In America in the 1890s Joaquin Miller was as well known as James Patterson or Michael Connelly are in 2022. Today, most Americans have never heard of him. This is normal. Most authors are a product of their times and as the times move forward, they recede into the distance. The handful that transcend their times like Dickens and Twain are the exceptions. Here I quote another 19th century writer, Abrose Bierce; "Among the several reasons why in literary matters the judgment of posterity is better than that of an author’s contemporaries, the chief is that posterity knows less about his life and character, and is in a position to consider his work on its merits without prejudice, for nothing is more false and misleading than biography—except autobiography. When the subject is an author it operates to prevent, or rather to postpone, a clear judgment of his work and rank." This is especially true of writers like Miller whose fame was as much a product of energetic self-promotion as of intrinsic merit. When the promoter died and the promotion ended, so did much of the fame.
So is there any reason to read Miller today? There are a couple. First is Miller's historical value. He was the pure type of the western pioneer; a type so common in his time that it was hardly worthy of notice but which has almost completely vanished. The western gold rush camps were a unique period which began in 1849 in California and ended in 1898 in the Yukon. It was world of young men, adventure, instant wealth and sudden death with no laws except those they agreed upon among themselves. Other writers described these camps, notably Mark Twain and Bret Harte but they were just passing through. Miller lived in these camps for years from the time he was barely out of adolescence. Over the years he lived in gold rush towns from Yreka to Orofino and finally as a county judge in Canyon City, Oregon. Near the end of his life he was an observer in the Yukon as well.
In Last Man of Mexican Camp he says: "The cabin was a true and perfect relic of what might, geologically speaking, be termed a period in the plastic formation of the Republic. Great pine logs, one above the other, formed three of its walls; the fourth was made up by a fire place, constructed of boulders and adobe. The bed had but one post; a pine slab, supported by legs set in the center of the earthen floor, formed a table; the windows were holes, chiseled out between the logs, that could be closed with wooden plugs in darkness or danger. Let these cabins not be despised. Their builders have done more for the commerce of the world than is supposed. Some day some cunning and earnest hand will picture them faithfully, and they will not be forgotten."
But in many ways they have been forgotten. In their very rudeness the real early gold rush cabins and shanties have disappeared without a trace even in our memories. Even though Miller is derided as an unreliable fabulist I think his depiction of the details of camp life are accurate. Before reading Miller I never thought of Forty-niners as always wearing hip-height rubber boots or of saloon bars packed with sand bags but now they always will be part of my image of the original wild west.
A number of eighteenth and nineteenth century observers who were there, and therefore ought to know, have said that the hunters had a fundamentally different character from the planters and the woodsmen were a different race from the plainsmen even though one may have descended from the other. In the same sense Miller insists that the men of the mining camps were a species unto themselves. And Miller's stories are about the only chance we have to know anything about this vanished race for while fortunes may be found in the earth today, our world has seen it last gold rush.
Now to the artistic considerations. I cannot claim that Miller was a great artist but I will say that he is as unusual as the culture of the gold camps. Miller was a product of the American far west in the 1840's and 50's. The only way for any bit of civilization to reach the west coast was by six months of roadless walking or six months sailing around the horn or perhaps slightly less time in a mixture of both via Panama. Miller grew up in a world where lumber was abundant and there for the taking but it is likely that his home did not have a dozen nails in it. How many books had he seen by the time he was 17? It is probable that there were a few people among his neighbors (what there were of them) who had a rudimentary education. It is possible that none of them had more than that.
There is a definite pioneer type and, as an artist, Miller displays both the strengths and weaknesses of his kind. Always ready to try something new. But also always ready to abandon it half-done for the even newer prospect over the next ridge. Pioneers were always willing to make do with 'good enough' because that was all that was available in the wilderness. A single board or even a nail might find a dozen uses. In europe and Asia or even Boston they might build to last a hundred years but in Miller's world a building needed to last a year or two until the deposit played out and it was time to move to the next mountain.
So it is with Miller the writer. Polished and perfect was not part of his vocabulary. He never stuck to a consistent rhyme scheme, his meter changed according to his whims. Just a the pioneers adapted what they had on hand to the needs of the moment, Miller endlessly self-plagiarized. If you read a lot of Miller, you will encounter the same images, the same phrases, the same characters over and over. But in spite of all this, every now and then he could produce something worth reading. Returning to Ambrose Bierce who knew Miller both personally and professionally I quote from Bierce's review of The Complete Poems of Joaquin Miller:
"In impugning Mr. Miller’s veracity, or, rather, in plainly declaring that he has none, I should be sorry to be understood as attributing a graver moral delinquency than he really has. He cannot, or will not, tell the truth, but never tells a malicious or thrifty falsehood. From his incursions into the realm of romance he returns with clean and empty hands. Excepting for his vanity and inveracity he is an honorable and high-minded man. That he is a poet of high rank is so well understood that I have no intention of reviewing here those of his poems which, by preserving them in this book, he declares to be his own choice from among the much more that he has written and published. Despite his prolixity, his tiresome repetitions, his frequent hyperbole and more frequent unnaturalness; despite, too, the general thinness of his thought, Mr. Miller has, in my judgment, the greatest natural gift of song of any American except Poe."
Considering that Bierce as a critic was famous for the vigourous verbal flaying he could deal out to those he thought deserved it, I find the remarks above very even-handed and even generous.
There remains the point the Miller was primarily a poet and in the 21st century poetry is the least regarded literary form of all. Poetry is very much against the temper of our times. A poem must be read and re-read to fairly assess it and today it is a rare work that can get even a first glance before it is swept away by the flood of newer content.
That said, Miller occasionally gets off a good one — something worth the time it takes to read slowly.
Much has been said and written about Mary St. Clair -- nearly all of it fiction. Now, understand, I never scarcely touched her hand. It was impossible that I should. I was but a lad of a dozen years when I saw her first in California, and she a woman -- well past her prime -- and surrounded by the strangest, strongest and bloodiest crowd of men I ever heard of. And in the later years of her life, when she came to me at Canyon City to die, she was old and all broken down. But she did me a kindness when a boy; and, while I may not mention it further now, I would kick myself half way to Oakland if I could deny that I liked her always and still respect her memory.But this is growing serious, and we must get on with her silk stockings.One of her last husbands -- I think next to the very last -- George W. Clayton (hanged at Helena), wrote me -- I was living in Paris at the time of her death -- that the evening of her life was full of peace and tranquility. I hope so; for there was certainly neither peace or tranquility for her in the olden days at Yreka.I think Clayton must have had a softening and refining influence over her hot nature, for he was himself one of the most refined of men. For example when Clayton shot Long Dan, I remember how Long Dan half rose up from the floor where he lay dying, pulled Clayton down to his side and pleaded, "Clayton, old boy, pull off my boots!" And then, when like a true gentleman, Clayton pulled them boots off, Dan smiled his thanks and whispered as he died, "Boys, now you owe those cigars!" You see a bunch of the boys had bet that same day that he would die with his boots on.But he didn't, you see.
But to get on with the silk stockings. Simon Oldham (you will find his name in the history of the Mexican War, where he figures as a most dashing officer.), had come back from a trip to San Francisco, and Mary St. Clair, or some one -- possibly several persons pooling in together -You see, no one can recollect all the details so far back, for this was well on to forty years ago!- gave him a slam-bang eleven course dinner at the American Hotel to celebrate his return. But I do know that Mary St. Clair sent me twenty dollars by Seth Warner and his brother, Cal Warner -- two long-haired fiddlers and friends of mine from Oregon -- to come and sit up on the platform, between the fiddlers, and repeat "Bingen on the Rhine" whenever Sim Oldham asked for it. And I remember that he asked for it between tunes, and they had a tune between courses right along. So I guess I recited "Bingen" about a dozen times. Finally Oldham wanted Miss St. Clair to get up on the platform before the fiddlers and dance "Money Musk." She didn't want to do it. Flaxbrake (1 don't know his other name, but he had a monstrous jaw), took sides with Mary, as did the man next to him. And this made Oldham furious. And so, to keep peace -- although her face was burning with anger she climbed up with us, lifted her skirts and began to dance as never danced woman since the world began!
You must know something more about this Sim Oldham before you will fully understand how important it was to keep peace with him, and why a woman of Mary St. Clair's spirit would put her own pride and personality under foot to keep him quiet. He had already killed four men in and about Yreka in less than a year's time. And the two he was to kill above the saloon next day made six. And Dr. Alexander, whom he killed over at Jacksonville, on the race-course -- shooting down a $10,000 horse to get at him -- made seven. But after that he cooled down a bit and never killed but two more men, common fellows from the States, I guess, and was finally killed himself in a bar-room in Orophee by a mere boy. Now, when you know that the men who were at the hotel with him to feast and make merry over his return from San Francisco were men of similar bright, quick and artistic qualities, you will understand that Mary St. Clair knew she had a powder magazine to manage, and every occupant with a lighted cigar in his teeth!
I know; it sounds strange to tell of giving a grand dinner to a man with all these spirited and genial gentlemen, gathered in from the big and the little mining-camps round about, to celebrate a journey to San Francisco. But bear in mind, in those days it was harder work to get from Yreka to San Francisco and back than it is to-day to go from this place to Paris and back. For the very first thing to do was to straddle an obstreperous mule and ride over a mountain to Scott's Valley, then take stage up the valley to the base of the snow-clad Scott's mountains, then on and on and on! Trinity mountains next -- a long, lonely trail for summers only, where, if a mule lost footing or you lost your balance, it was no longer on, on, on! -- but down, down, down! Those were the days when Jim Long kept the saddle train over these mountains.I mention Jim Long as the most remarkable man in all that time and country, in this: that he got religion and he died in bed, and never, so far as I can recollect, killed anybody.But how I do get away from the main point of my story. Surely I grow old and garrulous.
Mary danced! And oh, how Mary did dance! Did you see Lola Montez dance ? I went on the same ship with her to the Sandwich Islands, and she danced the heads off half the men on board that vessel. One man, a man of letters, killed himself because of her before we came to land. And Menken. Did you see Ada Isaacs Menken in "Mazeppa," at the old Tom Maguire Opera House? Charles Dickens saw her dance at Astley's in London. She dictated her wonderful little book "Infelicia" to him. There is no such poetry outside of the Bible as in that book. And yet her poetry of motion -- with that perfect form of hers -- surpassed her poetry of expression. But Mary St. Clair -- there in the glare and fire of those maddened men's eyes -- surpassed Montez and Menken had they been both in one. She was dancing for life! Not for herself but she didn't want to see the death of others. And so she danced and she danced and she danced! She had silk stockings -- flaring, flaming, fiery-red silk stockings. Sim Oldham was wildly, madly glad. He turned over to Flaxbrake and his friend and said something in loud whispers. They drew back, indignantly. Then Oldham yelled out :" Them's my silk!" He had very likely brought them with him for her from San Francisco. Nothing wrong at all in that, but it was not for him to tell it right there and then. Then, as she still danced on, desperately, and tried to not hear or heed, he half arose, and again shouted :" Mary, them's my silk, and 1 want 'em!"
