The Passing of the Storm, and Other Poems. Alfred Castner King

Books have, from time immemorial, been the conservators of human wisdom, the repositories of information, the mentors of youth and adolescence, the counsellors of manhood, the comfort and companionship of age.

The experience of an individual, school or era, when committed to book form, becomes the common property of all succeeding time, and the accumulated knowledge of the past, transmitted from generation to generation, through the medium of books, may with justice be regarded as the most valuable of human heritages.

But they have not always been unmixed blessings; they have both led and misled; they have elucidated, yet have mystified.

They have dissipated the shadows of ignorance and superstition, but in some instances have confused and obscured the searchlight of truth. In the economy of human affairs, books have been factors of no small importance. They have proved the most potent expositors of iniquitous systems, and when properly directed against crying evils have accomplished speedy reforms. They have precipitated wars, incited revolts and seditions in the cause of progress, yet have intensified prejudice, political, religious and racial. With silent eloquence, they have cried out against the wrongs of those who had none to plead their cause, while in other cases, their influence has tended to perpetuate existing abuses. In some instances they have taught men to be content with servitude, in others have ignited the beacon fires of liberty. Though they are usually found enlisted under the banners of justice, yet no cause has ever been so unworthy, and no institution so unholy, that books have not been written in their defence. In verity, they have sown both wheat and tares.

Books have been written on every conceivable subject, under all conditions, by all sorts of writers, and from an endless variety of motives. The recompense of those who have written them has been equally various. Some have been apotheosized and worshipped, others have been the recipients of orders and decorations of honor at the hands of kings and potentates, while others have received the ovations of admiring multitudes. Some have anonymously contributed their mite toward the enrichment of literature, others have appeared, from whence we know not, and after placing their offerings upon the altars of poesy and art have departed unrewarded into the shadows of obscurity, leaving as footprints innumerable quotations which have become proverbial. Some, as the bards and minnesingers of old who in mediæval castles ate their bread by the sufferance of the feudal lords and barons, have in more recent years been dependent upon the bounty of some munificent, and usually titled patron, to whom they, as a matter of policy, dedicated their strains and panegyrics, consequently wielding mercenary pens. Some who have presumed to write in a manner displeasing to those who sat in high places have met with vilification, exile, imprisonment, decapitation, and have not been strangers to the pillory. Criticism and ridicule are the patent rewards of incipient authorship, while want, neglect and starvation have terminated the career of more than one name afterwards great in the world of letters.

Aside from motives common to all who with reverent steps humbly strive to follow where the great lights of poesy have led, the author of these unpretentious pages has been actuated by a desire to portray, in his correct light, a very frequently misrepresented character, viz.: the pioneer prospector. It has long been customary for writers of western fiction to picture this character as a large-hearted but rough and untutored individual, expressing himself in a vernacular consisting of equal parts of slang, profanity and questionable grammar, possessing no ambitions above the card table or the strong waters which cause all men to err who drink them. An intimate acquaintance with this class, extending from the years of infancy to middle age, convinces the writer that the common description is manifestly unjust and misleading.

The men who flocked to the early gold excitements, and who subsequently prospected the western mountain ranges for their hidden wealth, were the cream of American and European manhood; men possessed of more than ordinary endowments of intellect, education and physique, while their industry, bravery and hardihood have never been questioned.

Proof of this exists in the names which

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