The Comstock Club. C. C. Goodwin
him because I have been thinking of him all day, and because I fear that his work is finished. The last we heard of him, was, that he was disputing with the surgeons in San Francisco, they telling him that he was fatally ill, and he, offering to wager two to one that they were badly mistaken."
"Poor Henry," mused the Colonel; "he is a plucky man. I heard one of our rich men once try to get him to write something, or not to write something, I have forgotten which, and when Mighels declined to consent, the millionaire told him he was too poor to be so exceedingly independent. Here Mighels, in a low voice, which sounded to me like the purr of a tiger, said: 'You are quite mistaken, you do not know how rich I am. I have that little printing office at Carson; paper enough to last me for a week or ten days. I have a wife and three babies,' and then suddenly raising his voice, to the dangerous note, and bringing his fist down on the table before him with a crash, he shouted, 'and they are all mine!'
"The rich man looked at him, and, smiling, said: 'Don't talk like a fool, Mighels.' The old humor was all back in Mighels' face in an instant, as he replied, 'Was I talking like a fool, old man? What a sublime faculty I have of exactly gauging my conversation to the mental grasp of my listener!' But, Alex, do you not think there is a great deal of humbug about the much vaunted power of the press?"
"There's gratitude for you. You ask me such a question as that."
"And why not?" inquired the Colonel.
"You won a great suit last week, did you not—the case of Jones vs. Smith?"
"Yes. It was wonderful; let me tell you about it."
"No; spare me," cried Alex. "But how much did you receive for winning that case?"
"I received a cool ten thousand dollars."
"And you still ask about the influence of the press?"
"Yes. Why should I not?"
"Sure enough, why should you not? If you will stop and think you will know that three months ago you could not have secured a jury in the State that would have given you that verdict. There was a principle on trial that public opinion was pronounced against in a most marked manner. The press took up the discussion and fought it out. At length it carried public opinion with it. That thing has been done over and over right here. At the right time, your case, which hung upon that very point, was called. You think you managed it well. It was simply a walkover for you. The men with the Fabers had done the work for you. The jury unconsciously had made up their minds before they heard the complaint in the case read. The best thoughts in your argument you had unconsciously stolen from the newspapers, and the judge, looking as wise as an Arctic owl, unconsciously wrung half an editorial into his charge. You received ten thousand dollars, and to the end of his days your client will tell (heaven forgive his stupidity) what a lawyer you are, but ask him his opinion of newspaper men and he will shrug his shoulders, scowl, and with a donkey's air of wisdom, answer: 'Oh, they are necessary evils. We want the local news and the dispatches, and we have to endure them.'
"I am glad you robbed him, Colonel. I wish you could rob them all. If a child is born to one of them we have to tell of it, and mention delicately how noble the father is and how lovely the mother is. If one of them dies we have to jeopardize our immortal souls trying to make out a character for him. They want us every day; we hold up their business and their reputations, beginning at the cradle, ending only at the grave."
"What kind of character would you give me, were I to die?"
"Try it, Colonel! Try it! And if 'over the divide' it should be possible for you to look back and read the daily papers, when your shade gets hold of my notice, I promise you it shall be glad that you are dead."
"But what about that unregenerate soul that you were going to tell me of—has some broker sold out some widow's stocks?"
"No: worse than that."
"Has some one burglarized some hospital or orphan asylum?" suggested the Colonel.
"Oh, no. Old Angus Jacobs, you know, is rich. Among strangers he parades his thin veneering of reading, and poses as though all his vaults were stuffed with reserves of knowledge. Well, while East last spring, he ran upon a distinguished publisher there, with whom he agreed that he would, on his return, write and send for publication an article on the West.
"He came and begged me to write it, confessing that he had deceived the publisher, and asserting that, he must keep up the deception, or the integrity of the West would be injured in the estimation of that publisher.
"I went to work, wrote an article, became enthused as I wrote, wrote it over, spent as much as three solid days upon it, and when it was finished I looked upon my work, and lo, it was good.
"Then, at my own expense, I had it carefully copied and gave the copy to old Angus. He sent it East. To-day he received a dozen copies and a letter of profuse praise and thanks from the publisher.
"I saw the old thief give one of the copies to a literary man from San Francisco, telling him, cheerfully, as he did, that he dashed the article off hastily, that most of the language was crude and awkward, but it might entertain him a little on the train going to San Francisco."
"I never heard of anything meaner or more depraved than that," indignantly remarked the Colonel, "except when I read the funeral service over an old Dutchman's child once, in Downieville. Speaking of it afterward, the old Hessian said:
"'Dot Colonel's reading vos fine, but he dond vos haf dot prober look uf regret vot he ought to haf had'—but here comes the Professor."
Professor Stoneman joined the pair, and when the greetings were over the Professor said:
"I am just in from Eastern Nevada: went to Eureka to examine a mine owned by a jolly miner named Moore. It is a good one, too—a contact vein between lime and quartzite. The fellow worked, running a tunnel, all winter, and now he has struck, and cross-cut, his vein. It is fully seven feet thick, and rich. I asked him how he felt when at last he cut the vein.
"'How did I feel, Professor,' he said, 'how did I feel? Why, General Jackson's overcoat would not have made a paper collar for me.'
"There are a great many queer characters out that way. Moore is not a very well educated man. In Eureka I was telling about the mine—that Moore ought to make a fortune out of it—when a man standing by, a stranger to me, stretched up both his arms and cried: 'A fortune! Look at it, now! Moore is so unspeakably ignorant that he could not spell out the name of the Savior if it were written on White Pine Mountain in letters bigger than the Coast Range. But he strikes it rich! His kind always do.' Then he added, bitterly: 'If I could find a chimpanzee, I would draw up articles of copartnership with him in fifteen minutes.'
"And then a quiet fellow, who was present, said: 'Jim, maybe the chimpanzee, after taking a good look at you, would not stand it.'
"I was sitting in a barroom there one day, and a man was talking about the Salmon River mines, and insisting that they were more full of promise than anything in Nevada, when another man in the crowd earnestly said:
"'If my brother were to write me that it was a good country, and advise me to come up there, I would not believe him.'
"Quick as lightning, still another man responded: 'If we all knew your brother as well as you do, maybe none of us would believe him.'
"That is the way they spend their time out there. But I secured some lovely specimens: specimens of ore, rare shells, some of the finest specimens of mirabilite of lead that I ever saw. It is a most interesting region. But I don't agree entirely with Clarence King on the geology of the district. You see King's theory is—"
"Oh, hold on, Professor," said the Colonel, "it does not lack an hour of midnight. You have not time, positively. Heigh ho. Here is Wright. How is the mine, Wright?"
"About two hundred tons lighter than it was this morning, I reckon," replied Wright.
"But tell us about the mine, Wright," said Alex, impatiently. "How is the temperature?"
"How is your health?"