She stopped as if shot, sprang to the floor, and then, passing down -- smiling on all the men as she passed -- she came to Oldham, at the head of the table. She paused only long enough to hiss in his face : "And you shall have them - with my compliments." Then, she turned, and reaching her hand out over the men seated at the table, said with firmness and authority: "Gentlemen, keep your places!Let no man move till I send in the flowing bowl and come back!" And she was gone. Almost immediately, Smilin' Joe, Hugh Sheer's bar-tender, came in with a great, big, wooden, Mexican bowl, such as the Mexican miners used to wash gold with in those days. And he set this big, steaming bowl down before Sim Oldham, and with that smile of his, as broad as a fire-place, he was gone. Smilin' Joe left lots of his vast smile with Sim Oldham. Oldham lifted up the ladle daintily, filled cup after cup, cup after cup, and seemed all serenity and peace. And all the men at the table -- true to the last command of Mary St. Clair -- kept in their places and quietly emptied their cups. I don't know what it was, possibly eggnog, or some like beastly concoction. But the two fiddlers did not relish this temporary tranquility. They seemed to think it the calm before the storm, and soon Seth Warner, in a sort of want-to-go-out-to-get-a-drink way said, "Hold my fiddle a minute,Bub," and slid softly to the floor and out the back way. Then his brother put his fiddle and bow under his arm softly, but saw Sim Oldham watching him and he, too, said, "Hold my fiddle a second, Bub." and got down and out the other way. But he had game and goodness enough to crane his neck back and in at the edge of the door, and ask, "Have a drink, Bub?"
As said before, 1 was young. 1 could easily have taken both fiddles with me and got out on a very good excuse, but I had no apprehension of trouble ahead at all. And now the cups were sent up a second time. Sim Oldham was in his element, and, apparently, serenely happy. He dipped and poured and poured and dipped, and the bowl was getting low. At last he felt something in the bottom of the bowl with his ladle and drew it out. Dripping and drowned and streaming it hung there -- a long, stringy mass of red.Sim Oldham half arose, still holding the long ladle with its dripping, stringing mass of red. Suddenly, Mary was right behind him -- "had the drop," as it were. He turned green and pale and pale and green, and his hand trembled as Mary St. Clair stepped up and hissed in his ear: "There's your silk, with my compliments!"Some of the men went down, leaning over like or on all fours, as if hunting for hats or handkerchiefs. But they all got to the door out with Oldham at the head, and with never a word.
Perhaps he was sick next day, and, maybe, it was only cunning; for he did not appear next day till after dark, and by then the two men who had been waiting for him in the room above the saloon were drunk. And so he piled them up in a corner together and did not get a scratch.
Three thousand men! Not a woman, not a child, down in that canyon of ours, so deep that the sun never reached us in the winter and but a little portion of the day in Summer,
Forests, fir and pine, in the canyon and out of the canyon up the hills and up the mountains, black and dense, till they broke against the colossal granite peaks far above us and crowned in the everlasting snow.
Three little streams cam tumbling down here from the snow peaks in different directions, meeting with a precision which showed that they knew their way perfectly through the woods; and from this little union of waters the camp had taken the name of "The Forks".
We had no law, no religion; but I insist, for all that, the men were not bad. It is true they shot and stabbed each other in a rather reckless manner; but then they did it in such a manly sort of a way that but little of the curse of Cain was supposed to follow.
Maybe it was because life was so desolate and dreary that these men threw it away so frequently, and with such refreshing indifference, in the misunderstandings at the Forks; for, after all, we led but wretched lives. That vast freedom of ours became a sort of desolation.
But men were grandly honest there. They invariably left gold in their gold pans from day to day open the claim -- ounces, pounds of it, thousands of dollars to be had to the taking up. Locks and keys were unknown, and, when the miner went down to town on Saturday night to settle his account, he, as a rule handed the merchant his purse and let him weigh whatever amount he demanded, without question.
The first woman came unheralded. Like all good things on earth, she came quietly as a snowflake down in our midst without ado or demonstration.
Who she was or where she came from no one seemed to know. Perhaps the propriety of questioning occurred to some of the men of the camp; but it never did to me. I had rather say, however, that when they found there was a real live woman in camp, a decent woman, who was willing to work and take her place beside the men in the great battle, bear her part in the common curse which demands that we shall toil to eat, they quietly accepted the fact, as men do the fact of the baby's arrival, without any question whatever,
This was not really the first woman to come into our camp of three thousand bearded men; and yet it was the first. There were five or six, maybe more, down at the Forks -- some from Sydney, some from New Orleans, and so on; but these were worse than no woman at all--waifs of the foam, painted children of passion. I am not disposed to put these women in the catalogue of saints. They were very devils, some of them.
These women set man against man and that Winter made many a crimson place in the great snowbanks of the streets. They started the first graveyard at the Forks; and kept it recruited, too, every holiday and almost every Sunday.
True, they did some good. I do not deny that. For example, I have in my mind now the picture of one, Sack Hill, from Mobile, holding the head of brave young fellow, shot through the temple, his long yellow hair in strings and streaming with blood. She held him so till he died; and mourned and would not be separated from him while a hope or a breath remained -- the blood on her hands, on her face, all over her costly silks and lace, and on the floor.
Then she had him buried elegantly as possible; sent for a preacher away over to Yreka to say the funeral service; put evergreens about his grave, and refused to be comforted.
All this was very beautiful-- a touch of tenderness in it all; but it was spoiled by the reflection that she had allured and almost forced the poor boy into the fight, in hopes of revenging herself on the man whom she hated and by whose hand he had to fall.
I knew another woman there who was very benevolent--in fact, they all were liberal with their money, and were the first and freest to bestow upon the needy. This woman was a Mexican--from Durango, I think; and her name was Dolores. Gentle in her manner, patient, sad; not often in the difficulties that distinguished the others; but generally alone, and by far the best liked of all these poor Magadalens. This good nature of hers made her most accessible, and so she was most sought for deeds of charity. Toward Spring it was said she was ill: but no one seemed to know, or may be no one cared.
If you will stop here to consider, it will occur to you that is is a man's disposition to avoid a sick woman; but a woman's disposition to seek out a sick man and nurse him back to health. This being true, here is a text for a sermon.
A bank had caved on a man-- only a prospector, a German, who lived alone in a little cabin on the hillside and crushed him frightfully, Nurses and physicians were necessary. The man was penniless and alone, and help had to come from the camp.
Some one went to Dolores. She was in her room or cabin, out a little way from any one, alone and ill, sitting up in bed, looking "wild enough,"as the man afterward stated. He told her what had happened. She leaned her head on her hand a moment, and then lifted it, looked up, and drew a costly ring from her finger, the only one on her pale, thin hand, and gave it to the man, who hurried away to get other aid elsewhere.
Now there was nothing very odd of unusual in a woman giving a ring. That was often done. In fact, there was scarcely any coin on the Creek. In case of this kind a man generally gave the biggest nugget or specimen he had in his pocket, a ring if he could not do better, sometimes a six-shooter and so on, and let them make the best of it, but but always something, if that something was possible. Let this be said and remembered of these brave old men of the mountains.
A few day after this, it came out the Dolores was dead. Then it was whispered that she had starved to death. This last was said in a sort of whisper. It came out with a shudder like between the teeth, as if the men were afraid to say it.
On investigation, it was found that the poor woman had been ill some time, had lost her bloom and freshness, and what becomes of a woman of this kind, who has no money, when she has lost her bloom and strength? Never had much money, always gave it away to the needy as fast as she got it, and so had nothing to fight the world with when she fell ill.
Then came the man with the rent, the lord of the log cabin--a cross between a Shylock-Jew and a flint faced Yankee--took her rings and jewels, one by one. The baker grew exacting, and finally the butcher, refused to bring her meat. And that was all there was of it. That was the end.
That butcher never succeeded there after that. Some one wrote "Small-Pox"over his shop every night for a month, and it was shunned like a pest-house. But all that did not bring poor Dolores back to life. The ring was an antique gold, with a costly stone, and a Spanish name, which showed her to have been of good family. A wedding ring.
But this woman, however, was an exception and at best, when in health, with the exception of her generous and sympathetic nature, was probably no angel.
I was in a neighboring cabin, on night, when it was announced that the first woman had come to the camp. The intelligence was received with profound silence.
There was a piece of looking-glass tacked up over the fire-place of this cabin.
Old Baldy whistled a little air, and walked up to this glass sidewise, silently, and stood there smoothing down his beard.
"Ginger blue!"cried the Parson, at last, bounding up from his bench and throwing out his arms, as if throwing the words from the ends of his fingers. "Ginger blue! hell-ter-flicker!" And here he danced around the cabin in a terrible state of excitement, to the tune of a sting of iron-clad oaths that fell like chain shot. They called the Parson because it was said he could outswear any man on the river; an accomplishment I was inclined to doubt, wonderful as were his achievements in this line.
I am prepared to testify that during the half hour that I remained in that cabin, after the announcement, every on of the ten men there took a look the little triangular fragment of looking-glass that was tacked up over the fire-place.
The arrival of Eve in Paradise was certainly an event; but she came too early in the world's history to create much sensation.
Stop here, and fancy the arrival of the first woman on earth to-day--in this day of committees, conventions, brass-band receptions and woman's rights!
You fancy a princess had come upon us. A good angel, with song and harps; or, at the least, carpetbags, and extended crinoline, waterfalls, and false hair, an pack-train of Saratoga trunks, and all the adjuncts of civilization. Not at all. She had secured the cabin once occupied by the unhappy Dolores; and I took the first occasion to pass that way, and, if possible, to see her with my own eyes. I confess that deep down in my heart was a delicate hope, the faintest, far possible shadow of belief the this, after all, was my good angel. I walked as if in a dream when I approach the place. No one visible. I heard a sound like the washing of the waves, in the cabin--a dead, steady thud, and thud and thud. But under the eaves of the pine-thatch was a modes sign, written in charcoal ion a cedar shingle. It read:
"Washening and Irening dun hear".
The hopes of the young and the imaginations of all are like corks. Almost any other soul under the sun had been disgusted. I was not even displeased. Not being able to get sight of the first woman, I whistled cheerfully and walked on.
This woman was called "the Widder." Why widow, rather than spinster, I do not know. Perhaps some inspired genius who had some knowledge of life, coupled with a regard for the truth, first spoke of her as "the Widder" as he tossed off a glass of gin and bitters with his companions at the "Howlin' Wilderness" Saloon, and thus baptized her in a name, not without a sort of special dignity in it, that should be hers as long as she should remain an individual element in the Camp.
Men, even the most bloated and besotted, walked as straight as possible up the trail that led by the Widow's cabin, as they passed that way at night; and kept back their jokes a war_hoops till far up the creek and out of her hearing in the pines.
A general improvement was noticed in all who dwelt in sight or hearing of her cabin. In fact, that portion of the creek became a sort of West End, and cabin rent went up in that vicinity. Men were made better, gentler. No doubt of that. If, then, one plain, ignorant woman, rude herself by nature, can do so much what is not left for gentle and cultured woman, who is or should be the true missionary of the West--the world?
A woman's weakness is her strength.
True, she is very plain. But you may adopt it as one of your rules of life, and act upon it with absolute certainty, that, if you have to trust any woman, trust a plain one, rather than a handsome one; for the plain ones were not made to sell, else they too had been made handsome.
"Not to be to particular about a delicate subject," said old Baldy who had been fortunate enough to see her, "her memory possibly may reach back to the Black Hawk War."
She was tall, gentle, genial too, and soon a favorite with her many, many patrons. She had a scar on the left side of her face, they said reaching from the chin to the cheek; but, with a woman's tact, she always kept her right side to her company, and the scar was not always noticed.
What had been her history, what troubles she had had, what tempests she had stood against, or what great storm had blown this solitary woman far into the great black sea of firs that belts about and lines in the shadow of the Sierras, like a lone white sea-dove you sometimes find far out in the China seas, no man knew; and, be it said to the credit of the Forks, no man cared to inquire.
