen. And they were still freezing by the fire, after he was brought in-because a freeze continues till the thaw sets in, and the thaw does not set in until the heat has time to penetrate; and when you are lying before a fire out of doors, in a cold bright starlit night, one side chills about as fast as the other thaws.' "Yes, that's true,' said the judge'when a man is lying out.' "I thought he put a curious little quaver on the last word but one o' that remark, but it was so slight I passed it ors have taken the advice of the late Mr. Greeley, and gone West.' by an' went on with my story. "Yes, gentlemen, feet that have been tramping in the wet snow all day freeze very suddenly, in the change of temperature which takes place as the sun is going down, in high altitudes. And when a boot and sock once become like solid ice the jig is up. There is no more motion for the foot, which clumps lifelessly and helpless at the end of the leg. A casing of cast metal is not more immovably fitted to that which it surrounds than is a frozen boot to a freezing foot. You might as well pull at one of the bronze boots on the statue of Jackson, as attempt to draw such a boot. The poor fellow, in this case, having become conscious, as he clumped about the desert in the snow hunting his cattle, that his feet were freezing, tried to draw his boots, then to rip them off; then, as the twilight settled into the steely cold starlight, he set himself down and tried to whittle them off, like the bark from a tree; and when found, he had whittled the skin, and the flesh, and the nerves, and the tendons, till the chips of leather, with the white bloodless flesh adhering to their concave sides, lay about him on the snow, like unskillfully shaven chips from some young white-wooded tree, and "My God! sir, stop!' roared the judge, dropping his face upon his knees, and into the palms of his hands. I stopped. Seeing the terrible emotion of Judge Ephraim Shadwell, some member moved, 'That we do now take a drink, and adjourn.' Seconded. "While the drinks were being served, the judge recovered, and said to me: 'My dear friend, permit me to thank you for this evening's entertainment, and to assure you, sir, that I have never met your equal. I formerly flattered myself that I could do something in that line, but hereafter I shall feel that, even in my special field, the hon "I thanked the judge for his spoken compliments, but Webster's Unabridged, soaked in Los Angeles honey, never could pan out a speech equal to thanking him for the admiring radiation that shone from his face." "Didn't he hev no daughters?" asked a rough miner. "I'd ha' married into that family, some way or other, ef I'd ha' been you!-married the old man, ef I couldn't done no better." To this sneer our hero did not, by face or words, condescend to express any rejoinder, but continued his narration. "While we were drinkin' an' adjournin', the member who took notes stood alongside o' me, and asked me how far it was from the mud to the snow, from the snow to the dust, from the dust to the hot place in the valley, an' from the hot place to where the ox-driver froze his feet; an' when I told him it was all inside o' one day's drive, with a good span o' horses, he drew a long breath an' shook his head, sayin' slowly, 'Wonderful climate! wonderful climate!' "We all went home from that club, an' I flattered myself, for about two weeks, that I was just the old he school-marm abroad, enlightenin' the people. "Finally, I was ready, packed up, to return to this coast, an' just as I had bid farewell to all my relations, an' was gettin' on the cars, the hotel - clerk where I roosted handed me this document." Here he drew from his breast coatpocket a long envelope, and slowly passed it over to the foreman, the contents of which, on being read aloud, proved to be as follows: "SPECIAL LITERARY CLUB. "DEPARTMENT OF ARTISTIC LYING. "This certificate bears witness to whom it may concern, to the full effect that in the above department, |