This meeting together, this coming and going of thousands of men from all parts of the earth, where each man stood on the character he made there in a day, deadened curiosity, perhaps.
At all events, you can go, a stranger, to-day, anywhere along the Pacific, and, if your character indicates the gentleman, you are accepted as such, and no man cares to ask of your antecedents. A convenient thing, I grant, for many; but nevertheless, a good thing and a correct thing for any country.
The old Jewish law of every seven years forgiving each man his debt was an age in advance of our laws of to-day; and, if any means could be devised by which every seven years to forgive all men their offenses, and let them begin life anew all together, an even start, it would be better still.
She could not keep herself concealed. I saw her at last, hanging out clothes and talking at the same time to a crowd of admiring miners. She was a tawny woman, in a loose, thin calico dress, that clung about her long, thin body like a banner about a flagstaff on a still day, She had black eyes, and black circles about her eyes that made them look larger than an owl's at a little distance, as if the head were nearly half eyes. Her face was very plain; but rather melancholy than vicious , with a large mouth, which, as a rule, indicates an open-handed and generous nature.
The Widow had admirers from the first; many and many a worshiper, and not altogether without reason, There was about her a certain sweetness of nature that contrasted well with the rough life in which she was thrown; and the strong men noted this, and liked the sense of her presence.
Besides that, this woman had a certain sincerity about the, a virtue that is as rare as it is dear to man. I think, if we look at ourselves clearly, we will discover that this one quality wins upon us more that any other -- that is more than beauty, more than gold--sincerity, earnestness. For my part, I only make that one demand on any man or nay woman. You cannot be graceful at will, or wealthy, or beautiful, or always good natured; but you can be in earnest. You can refuse to lie, either in word or in deed. I demand that you shall be in earnest before you shall approach me. Be in earnest even in you villainy.
As the Summer wore away, her suitors dropped off like early candidates for office, and left the field almost entirely to the two leading men of the camp-- Sandy and the Parson.
Sandy was a man of magnificent stature, with a graceful flow of sandy beard, but and ignorant, awkward child of Nature. A born leader of men, but a man who declined to lead unless forced to come to the front by his fellows, and for the time take charge of whatever little matter was under consideration in the camp. Sandy was a man you believed in, trusted, and honored from the first . There was not a crafty fiber or thought in his physical or mental make-up.
The Parson was a successful miner; a massive, Gothic man, though not so tall as Sandy. He had been a sailor, I think. At all events, he had a blue band of India ink with little diamonds of red set in between the bands, on his left wrist. Possibly it was his right wrist, for I cannot recall positively at this distance of time; but I think it was the left.
The Parson was the first authority in history politics, theology, anything whatever that came up. I do not think he was learned; but he was always so positive, and always to ready with his opinions and so ready to back them up too, that all were willing to ask his opinion in matters of doubt, and few were willing to question his replies.
After a while it became talked about that Sandy was losing ground with the Widow--or rather, that the Parson was having it pretty much his own way there, as in other things in the camp, and that Sandy rarely put in an appearance.
About this time a pretty little cottage began to peep through the trees from a little hill back of town.; and then it came out that this, with its glass widows and green window blinds, was the property of the Parson, and destined as the home of the Widow.
I think the camp was rather pleased at this. True, there was a bit of ambition and a grain of cunning too in the Parson's nature which made the free, wild men of the mountains look upon him sometimes with less favor then they did on Sandy. Still they liked him, and were glad that the Widow was to have a home at last.
But somehow the wedding did not come on as soon as was expected , and the Widow kept on rubbing, rubbing, and rubbing, day after day, week after week, as if nothing of the kind was ever to happen to her.
Late in the Fall, on evening as the men stood in a semicircle in the Howlin' Wilderness saloon, with their back to the blazing log fire, Sandy brought his fist down emphatically on the bar, as he took part in the conversation, and turning to the crowd, said:
"It's an everlatin' and a burnin' shame!"
He rested his right elbow on the bar, and drew the back of his left hand across his mouth, as if embarrassed, and again began:
"It's a breathin' and a burnin' shame, I say, that the woman has got for to go on in this way, awashin' of duds for us fellow of this here camp. If this here camp can't afford one lady in it precincts why, then I shall pull up stakes and to to where the tall cedars cast their shadows over the coyote, and the coyote howls and howls--and--and--"
He wiped his hand again, and broke down utterly. But he had said enough. A responsive chord was touched and the men fairly sprang to their feet with delight at the thought.
Some of the best things in life are like leads of gold--we come upon them it a kind of sudden discovery.
The Parson's eyes twinkled with delight. "I move that Sandy take the chair for this occasion and second the motion, and plank down twenty ounces for the Widow."
Sandy removed his slouch hat, blushed behind his beard and the new dignity, and said:
"Bully for you! I raise you five ounces and ante the dust."
Here he drew a long, heavy purse from his pocket, and passed it over to the barkeeper, who thereby became treasurer of the enterprise without further remarks. The Parson's eye twinkled again.
"I see your five ounces and go you ten better."
"Called," said Sandy; and he pecked at the barkeeper, which little motion of the head meant that that further amount was to be weighted from the purse for the benefit of the Widow.
One by one the boys came forward' and, as the enterprise got noised about the camp, they came down to the Howlin' Wilderness saloon till far in the night, to contribute what they called their "widow's mite."
Even the head man of the company up the Creek known as the "Gay Roosters" and who was notoriously the most rough and reckless man in the camp, jumped a first-class poker game, where he was playing at twenty dollars ante and pass the buck, to come in and weigh out dust enough to "call" the Parson and Sandy.
The Forks felt proud of itself for the deed. Men slept sounder and woke in a better humor with themselves for the act.
Yet all this time is was pretty well conceded that the gold, and the Widow too, would very soon fall to the possession of the Parson.
"Set 'em deep, Parson! Set 'em deep!" said head to th "Gay Rooster," as he shook hands with the Parson that night, winked at the boys, and returned to his game of poker.
There had been many a funeral at the Forks; but never a birth or a wedding. But now this last, with all its rites and mysteries, was about to come upon the Forks; and the Forks felt dignified and elated. Not one of the three thousand bearded men showed unconcern. It was the great topic--the Presidential Campaign, the Dolly Varden of the day. The approaching wedding was the morning talk, the talk at noon, and the talk at night.
And it was good for the camp. The last fight was forgotten. Monte took a back seat in the minds of these strange, strong men; and, if the truth could be told, I dare say the German undertaker who had set up under the hill, noted a marked decline in his business.
The boys were with the Parson; and the Parson with the boys. They all conceded that he was a royal good fellow, and that the Widow could not well do better.
The amount of gold raised by the men in their sudden and impulsive charity was in itself, for one in the Widow's station, a reasonable fortune.
"What if she gits up and gits?"
The man who said that a narrow-minded, one-eyed, suspicious fellow, who barely escaped being kicked down by the head of the "Gay Roosters," and kicked into the street by the crowd.
Still later in the Fall the Parson sat in Howlin' Wilderness, with his back to blazing, crackling fire, having it all his own way at his favorite game of old sledge. He had led his queen for the jack just as though he knew where every card in the pack was entrenched. Then he led the king with like composure, and was just crooking his fingers up his sleeve for the ace, when a man in black, with a beaver hat and a white neck-tie rode by the widow on a black horse.
"Sombody's a dyin' up the creek, I 'speck," said Stubbs. "Maybe it's old Yallar. He allers was a kind of a prayin', codfish eat' cuss, anyhow."
Here Stubbs turned and kicked nervously at the fire.
The game did not go on after that. No one said anything. Perhaps that was the trouble. The men fell to thinking, and the game lost its interest.
There was no fight of importance at the Howlin' Wilderness that night, and by midnight the frequenters of the saloon had withdrawn. The candles were then put out, and the proprietors barricaded the door against belated drunkards, spread their blankets on a monte table, with their pistols under their heads, and by the smouldering fire were at rest.
The ground was frozen hard next morning, the miners flocked into the Howlin' Wilderness. The Parson was leading off gaily again and swearing with unusual eloquence and brilliancy, when a tall, thin, and sallow man, from Missouri, known as "The Jumper," entered. He looked wild and excited, and stepped high, as if on stilts.
The tall thin man went straight up to the bar, struck his knuckles on the counter, and nodded at the red bottle before him. It came forward with a glass tumbler, and he drank deep, alone and in silence.
When a miner of the Sierras enters a saloon where other men are seated, and drinks alone, without inviting any one, it is meant as a deliberate insult to those present, unless there is some dreadful thing on his mind.
The Jumper, tall and fidgety, turned to the Parson, bent his back over the counter, and pushed back his hat. Then he drew his right sleeve across his mouth, and let his arms fall down at his side limp and helpless, and his round, brown butternut head roll loose and awkward from shoulder to shoulder.
"Parson."
"Well! well! Spit it out!" cried the Parson as he arose from the bench, with a dreadful oath. "Spit it out! What it h__ is busted now?"
"Parson."
Here the head rolled and the arms swung more than ever, and the man seemed in dreadful agony of mind.
The Parson sprang across the room and caught him by the shoulder. He shook him till hes teeth rattled like quartz in a mill.
"The--the man in black," gasped The Jumper."The black man, on the black horse, with a white choker. Sandy--the--the Widow."
The Parson sunk into a seat, dropped his face in his hands for a moment, trembled only a little, and arose pale and silent. He did not swear at all. I am perfectly certain he did not swear. I know we all spoke of that for a long time afterward, and considered it one of the most remarkable things in all the strange conduct of this man.
When the Parson arose, The Jumper shook himself loose from the counter, and tilted across to the other side of the room, to give him place.
The stricken man put his hands of the counter, peeked over the bar keeper's shoulder at this favorite bottle, as if mournfully to a friend, but said not a word. He emptied a glass, and then, without looking right or left, opened the door, and went straight up to the Parsonage. The Parsonage was the name the boys gave to the cottage on the hill among the trees.
"Gone for his two little bull-pups." said Stubbs. That was what the Parson called his silver-mounted derringers.
"There will be a funeral at the Forks to-morrow," gasped The Jumper.
Here the German undertaker arose cheerfully, and went down to his shop.
"Well, Sandy is no sardine. Bet you boots Sandy ain't no sardine!" said Stubbs. "And, anyhow, he's got the start just a little, if the Parson does nail him. For he's had her first' and that's a heap, I think, for wimmen's mighty precious in the mines--sumthin to die for, you bet."
The Parson was absent for hours, and the Howlin' Wilderness began to grow impatient.
"He's a heeling himself like a fighting-cock," said Stubbs; "and, if Sandy don't go to kingdom come with his boots on, then chaw me up for a shrimp."
The man here went to the door, opened it, put his head out in the frosty weather, and peered up the creek for sandy, and across the creek for the Parson, but neither was in sight.
The "Gay Rooster" company knocked off from their work, with many others and came to town. The Howlin' Wilderness was crowded and doing a rushing business.
The two bar-keepers shifted and carefully arranged the sand-bags under the counter, which in that day and country were placed there in every well-regulated drinking saloon so as to intercept whatever stray bits of lead might be thrown in the direction of their bodies in the coming battle, and calmly awaited results.
About dark, a thin blue smoke, as from burning paper, curled up from the chimney of the Parsonage, and the Parson came slowly forth.
"Blamed if he hasn't been a making of his will and a burning of his letters. Looks grimmer than a deacon too," added the man, as the Parson neared the saloon.
He spoke quietly to the boys, as he entered, but did not swear. That was thought again remarkable, indeed.
He went up to the bar, tapped on the counter with his knuckles, threw his head back over his shoulder toward the crowd, and yet apparently without seeing any one, and said:
"Boys, fall in line, fall in line. Rally around me once again."
They fell in line; or at least the majority die. Some, however, stood off in little knots and groups on the other side, and pretended not to have heard or noticed what was going on. These it was at once understood were fast friends of Sandy's and unbelievers in the Parson.
The glasses were filled quietly, slowly and respectfully, almost like filling a grave, and then emptied in silence.
Again it was observed that the Parson did not swear. That was considered as remarkable as the omission of prayer from the service in a well-regulated church, and I am sure contributed to throw a spirit of restraint over the whole party friendly to the Parson. Besides it was noticed that he was pale, haggard, and had hardly a word to say, and, most of all, had barely touched the glass to his lips.
No one, however, ventured to advise, question or in any way disturb him. All were quiet and respectful. It was very evident that the feeling in the Forks was largely with the Parson.
Sandy did not appear that evening. This of course, was greatly against him. The Forks began to suspect that he feared to take the responsibility of his act, and meet the man he had so strangely deceived and so deeply injured.
The next day the saloon was crowded more densely than before. Men stood off in little knots and groups, talking earnestly. There was but one topic--only the one great subject--the impending meeting between the two leading men of the camp, and the probable result.
The Parson was among the first present that day, pale and careworn. They treated him with all the delicacy of women. Not a word was said in his presence of his misfortune, or the occasion of their meeting. To the further credit of the Forks I am bound to say that there was scarcely and intoxicated man present.
The day passed and still Sandy did not appear. Had there been any other way out of camp than through the Forks and up the rugged, winding corkscrew stairway of rocks opposite, and in the face of the town, it might have been suspected that he had taken the Widow and fled to other lands.
The Parson came down a little late the next morning, pale and quiet, as before. He did not swear. This time, in fact he did not even drink. He sat sat down on a bench behind the monte table with his back to the fire and his face to the door. The men respectfully left a rather broad lane between the Parson and the door, and the monte table was not patronized.
The day passed; dusk, and still Sandy did not appear. By this time he had hardly three friends in the house.
"Hasn't got the soul of a chicken!" "Cave in at last!" "Gone down in his boot!" "Busted in the snapper! "Lost his grip!" "Don't dare show his hand!" These and like expressions, thrown out now and then from the little knots of men here and there, were the certain indications that Sandy had lost his place in the hearts of the leading men of the Forks.
Toward midnight the bolt lifted! Shoo! The door opened and Sandy entered, backed up against the wall by the door, and stood there, tall and silent.
His great beard was trimmed a little, his bushy hair carefully combed behind his ears, and the neck-tie was now subdued into a near love-knot, in spite of its old persistent habit of twisting around fluttering out over his left shoulder. His eye met the Parson's but did not quail.
The bar-keeper settled down gratefully behind the bags of sand, so that his eyes only remained visible above the horizon.
The head of the "Gay Roosters" tilted a table up till it made a respectable barricade for his breast, and the crowd silently settled back in the corners, packed tighter than sardines in a tin box.
You might have heard a mouse, had it crossed the floor. Even the fretful fire seemed to hold for the time its snappish red tongue, and the wind without to lean against the door and listen.
The Parson slowly arose from the table. He has his right hand in his pocket, and was very pale.
Experienced shootists, old hands at mortal combat with their kind, glanced from man to man, measured every motion, every look, with all the intense eagerness of artists who are favored with one great and especial sight, not to be met again. Others held their heads down, and only waited in a confused sort of manner for the barking of the dogs.
Neither of Sandy's hands were visible; but, as the Parson took a few steps forward, and partly drew his hand from his pocket, Sandy's right one came up like a steel spring, and the ugly black muzzle of a six shooter was in the Parson's face.
Still he advanced, till his face almost touched the muzzle of the pistol: He seemed not to see it, or to have the least conception of his danger.
It was strange that Sandy did not pull. Maybe he was surprised at the singular action of the Parson. Perhaps he had his eye on the unlifted right hand of his antagonist. At all events he had the "drop" and could afford to wait the smallest part of a second, and see what he would do.
"I have been a-waiting" The Parson halted a long time at the participle. "I have been a-waiting for you, Sandy, a long time."
His voice trembled. The voice that had thundered above a hundred bar room fights, and had directed the men through many a difficulty in the camp, was now low and uncertain.
"Sandy," he began again, and he took hold of the counter with his left hand, "I am going away, Your cabin is too small now, and I want you and--and--your--your family to take care of the Parsonage till I come back."
Sandy sank back closer still to the wall, and his arm hung down at his side.
"You will move into the Parsonage tomorrow morning. It's full of good things for Winter. You will move in it, I say, tomorrow mornin' early! Promise me that."
The Parson's voice was a little severe here. More determined than before; and as he concluded, he drew the key from his pocket and handed it to Sandy.
"You will?"
"Yes."
The men looked a moment in each other's eyes. Perhaps they we both embarrassed. The door was convenient. That seemed to Sandy the best way out of his confusion, and he opened it softly and disappeared. The Howlin' Wilderness was paralyzed with wonder.
The Parson looked a little while out in the dark through the open door and was gone. The was a murmur of disappointment behind him.
"Don't you fear!" at last chimed in the head of the "Gay Roosters." "Don't you never fear! That old sea dog, the Parson, is deeper than a infernal gulf."
"Look here!" He put up his finger to the side of his nose, after a pause, and, stroking his beard mysteriously, said: "I say, look here! Shoo! Not a Word! Softly now! Powder! That's what it means. Powder! Gits 'em both into the Parsonage and blows 'em to kingdom come together! Gay loving move that will be, won't it?"
The Howlin' Wilderness was reconciled. It was certain that the end was not yet, by a great deal. It was again struck with wonder, however; and for want of a better expression, took a drink and settled down to a game of monte.
Early the next morning--a morning full of unutterable storms and drifts of snow--Sandy, with his bride and their few effects, entered the Parsonage, as he had promised.
The Parson was not to be seen.
Men stood about the door of the Howlin' Wilderness, and up and down the single street, in little knots, noting the course of things at the Parsonage, and now and then shaking their loose blanket coats and brushing off the fast falling snow.
After a while, when the smoke rose up from the chimney top and curled above the Parsonage with a home like leisure as if a woman's hand tended the fire below, a man with hes face muffled up, was seen making his way slowly up the rugged way that led led from the town across the Sierra.
It was a desperate and dangerous undertaking at that season of the year. He made but poor headway, in the face of the storm that came pelting down in his face form the fields of eternal snow: but he seemed determined, and pushed slowly on. Some times it was observed he would turn, and, shading his eyes from the snow, look down intently at the peaceful smoke drifting through the trees above the Parsonage.
"Some poor idiot will pass in his check tonight if he don't come back pretty soon," said Stubbs, as he nodded at the man up the hill, brushed the snow from his sleeves, and went back into the saloon.
Sandy soon took his old place in the hearts of the boys. His wife was the sun and moon and the particular star of the camp; and the Parson was for a time almost forgotten, save by the two people at the Parsonage. Often Sandy sought him, up and down the creek; but he was not to be found. He had evidently left the camp.
After a month or two the talk became more general and respectful about the Parson.
It was with a little surprise that the Forks discovered, one evening, while discussing his merits and recounting his achievements, that he had never really killed a man during all his stay in the camp. How a man could have maintained the reputation for courage that this man had, and have held the influence over men that he did, without having killed a single man, seemed to the Forks unaccountable. Still they spoke of this man with kindness and almost with gentleness , and missed him through all the long, weary Winter more that they were willing to admit.
Spring came a last; but not the Parson. The Summer passed; but the Parson still refused to appear.
Early in Autumn some prospectors pushed far up the Fork, running parallel with the trail leading out of camp; and there, in the leaves, they found a skull. There was a hole in the temple, and the marks of sharp teeth on the smooth white surface. They also found a few other bones, badly eaten by wolves, and a small silver mounted pistol.
The party came down to the Forks one night, where Sandy and his friends were enjoying themselves at the Howlin' Wilderness.
The leader told what they had found, and laid the pistol on the counter.
It was one of the Parson's little "bull pups."
The pistol was empty. Sandy touched it tenderly, almost reverently.
The boys stood in line at the bar. The glassed were filled in silence.
Then Sandy pushed back his black slouch hat, pulled it from his head and laid it on the counter.
"Boys," he began, as he stood on one legs, leaning against the counter, and looking sadly down into the tumbler. "Boys, here's to--here's to the--"
He looked down, and began again.
"Boys he was deep, deep down to the bed rock, boys; but the pay grit was there--pure, pure, gold."
The strong men drank, and wiped their beards and eyes with their sleeves, as they turned away. Sandy did not touch the glass to his lips; but his brown face and beard were wet somehow, as he took up his hat and went to the door. He looked up the hill, along the rocky trail; the, brushing his eyes with his hands, went slowly and sadly back to the cottage in the trees, to tell the sad new to his "family."
"Pa! Pa! There stands Murietta!" Pa put up his glasses as the carriage spun on around in the little drive on the Pincian Hill, and then Mollie half stood up in the carriage, and waved her parasol and shouted in the hope of catching the eye Murietta as the carriage spun on around and rose up again; and half a dozen gallant Itallans sprang forward to save her in case she should fall; but still the artist did not see. Suddenly there was a parasol poked in his face. Murietta started back. Mollie poked the footman in the back with her parasol; the footman poked the coachman in the ribs with his elbow; the coachman pulled his reins, and the carriage came to rest on the parapet overlooking the great Piazza del Popolo.
"Boo!"cried the lightearted Mollie as she thrust out with her bayonet and poked the pensive artist in the back with the point of it. The officers sprang forward in a platoon to catch the lively little Amazon in case she should spill from the carriage; but she brushed them aside with her bayonet and shouted aloud to the artist who was just now turning about.
"Oh my eye! Oh my eye! Don't look this way! don't! don't! Don't know a body, do you?" She put up her hands, parasol and all, and laughed and pretended to try to hide her face; and then she reached out and put her arms about the artist's neck and pulled him in towards the carriage, and pushed and leaned and reached till all the army of polite officers came up again to the rescue, and stood there expecting every moment to see her spill herself to the ground.
"Well now, you are the worst! And when did you come? And where did you go? And where are you now? And where will you be? and how have you been?"
The Californian girl paused for breath as the artist shook General Wopsus by the hand in that easy and careless way of the West which showed that the two men were at least old campaigners, if not old friends.
Then leaning her head towards Marietta, she said "Do you see those fellows in buttons? All these here, thick enough to stir 'em with a stick, aren't they?" And here she made a movement with her parasol as if she was stirring them up very lively. "Well, them's my lovers! All them my lovers; just think of it! And — look here!" she bent her head again towards the artist, "What do you think? They're princes and counts and marquises and dukes and barons and earls, and everything! besides being officers, you see? You bet you!" She turned her head, held out her parasol sociably as if to receive on the point of it a bold officer who looked as if he was about to make a charge upon the carriage, and continued, "Yes — and I'm going to Court too! And I'm going with a prince! Bet your life! a prince — a real live prince! What would they say to Mollie Wopsus now, I wonder, in Mexico or California, eh?"
The lively little Mollie thrust out her parasol in the direction in which she suposed Mexico and California to be, as if she would run them through for some old slight or another; and then again dropping her head to the artist, whispered "And I've got a real lover too, Mr. Murietta, a count and an officer, with the brightest sword and epaulettes, and belts and buttons and things! And oh! Papa won't let us get married, you know, at all, at all, because he has not yet come into possession of his castle, — an old, old uncle, you know, who keeps living on and living on and living on just for spite you know. And then," and here the head fell to one side and the girl grew very serious "and then he's so mean to Count Paolini, don't you know? and the count being a gentlman can't at all get on with his pay, for it is not enough for a gentleman to live upon. And so, you see-"she looked up to see if Pa was listening "and so you see I divide with him, I do! Oh, it's so nice! Better than a novel, ain't it?"
Murietta smiled; and the happy girl went on "And oh, don't you like Rome? And oh, ain't it such a pretty place to buy jewellery? And then, such handsome men you know! and they are so polite, and then only to think — only to be surrounded all the time by dukes and princes, and counts and barons! I declare, Mr. Murietta, I'm ashamed, heartily ashamed, of being only a general's daughter."
"Ah, but, Miss Wopsus, when you marry the count, that will be changed, you know!"
"When I do! Yes, yes, indeed it will, and the sooner the quicker, say I! You see this don't last always. I know whole stacks of American girls who are coming over here next year — and this thing won't keep you know! These dukes and counts and barons and marquises will all be married you know. And then, then what will become of Mollie Wopsus?" She buried her face in her hands and shook her head. "if I don't get Count Paolini I shall die! I shall die, and be buried in the cold, cold ground, and-" Here the band struck up to its highest and final note; and the horses began to plunge and prance, and the carriage began to move. Mollie kissed her hand as the general reached his, to Murietta. "Yes, I shall die, shall die — And oh! You must dine with us today, and I declare I am real hungry at the thought of dinner! How a fellow can eat in Rome! and-" The carriage was whirled away and the pleasant words California girl were spilled in the tumult, trodden under the feet of the prancing horses, and lost.
Murietta's heart was made lighter by this young woman whom he had met often before in the far West, and gathering his cloak about him he was sauntering away when a heavy hand fell upon his shoulder. He turned and that hand was offered in token of friendship. "I am rough but honest, a man who carries his heart in his hand. I am a man of the world; you are an artist. You dream, I work. Come, we can be of use to each other as friends. It is best to be friends."
Murietta drew back and wrapped his cloak closer about him. "What if I prefer to be enemies?"
"Ha! ha! just what I was saying! You are a dreamer! Well, there is no occasion for being enemies, none in the least; I only want to ask you a question or two about a certain young lady with whom I just now saw you conversing in a most friendly manner." The admiral took out a large note book from his breast pocket, and began to scan a list of names, with figures, dates, addresses, and the like, set opposite them. He stopped reading a moment, tapped the leather noteook with his fingers as if it had been a kind of instrument on which he was about to play a tune, and then, stepping closer to the side of the artist, and looking carefully about to see that no one was listening, went on— "I am a blunt and open-hearted man, a rough but honest sailor — Ah! you smile at this! But if you come to know me you will say at last, ay! you will inscribe it upon my tombstone, 'The admiral was a rough but an honest man.' Well, as I was saying," Here the fingers played up and down the back of the leather note book as if they were about to begin the tune. "as I was saying, I am a blunt, honest man, and if I tell you why I want to know these things, and you see nothing wrong in it, will you not tell me?"
"Well, yes." said the artist, half sullenly, and gathering his cloak still closer up under his chin.
"Then I proceed to explain." The fingers again played a tattoo up and down the back of the leather note book, and the admiral, looking again over his shoulder to be doubly sure that no one was listening, went on. "In the first place you, you, Murietta, ought to belong to my association. You have a reputation. Well, reputation is money. Fame is money. Title is money. The name of a count is worth so much in market. A duke so much. A marquis so much. A general so much, and so on. Well, the name of an illustrious painter is worth, — let me see"— the fingers again ran up and down the imaginary keys on the back of the leather note book "is worth, say — well! say a quarter of a million francs." Murietta loosened his cloak a little from under his chin and relaxed his features. He was getting interested to know what this mysterious, half-hideous man was drivng at.
"You follow me?"
"Yes."
"You are interested, then."
"Yes."
"Well, you are poor."
"Certainly, if that is any of your busiess."
"No offence — no offence. I am a blunt but honest man, and only want to feel my way across the ground as I proceed." The fingers again tapped and danced along the back of the note book. "Now we come to the pith and core of the question. Thouands of young ladies pour into this country every year from America, and also from England. They are the cream of the country, and particularly from America, are the wealthiest and best of the land. Of course they are vulgar, very loud and very vulgar, but then they are also very rich. Well, you follow me."
"Yes."
"Good. These girls, vulgar but rich, come here in nine cases out of ten to get married. That is their business. They have no other. Particularly those from America are here for that purpose, and that purpose alone. They know nothing about art; they care less. They would give more to look upon the face of a single member of a royal family than to see all the works of Michael Angelo or Da Vinci."
"Well, suppose what you say is the truth, what of it?" Murietta was again gathering up his cloak and contracting his brows.
"That is it, that is. Now we come to the point." He again tapped and tattooed on the back of the note book. "Put this and that together, and you will understand. These girls, these vulgar but wealthy women from the West, are here to get husbands. Shall they be disappointed? No! A gallant man will not willingly see a lady disappointed. I am a gallant man. I have set my heart to assist them in this matter. I go about doing good in sllence. They do not know, do not dream, how I am assisting them, in their efforts to get what they have crossed the seas to obtain."
"I do not understand you at all."
"Look here! read these names. I am a blunt and an honest man — a man who carries his heart in his hand. I have nohing whatever to conceal. Read these." The admiral handed the book to the artist, and struck an attitude before him as if he would sit for the personification of simple innocence. Murietta glanced down a long list of names nich addresses, dates, and figures opposite them.
"There!" The admiral pointed to the name of Mollie Wopsus. "There! Now what sum shall we set opposite? In other words what is she worth? She comes here to be married like the others. She, like the others, wants a title. Very well. These titled gentlemen are my friends. They are not to be imposed upon. Now, sir, she wants a title. She is easily caught, too easily; we are afraid of her. We cannot find out what she is worth. She comes from too remote a quarter. We have agents in New York, in Boston, in Chicago, who keep us informed here and in Paris, and in all great cities of the continent, and we know oftentimes better than the father himelf knows, what his daughter is worth. But here, sir, we are in a dilemma. Now you know this young lady. You not only know what she is worth, but, should she prove to be wealthy, you can materially assist her, assist her, mark you, in a most gallant and disinterested way, to procure a husband. There! there! pardon me," said the old admiral, catching his breath and reaching out and taking his book, and again tapping the tattoo on its back. "Pardon me, sir, but I hope I have now proved to you that I have no secrets at all in this matter from gentlemen, from gentlemen, mark you. And now, sir, what sum shall we set against the name of the vivacious Miss Mollie Wopsus."
Murietta seemed to have a sudden inspiation. He drew his cloak closer up under his chin and said through his teeth: "Ten million francs."
The admiral wrote the figures down with as much coolness as if he had been entering a note of the weather. Muritta remained no longer, but left the man writing in his leather note book, and melted away in the crowd.
* * * * * *The sun was brighter than ever. The whole hilltop blossomed with beautiful women from the four wide quarters of the Christian world. They walked, they rested in the sun on the benches by the beautiful figures in marble and by the fountains where white swans swam in reedy little lakes. The same great girdle of carriages kept whirling around the rim of the blossoming hill and Mollie Wopsus again poked the footman in the back, who set things in order to stop the carriage. Then Mollie reached her hand to Marietta, and seemed so very happy. This time there was a perfect swarm of gilded butterflies about this wild flower from California, and she revelled in her glory. The old General Wopsus, too, came in for a good share of compliment and flattery, and with all his sound railroad sense, was not at all displeased at it. He sat back there as a sort of king on his throne receiving homage and bestowing honours. In fact, he was a king even at home for he was the great railroad king of the West. His wife, Mrs. General Wopsus, sat beide her daughter, a careworn woman, with the lines of her husband's railroads written all over her face. A good woman as ever breathed, full of heart and soul and sympathy for all things, rational and irrational; yet, like most of her compatriots, most uncommonly weak on the subject of rank and titles. And being a woman, how could she not be overcome with this flood of flattery that poured in upon the little group of Wopsuses.
"Oh, ain't it jolly?" shouted Miss Wopsus as the artist pushed back his hat and took her extended hand. Whatever it was she referred to as being particularly "jolly" he did not know, perhaps she did not know herself. The reasonable thing is to suppose that she felt "jolly" on general principles. "Oh, ain't it gay though!" She threw out her arms, parasol and all, and caught the artist around the neck as if she were going to salute him or drag him into the carriage and cover him up in her lap. The Italians — princes, dukes, counts, marquises, and barons — who had sprung forward as she threw her arms out, now saw that the embrace was not for them, and they fell back to a respectful distance, tapped their sword hilts, smiled pleasantly, looked at each other, patted the sand with their boots, and kept time to the music, and watched till Mollie Wopsus was done with the stranger. "Oh, ain't it delicious living in foreign lands?" The pretty Califomian loosened her arms from the artist, clasped her hands, and setting her head to one side, looked up in an ecstasy of delight. The good Mrs. Wopsus was so affected that a little express train of shining tears started down one of the railroad lines, but collided at the corner of one of the nuerous junctions, and went all to pieces.
"But then you see, Mr. Murietta, they are not all foreigners. And the Americans"— here Mollie's head drooped to one side again, the clasped hands went up, and the soft brown eyes went down "the Americans, you know, Mr. Murietta, are so, so very, very vulgar. You see, Mr. Murietta, they were not even educated abroad. O, Count Paolini says they are so, so vulgar!" Then she sighed as she thought of Paolini, and her head fell down, and her hands went up and clasped, as if in a sort of petition to the railroad king for her lover the count. Dear spoilt little Mollie Wopsus! She had been to school almost a year in Paris. Therefore Mollie had been educated in Europe, and felt that she had a perfect right to cut her American friends — save a very few favoured ones like the famous artist — and she did cut them on every posible occasion. The music had again reached the high note, and the leaves were dancing on the trees, and the palm was reaching his broad hands to give the blessing, and the horses were prancing and shaking the harness. Mollie caught the artist by the cloak, lifted her sceptre-like parasol, pulled, and landed him, with her father's help, in the seat by the side of the king of railroads. The horses pressed forward; the Italian knights and noblemen fell back, hat in hand, at precisely the same moment, made precisely the same low bow with precisely the same gesture, as if they had all been parts of a sort of machine in first rate working order, which had been set in motion by the wheels of the carriage of the Wopsuses.
"Yes, we are going to Court. Pa's going to Court. Mamma's going to Court. We are all going to Court. And we, bet your life! we go on our own hook, don't we, pa?" Pa pecked his head a little as if he had been a parrot on a pole, and went on with his thinking.
"Look here, I'll tell you something." Mollie reached out, took the artist by the cloak, and pulled him towards her. "You see,"she went on "the rest of 'em have to go to the minister. There they register in a book, and the minister gets 'em invited to Court. Pshaw! Not for Joseph!" She snapped her fingers in the air, and then, taking up her parasol, made several sword thrusts at the naked boughs that hung above the carriage as it whirled on around the Pincian. "Not much! We go cross lots — we do, don't we, pa?" Pa again pecked his head at the daughter, and kept up his thinking about his gridiron of raiboads in the great West. But the kind mother was again so affected by the happiness of her daughter and their good fortune among the great people of this foreign land, that she again sent a little express train of shining tears down one of her numerous railroad lines, till it collided against a pleasant smile at the comer of her mouth.
"Here they come! look, here they come! Look, here they come!" Mollie had thrown down her parasol, and was now clasping her chubby hands with perfect delight. The carriage was again rolling up to the point where she had parted with her suitors. True enough, they were coming trooping through the beds and avenues of flowers, and winding in and out through the carriages, and coming up straight to the presence of the railroad king and his daughter with the ten million dowry. "Dear, dear! Mr. Murietta, what could you have said about me yesterday? I declare it was bad enough yesterday, but today it is perfectly alarming. And I tell you, look here," She reached and caught the artist again by the cloak and pulled him forward so that her parents might not hear. "look here! I think I can do better than take Count Paolini. Count Paolini is all right, you know, and I tell you it will break my heart to give him up. It will break my heart, but I can do better — I — I-" She put up her hands and burst into tears. "It will break — break— it will break my — my — boo, hoo, hoo!"
The carriage spun through the crowd and sped on around the hill, while the polite Italians lifted their hats.
* * * * * *There was a general "evening" to be given at the palace at the head of the Scala de Spagna. There was the picture of an American eagle with outspread wings above. There was a porter sound asleep in a little lodge which was not nearly big enough for a bedoom, yet a great deal too big for a coffin. Murietta had come late, and he waked up this man with a military cap and military clothes, made the necessary inquiries as to the route he should take in the labyrinth of stairs, and on what particular flat or floor he should stop and pull the bell, and slipping a franc into the fellow's hand as a sort of healing plaster for his broken rest, he passed up as he had been directed.
Here was the din and tumult of a hundred voices. Above the tumult the voice of Mollie Wopsus rose like the call of a hunter's horn, and she was everywhere and at the same time the happiest heart, and the most guileless in all Rome. "Bet your life, here he is, mamma! here he is, Now come! we're going to have something to eat. Ah, they do make the best lobster salads in Rome! Celery and lobster and vinegar and oil! Oh, it's awful jolly! Come along, come. You've got to take mamma to supper, the hostess said so, 'cause we all come from California you know. Come now — come along! Oh if my dear count was only here"
Murietta laughed outright. "Love and lobster salad! Oh Mollie, you will do!" `She was so thoroughly good, so simple-hearted, that everybody smiled, and said "Oh, it's only Mollie Wopsus." and sat down to the repast where Murietta found himself seated between Mrs. Wopsus and a countess.
Mollie sat opposite, and was soon entrenched behind a perfect barricade of salad, and was firing right and left with her tongue at the officers of the Italian army. "Ha!" She put up her hand, fork and all, and leaning half way over the table, to Murietta, said "There you are again making love to the countess!" and all the table looked up and laughed, while the face of the countess took on the hue of not only pink but scarlet.
"Ah! you are only jealous and provoked because your count is not here."
"Bet your life I am provoked because he ain't here."
"And why is he not here, then?" queried Murietta across the table.
"Because, because you see he and Prince Trawaska have gone to Court. They have to be there, you see."
`"And why do they have to be there?"
"Oh, they have to be — that's all. I reckon it is because the king wants them. Maybe the Court could not go on without them — don't know — but Prince Trawaska-"
"Prince who?" asked Murietta, for the first time catching the name that seemed to be familiar.
"Prince Trawaska, or something of that kind. He's not an Italian, you know. No, he's one of those dreadful Germans, with big red ears and big red heads and big red faces, that look just like as if they had just been born, you know." And here Mollie set her fork handle down on the table with the prongs erect in the air like the trident of Neptune in the Vatican statue, while her pretty lips pouted and wrestled with a mouthful of lobster salad.
"Mollie, I know a Prince Trawaska." answered Marietta, half gravely, across the table.
"Ah, do you, do you, do you? Now, that's nice, you bet your life! Maybe it's the same one and maybe it's not. That will do you see for the first chapter of a novel. There'll be two. One of them will be a villain, you know, and he will marry some beautiful princess. "Yes, yes, that's it, bet your life! One of them, you see, will be the heavy villain of the novel. He will marry somebody, and then the other one, who will be the brave good knight, will come and rescue her and kill the wicked prince. And then she will mourn very deeply and very properly, and then the cross old father will get reconciled, and will give them any amount of tin and say, 'Bless you, my children!' And then, after mourning very deeply for just six months to the day, they will be married and move into a great castle with towers and battlements and a secret passage and — Oh bet your life! I could write the best novel in the world, I could."
The trident went down and made a harpoon plunge at the diminished heap of salad, and Mollie's little mouth was stopped effectually for some time.
"But Mollie, suppose these two particular princes and the villain turn out to be the same one?"
"Oh nonsense, but it doesn't, it won't, it can't. It never does, you know. It never will."
"No, not in fiction. But it may in fact, nevertheless."
"Well, Miss Mollie, I will not frighten you any more. I only want to tell you, however, that this Prince Trawaska that I know is not an Italian, that he is a colonel in the Italian army, that he has enormous ears, a red, smooth, fat face, a stout chin, and a long sabre at his side."
The Italians present were leaning and listening with as much attention and interest as their matchless politeness will allow. Murietta went on, "And also I want to tell you that we live in the same house, on the same floor, and-"
Mollie could contain herself no longer. "Good! tip-top, first class, bet your life! On the same floor with a prince."
"Yes, next door to him, in fact. He and an Italian count occupy the adjoining room. And the prince is a knave!"
Mollie caught up and again clanged down the trident on the empty plate till it rang like a sword on a helmet. "Next thing you'll be saying something dreadful about Count Paolini, you will! and I won't stand it, I won't!" Down went the little head, up went the little hands, and tears ran through the fingers like rain. Then in a moment she seemed to rally, and thought she had something to say and thought she could trust herself to say it, and taking down her hands and taking up the trident, she began: "Bet your life, if— if— Bet your life, if — boo — hoo — hoo-"
But Mollie soon recovered. These were April showers falling in the bright springtime of her youth, and the sun soon was shining bright as ever. "I will never speak to you again, Mr. Murietta. Never, so long as I live. No, Mr. Murietta, I will not. I love Count Paolini, and I don't care who knows it; and I will have him, or it will kill me! There now! It's out, and I will never speak to you again. Please, Signor Coombo, pass me the salad."
The lobster salad was passed. "And now, Mr. Murietta," said Mollie, as she set the trident in rest, "I want to know how you know Prince Trawaska is a villain." Murietta only said "Tomorrow," in answer.
Murietta looked up, glad as if he had heard the voice of a bird above him in his native woods of the Pacific. "By the bald-headed Elijah! There he is at last! Come in! come up! That's right! That's the way, right through there to the left, and I will meet you on the step."
"Come up, Murietta! do come up," said the good old General Wopsus "it will be such a relief to have one man at least by my side who is not an Italian count, or a Polish prince, or an American colonel."
He entered at once, and handed his cloak and hat to the porter, and passed on up the stairs, where Mollie met him with extended arms.
"And you must never speak to me any more. Never so long as I live," laughed Mollie, and she handed the artist over to her mother, and then to her father, who proceeded to hand him over to counts and colonels and princes. And the first count there, at least the first in favour in the eyes of Mollie, was the Count Paolini.
And the first in favour, in the eyes of the general, of all the assembled princes, was the Prince Trawaska.
Murietta sat down in silence. In truth there was a very awkward silence just then, and as the artist sat there looking down into the white and now half-deserted street, he saw or rather felt that the handsome Paolini was eyeing him from head to foot.
Paolini had recognized him. He knew perfectly well that this man who sat there so quiet and so complacently, and who seemed to be hand and glove with this woman of prodigious wealth, was the very man who dwelt in the mean and wretched rooms next door to his own, on the side of the Tarpeian Rock. And he was thinking how he should conciliate him, win him to his side, and make him his ally in this campaign on which depended his fall or his fortune.
Then his brows gathered. Another and a darker thought took hold of him. He said to himself, "Why conciliate? Are there not enough desperadoes in Rome to meet this one man, who scours the darkest streets at the most dangerous hours of the night? Is the Tiber not deep and dark enough to hide him and my secret with him? He looked into the face of Murietta with all his might. He could see no further into his soul than one can see into the dark and turbid Tiber. He was troubled and annoyed at the artist's composure.
* * * * * *He was now before the one work in marble worth making the circuit of the world to see. You cannot get away from this pitiful face and figure if you would. The man is down, dying. He is half resting on his right hand, but you seem to see him sinking. You are certain he will fall every moment. His brow seems to perspire. You hold your breath as you look at him, and sympathize with him, and suffer with him. You are actually suffering with this piece of ancient marble. What a despair in his held-down face! What a sick look in his swooning eyes!
"Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday. Bet your life, that's why the Romans have got so many holidays. Because they butchered so many of them gladiators. How d'ye do, Murietta?"
Mollie turned to her father "Come along, governor, here he is! Now then, if you want an antiquity, buy that! O, how sick he does look. It makes me hungry!" So saying, she took the artist by the arm, and leaving her parents and the party of Americans to walk around and wonder at the "Sick" gladiator, she led him on into the next room. "And O, thou thunder-stricken nurse of Rome!" cried Mollie, as she caught sight of the big brass wolf standing up astride of the two twins, and pointing out her sharp nose, and looking as stiff and stupid as a wooden hobby horse.
"Why don't you quote Byron, Mr. Murietta? Don't you know that everybody spouts Byron that comes to Italy? That's why they put so much of Byron in the guide-book Want to have it ready, you see. Why, when I go into the Coliseum I fire Byron at the Colieum. When I go into any place or any city, and I want to stand there and say something nice and sentimental, why I just turn to my red back book, and there it is all ready, all ready, all cooked up. Byron, Byron, Byron"
Then pretty Mollie clasped her ruddy hands, put her parasol up under her wing of an elbow, and pouting out her lips, began in a loud and solemn voice:
"And O, thou thunder-stricken nurse of —
Oh, just see! just look there! how one of her hind legs has been split and torn! Bet that's where the dogs caught her, eh?
Poor little twins! How hungry they do look! Come along, come along, let's see this old Socrates. Why, he looks like an Irish plug-ugly, with his nose all knocked up. Bet your life! Square off old Sack!" And then she threw her parasol up under her arm, doubled up her fist and stood in a very warlike attitude before the old philosopher, who had perhaps seen quite enough of that in his lifetime to last him to the end.
At length Mollie fell in with one of the handsome and polite sergeants in attendance, and went on to another room as the general came up, and Marietta still lingered about "the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome," for to him it was full of history and meaning.
Then Mrs. Wopsus having done with the Dying Gladiator, came in with her face wet with tears, and lifting up her eyes saw the storied wolf and her twins. She then held her head, threw up her hands, clasped them together, and, perfectly certain that she was doing something very original, said
"And O, thou, thunder stricken nurse of Rome"
Then there came in an old party with green glasses and a very large umbrella, and looking up he started back, and with extended arms and umbrella said, in a deep and dreadful voice that sounded as if it might com up from out a pulpit,-
"And O, thou thunder-stricken nurse of Rome."
as if he had done a good thing and done it well, the green glasses and the great umbrella passed on in the wake of Mrs. Wopsus, as if they had their own opinion of men who could not on great occasions like this quote the immortal poet.
A young man just from school came next, and walking up to the frigid and misshapen wolf, he deliberately opened his red book and, striking an oratorical attitude, read as follows in a loud, clear voice : —
"And O, thou thunder-stricken nurse of Rome"
Then this young man passed on, feeling very sure that this thing had never been done before.
A tall and bony woman entered now, and lifting her gold rimmed spectacles, she walked straight up before the nose of the brass wolf, put her nose against it, and then stepping back, made a grimace at it and said "Booh" Then she shook her head and said "Don't you think I'm afraid of you if you did have twins." Then steping still further back she opened a book, turned through the leaves, and at last seemed to find what she sought, for she adjusted her spectacles and then she shrieked out in a voice that was sharp enough to split even the brass ears of the brass wolf:
"And O, thou thunder-stricken nurse of Rome."
Then the special correspondent took out a carpenter's rule, and measuring the exent of the rupture on the hind leg, she made a note of it in her book and passed on.
Another figure, tall and gaunt and threadbare, stood in the presence of the bronze wolf. Then a long lean umbrella shot down upon the floor, and the old missionary of Naples, shaking his death's head on the tombstone till the weeping willows waved about it mournfully, said in a voice that seemed to come from the grave :
"And O, thou thunder-stricken nurse of Rome"
Then, taking up his umbrella, and assuming the most meek and humble carriage and expression of countenance, went up and reached out his hand and tried to tear off one of the twins and put it in his pocket, but finding it was too securely fastened, and also finding that a sergeant who seemed to be asleep was not asleep, he passed on, and to the great relief of Murietta, did not see him.
The American party having completed the round of the museum, returned; and Mollie, bouncing into the room as she had first entered it that morning, found Murietta still dividing his attention between the Gladiator and the Wolf. "Come. Bet your life you've got to come. You can't shake me; I come from California, I do, and I know my way about. Now you come along, that's a good old boy."
Murietta, glad enough to go, go anywhere with this lively, light hearted, and honest creature, this bit of California sunshine, anyhere to get away from himself, away from his thoughts, offered her his arm good naturedly, and asked: "But where do you go, Miss Mollie?"
"O/, we're all going to jail, you know! Won't that be jolly? Bet your life I'll have a flirtation with the jailer, make him give me up his keys, and all that you know."
"But what jail are you going to this pleasant weather?"
"Oh, the jail, you know, where they kept St. Paul and St. Peter, and where, poor old Jugurtha was starved, and where the jailer was baptized, and where the spring of cool water came up to baptize him in, and all that, you know. Didn't you never hear of it all? Well, I read it this morning in the guide book. It's just here, you know. There it is! Here's the door. They've turned it into a church, you see."
Down, down, down, and around the old priest led, and as he passed down a step so narrow that Mollie and her mother could hardly pass their crinolines through, he crossed himself devoutly, and told his beads, and mumbled his prayers.
"Say! Look here, Mr. Monk, now what does that mean?"
Mollie stopped the whole party in its dark descent of the narrow stairs, and stopped the good priest in his prayers, and would not pass on till he turned about and explained that the hole in the wall to the right was the place where the head of St. Peter struck one day when the jailer pushed him down the steps toward his dungeon, and that it was one of the most sacred things in Rome.
Soon they reached the round dark cell. There, above them, just high enough to permit them to stand and swing a lamp, and by the dim light, you could see the very hole through which the great African king was dropped when they starved him to death. There lay the same great stone that was closed above his living grave. You could almost hear it fall: you could almost hear the stony walls echo —
"Ye gods, how cold are the baths of Rome."
"And this is the stone that St. Peter sat on," began the priest in a mournful voice.
"Oh, is it"said Mollie, and she looked about and sat flat down on the cold, damp rock in a manner so refreshing, that it fairly took the good father's breath.
"And this,"the priest began again"is the holy fountain of water that burst forth to baptize the converted jailer."
"Mollie, I thought you were going to flirt with the jailer."
"Flirt with your grandmother! Do you suppose I want to flirt with a man in a brown petticoat"
"Ah well, Mollie, never mind! We will send for the Count Paolini, and fancy that he is jailer."
"Oh, I'm so hungry! Look here, Mr. Monk, hand me that dipper." The California girl had been fumbling all the time in her pocket, and at last had brought out a roll of sandwiches and a wing of chicken.
The astonished priest passed the dipper of water, and as he proceeded to tell all the wonderful things that had taken place in that terrible prison, the little lady sat no the sacred stone, drank from the holy fountain, and eat her lunch of sandwiches and chicken wing with perfect satisfaction, while her mother stood by and looked tearfully on, and tried to follow the good priest in his mournful catalogue of crimes.
"No more, Mr. Monk, thank you. Now I am ready to go" and the arbitrary little tyrant led off up the narrow steps, munching a chicken bone as she went.
She stopped at the holy hole in the wall, and laid her head in it, and then began to scream and shout like an Irish milkmaid. It was over in an instant. But poor Mrs. Wopsus was in a fountain of tears at once.
"Oh my child, my child! what in the world has happened?"
"Bet your life I don't put my head in there again," said Mollie, half laughing, half crying, as she stood out on the upper floor.
"But, my child, my dear Mollie, what in the world has happened?"
"Nothing, nothing's up, I tell you. It's all hunky now. I only put my head in there while I was chewing my chicken, and I chucked my chin. That's all. See there! That's blood. Scratched my chin on old St. Peter's rock. Bet your life he's got a harder head than I have"
Mollie stood rubbing her chin; Mrs. Wopsus stood rolling her eyes, and the general was fumbling in his vest pocket for the usual five-franc piece for seeing this gloomy dungeon; while Murietta was thinking of the mighty men who had gone down in the great whirlpool of Rome, that for centuries drew all things to its centre and swallowed them up as if it had been a living monster.
"And they have turned this into a church too." said the quiet old general, looking up as they passed out and bent their steps toward the Temple of Vesta. Passing over the sort of bridge that crosses the excavations of the Forum, that in fact runs right over and above the remnants of the ancient Forum, they soon stood before a little round structure of marble, topped with a rotund roof of tiles, and not a great deal larger than a wigwam of buffalo skins in the West.
The party entered. There was one priest there to open the door, and another to stand before the altar and beg money. They saw some old relics, some wretched pictures, and that was all.
"And when was this built?" asked the general. The priests could not tell. They could not tell when it was built, who built it, or what it was built for. They only knew that it was called the Temple of Vesta that it was a church now, and that sometimes it stood up to its waist in the waters of the Tiber, on whose very brink it stood.
The general again fumbled in his vest pocket for the expected five francs, and Mollie rubbed her chin at the blue Madonna with the lamp at her feet, and Murietta mused and wondered what was the differnce between this lamp, this fine evening time now, and the lamp and the sacred fire of the vestal virgins that burned in these same walls attended by never sleeping virgins twenty centuries before.
"Well," said General Wopsus, feeling that he was buying a great deal of religion, as he tapped his vest's pocket, "well, they have turned this into a Catholic church, too."
It was but a few steps from the Temple of Vesta to the Temple of Fortune, just across the narrow, dirty street from the house of Rienzi the Tribune. They found that this ancient and venerable statue was of more imposing proportions by a great deal than the Temple of Vesta; but, to the infinite disgust of the general, who was anything but a Catholic, they found a great leathern apron swinging there, and a priest to pull it back and importune you for alms. The same mournful pictures, the same blue Madonna, with the dim lamp at her feet, and that was all they found in the ancient and storm stained Temple of Fortune. Again the general fumbled in his pocket. Murietta mused and wondered if the goddess would be kinder to him now that he had made a pilgrimage to her shrine. And Mollie still rubbed her chin, and Mrs. Wopsus rubbed her nose, and said, —
"My! what a smell"
"And what next" asked the general, with a smiling air and gesture, of the group as they stood under the marble eaves of the house of the Last of the Tribunes.
"Let us see the Cloaca Maxima." said Murietta "It is just here, close by the Temple of Janus."
"The Cloaca Whatima?"asked the mischievous Mollie.
"Why, the great cloaca," answered Muietta. "It is the great drain cut by the Tarquins, and it has been the sewer of Borne for more than twenty centuries."
"No, no," said the general, raising his voice. "We will not go there to see a sewer so old as that, for if we did we should find it turned into a Catholic church."
Murietta laughed." Then I propose the Theatre of Marcellus." said he.
"But is it not shut in Carnival?" asked the general.
"Ah yes," answered Murietta. "This theatre is shut this Carnival and every Carnival. And, in fact, it has been shut ever since about the time of the death of Julius Caesar."
"Bet your life I want to go there. I've heard all about this place. Lively lizards there, and all that. Thieves, banditti! Jolly, won't it be! Come along! Buckle on your swords!" And off led the lively Mollie up and amid the way of the Montenare between the Tiber and the Capitoline Hill.
* * * * * *"How tired and hungry it looks!" Mollie stood before the mighty structure with her back to the Tarpeian Rock, and in that one sentence photographed the grand old battle torn edifice better than many a polished page could do it. By degrees they drew up to the dingy shops and dens in the once lofty and beautifully chiselled arches of the theatre. Soon they found their way into the shop of the old maker and vendor of antiquities, and the general was at once at home and very delighted. Ah yes! the general knew an old coin at the first glance. He had at least a thousand coins all procured at immense cost of time and money. He felt of those before him, and pronounced them about the best he had ever seen. He talked in a very patronizing way to the cunning old vendor, and told him that they had got to making spurious old coins in England as well as in America, and shipping them to Rome.
"Be careful," said the simple-hearted Californian general, "be careful, my old friend, or they will impose upon you! You see they may come down here to you in your isolated retreat, and sell you these coins at a seeming sacrifice, and ruin you; ruin you both in fortune and your good name."
The old prince was very much afraid they would indeed, and his hands trembled and shook as he handled his coins, that seemed older even than the baby toys of Father Time.
Mollie was amused with all the many curiosities the venerable dealer set before them with a trembling hand on the rickety bench by the door, and so was her mother. They liked these things because the goodnatured general liked them. They were his great delight, and the party lingered here even till the setting of the sun. Many and many a coin, and many a curious sphinx and cat and serpent were selected and set aside, and the old dealer kept blessing his patron saint and the good Madonna who had led these people to his door.
"You should be on the Corso with these things, you should be on the Corso, by all means, or at least in the Via Condotti," said the general to the old palsied prince.
"Ah, that has been the ambition of my life. But my children are so many and my customers so few, that I have never dared leave the shelter of this gloomy den of ours, and here I must live and die,"sighed the old man"unless the good Madonna sends me some day another customer as kind and generous as yourself."
"Another customer! Well, I will send you another customer, I will send you two, three, four; we will buy, before we leave Rome, the whole of your stock."
"Then at last my fortune will be made, my daughters will be married, and I shall have a shop on the Corso," said the old man, clasping his hands before the good general and shedding tears of genuine joy.
It was getting chilly in that damp and cheerless part of Rome, and the party prepared to move on. The general drew out a full wallet of Italian notes, and counted down the old prince, the maker and vendor of antiquities, his full price and demand without a murmur. It was like a fairy tale. He had never seen, or at least never touched, so much money in all his life. It was nearly a thousand francs, and his fortune was indeed made. The store of antiquities was carefully packed in a little bag, and one from the dozens of idle boys about the door was selected to bear them on his back for the general to the door of his hotel. Suddenly the old prince threw up his hand to the side of his head, as if he had just remembered a very important and wonderful secret. He touched the general with his finger.
"Signor."
The general bent his head to listen.
"I have the serpent!"
The general waited for an explanation.
"I have a bronze of the original serpent seen by Eve in the Garden of Eden."
The general was both astonished and delighted.
"Will you only look at it — look at it now? I will tell you the history of it some other time. I will only tell you now that this little coiled-up image, which I will find in a moment," and he kept feeling about in the cracks of the wall as if he was looking for, and was about to find, a real live serpent, "I will only tell you now, I say, that this serpent was modelled by one of the grandchildren of Eve; the name, I regret to say, has not reached us, but there is no doubt about this."
The general had begun to smile with that incredulous smile that is the terror of dealers in antiquities.
"I tell you that it was made by one of the grandchildren of Eve, while she sat by in the chimney comer smoking her pipe of an evening, and reading her Bible, and at intervals giving him directions as to how the serpent looked and behaved when she saw him in the Garden of Eden."
"But," protested the honest old general and railroad king, "I — I — I don't believe a word of it."
"I can prove it — prove it; will you, signor, only let me prove it?"
The general bowed his assent, and the old prince laid hold of his coat and began to talk as only an Italian merchant can talk. It was getting late, and Mollie was getting hungry. The general really was becoming convinced.
"And what will you take for it"
"Five hundred — ^no, no, you have been so generous, so just— one hundred-" he stopped, looked in the general's face, and thought he still saw a smile there, and catching his breath, went on, "fifty francs — I will take fifty francs for the bronze serpent of the Garden of Eden." and he laid it, coiled up, in the general's hand, as he all breathless finished his speech.
The general paid him the money, and the party moved away, as the railroad king stood lifting the precious serpent in his hand, and rubbing its scaly coils and very remarkable looking head.
Taking a step after the party, while the delighted old vendor of antiquities followed hat in hand, and bowing all the time, he turned and said to the old prince and dealer: "But what makes it so very smooth?"
The remarkable old merchant put on his hat, struck an attitude, and then throwing out and reaching his arms as if he was about to hand something down and down and down through the hands of a thousand people standing in a line, he said : "Ah, that was done by handing it down from generation to generation."
"Bet your life it's he!" Murietta, as one just awakened from a dream, looked up. "There! there! what did I tell you. Murietta!"
the artist, hearing his name called by California girl, turned and made his way through the crowd.
"We are on the way for a drive around Rome. We are going over the Via Appia."
"A pleasant drive and a speedy return!" said the artist, lifting his hat, and stepping back to say good-bye.
"No, no! Come!" she cried reaching her hand. "We will not go without you!"
The street was getting blocked, and a little Roman, in a beautiful uniform overshadowed by an enormous plume of red cocks' feathers, came up smiling and bowing, and beckoning for the carriage to move on.
"Come!" cried Mollie, "you will have us all arrested"
The artist climbed into the carriage just in time to escape a speech from the policeman, and the party moved slowly on through the jammed and crowded streets above the buried city, and around the partly excavated Forum of Trajan.
"And Mollie the Mischievous is well?" said the artist, settling down in his seat, and looking at the picture of health before him.
"Well, and happy, too, as an apple on a tree!" and the little California lady, as if just reminded of it, put her hand in her pocket, laughed while doing so, and then drawing it forth held it out full of nuts and raisins and candies.
"No, thank you."
Just then a boy stood up on a box by the side of the driver of the carriage in advance, and shouted aloud "I say, Moll!"
The party drew up for a moment beside the excavations of the Roman Forum, and getting down from their carriages, stood toether and leaned over the rails and looked down at the little indolent army of workers twenty five feet below them. The general stood and looked earnestly at the work of excavation, and then said, — "It looks for all the world like a California mining claim!"
The excavation, which lays bare the Forum as it was in the time of the Caesars, is about three hundred yards long, two hundred wide, and fifty feet deep. "I think the owners are doing just about work to hold the claim," said Mollie.
"Nothing," said the general thoughtfully, "can more closely resemble a placer mine than this ugly excavation. There lies the bed-rock, the old Roman pavement, swept clean and creviced out; there are the picks and the wheelbarrows, and there the granite boulders and the quartz, only the quartz happens to be marble, and the granite boulders to be broken columns."
People were standing in hundreds looking down idly over the rails at the idle workmen. Here and there stood groups of tourists, with red guide books in their hands, that looked like lamps hung up by the authorities to give notice of repairs. Never did a live American see such indolent men as these Italians at their work. They move as if half asleep. Their tools are awkward, and always dull; their wheelbarrows have an old primitive wooden wheel, and hold about a saucepanfull of earth. They use no running planks, but push their load slowly up on the uneven ground.
"A Californian," said the general, "could carry twice the load in his hat."
They passed through in the presence of the two or three Romans in uniform to be found at every gate in Italy, and then climbed up, up, up a thousand steps, and stood at last on the level where Romulus had set his capital.
Later, they drove under the Triumphal Arch of Titus. On the marble pillars of the gate Murietta marked the figures of great strong men bearing the holy candlesticks and other sacred vessels of the Tabernacle which were brought to Rome by the son of Vespasian when he overthrew Jerusalem.
The carriages rumbled on down a sloping hill, over a very rough and broken section of old Roman pavement that has lain there unrepaired for perhaps a thousand years.
"Now we come to the shadows of the Coliseum! The gray Coliseum, lifting its stony circles against the eternal rounds of Time!"
"But Time," cried Mollie, "has set his teeth in it!"
"How old!" said Murietta.
"Damage!" rejoined Mollie, munching away at her nuts, "no, not a bit! It still looks as though it might furnish material for two or three Chicagos, and yet hold its place as the biggest thing out of doors"
The carriages stopped for a time, and sitting there together, they contemplated the colossal structure.
Then again the party was silent, for Mollie was absorbed in her nuts and candies, and Murietta was moody, and his mind was drifting far away.
They passed through the great wall of Rome, and were in the wide open Camagna, a place that looks more like a bit of the great American plains than anything to be seen in Europe. Barefooted peasant girls, and beautiful, too, as red May roses, were going into town in Indian file, with bundles of wood and cane on their heads.
The artist took his seat in silence, and Mollie was, for the first time and for a wonder, thoughtful. They drove rapidly on, for the sun was settling to the west. In a few minutes they were before the little church of St. Sebastian. A very small black monk was kneeling before an altar, and rising up as our party entered, he lighted a taper on the staff, and coming forward, pulled aside a red curtain, and showed the original footprints of our Saviour. The stone is of a brown colour, hard as marble, and about eighteen inches square. The prints are side by side, as close as possible, are rather large, and set at least an inch deep in the stone. The rim or edge of the stone seems to be cased in gold. It stands up against an altar to the right of the entrance to the church, or monastery as they are called here, and is kept under cover behind a double iron gate. Here you are also shown an arrow, said to be one of those by which the martyr fell, and also a portion of a stone pillar, to which he was bound when slain.
"It looks bad to see so much extravagance in this way, when there is so much poverty and misery among the poor," said the general to the monk.
"But," said the monk in answer, "when we reflect that it is the poor who chiefly use these sacred houses, and that they there, at least, are peers with the proudest of the land, it is not so bad after all.'
The general saw that the subject, like nearly all others in the world, had two sides to it, and was silent.
Ruins! ruins! ruins! right and left. After passing the Tomb of Metella, with its girdle of oxen skulls bound in wreaths — a tomb that has been a battlement, a palace, and a prison, they came to a tomb that has not even a name; and yet it is almost as colossal as a pyramid, and twice as gray.
"Marvellous, marvellousi!" mused the general, as they turned their carriages, and rested here a moment before returning to Rome. On the top of this lofty and colossal structure, that even the most imaginative Italian falters before, there is growing a grove of olive trees, and there is a little farm house perched up there, and the man has really a little farm on the top of his tomb. While the party rested here, a cock came to the edge of his little world, and strutting up and down, he flapped his wings and crowed above them, loud and clear and defiant.
* * * * * *Murietta found himself ascending the steps of the Hotel Ville, and heard a shout and a bounding step that was not to be mistaken. "Bet your life, Oh bet your life I'm glad to see you, so glad to see you;" and the little lady threw her arms about his neck, and laughed till she cried.
"Why, Mollie, what in the world is the matter?" said he at last, as he, half smothered, disengaged himself from the girl, and stood smiling at her enthusiasm and easy habits.
"Matter! Nothing the matter at all, only I've — I've got something nice to tell you." She stood swinging her hat by the ribbons, for it had been pushed off in her haste to embrace her brother, as she sometimes called Murietta, and holding her head to one side, and looking very bashful and very mischievous.
"Well, Mollie, what is it?" said he, as they sauntered along the hall toward the parlour, while she still swung her hat, and held her head to one side, and looked the very picture of perfect happiness.
"No, I won't tell you," pouted the saucy girl. "It's my little secret. My own little bit of a secret, the only one I ever had in my life, and I intend to keep it. I intend to keep it all day to myself." Then she held her head still lower to one side, and swung her hat as if she intended to twist the ribbons off, and send it flying through the window.
"Come, come, Mollie, tell me. It must be something nice, you seem so very happy!"
"It is nice, and I am happy, bet your life!" Then she stopped swinging her hat, thought a moment, and then diving into her pocket and holding out her hand to Murietta, said, "Have some goodies?"
"Certainly, Mollie. But now, about that wonderful little secret that you are going to keep all day, and that you told me about the moment I came, and that you will tell me before ten minutes longer; what is it?"
"Well now, don't you tell. Mamma knows it, and papa knows it, and the Count Paolini knows it, and that is all. Won't tell?"
"No."
"Hope you may die if you tell?"
"Yes."
"Well, now listen, this is my little secret — all mine, you know, but I can't keep it. The count made me promise not to tell, and he was so very particular. Well, now, he's in there," pointing to the parlour, as they still sauntered up and around the hall looking at the pictures and the statuary, "and don't you let it out when you go in. Well, he don't want any big wedding either, but I do; bet your life I didn't come all the way from California to be married off like a dummy. Not much, bet your life. That ain't me. Have another goodie?"
"Yes, Mollie. I am so very well today I feel like I could almost eat you."
"Well, there you are, a whole handful. And now I am going to tell you my little secret."
She stood before him blushing, with her pretty lips pouted out and her mouth full of sugar plums. She laid her head to one side, swung her hat faster than before, and began. "Now, you mustn't tell; hope you may die, and all that?"
"Yes; but Mollie, I know all about it."
"Shut up! you don't!"
"But I do."
The hat stopped swinging and the pretty lips pouted out, and then she stooped, reached into her pocket, and got another handful of candies. After a moment the old michieivous look came back into the eyes of the innocent girl, and she began: "Now I bet you a forty dollar hoss to a gooseberry, that you don't know anything about it."
"I will bet you a whole herd of Mustang ponies to one kiss Miss Mollie, that I know all about it."
"Done!"
"Is it a bet?"
"Yes, it's a bet. Here's the stakes. Put up your Mustang ponies."
"The Mustangs are on the plains of Arizona; you must trust me."
"I will trust you. Now come, what is it?"
The artist began a little thoughtfully, and quite slowly, for he felt more than half serious over this announcement of his, which in her happiness she had made without knowing it, and said: "You are engaged to be married to Count Paolini."
"There! take the bet."
She reached forward her girlish face, and the man kissed his romping, sometime sister, and then said, more earnestly than was his custom when speaking to this half child "Mollie!"
"Murietta?"
"This is a very serious business."
"Oh ain't it though! Do you know, Mr. Murietta, I cried and cried and cried for half an hour; and then mother, she cried and cried; and even old papa, the good old governor, he cried too! Oh it's awful serious, ain't it? I declare it makes one feel real shaky." And here she stopped, reached into her pocket, and drew forth another handful of candies.
"You know, Mollie," said the artist, taking a handful of proffered candies, and dropping them down among the flowers by the wall, "you know I promised to take you to my little palace on the Tarpeian Rock."
"Yes; and like all the men, you forgot all about it, and never did it."
"No; but I have come this morning. Can you go?"
"Go? Oh won't it be jolly! But then," and her manner took on a mock gravity which she really meant to be real, "but then, you know, mamma must go too, for the count is awful particular. You know the count says we American girls are all too fast and loose, and all that, and are liable to get ourselves talked about, and now that I am engaged, you know, I must be particular, if only to please him."
"Well now, my good little Mollie, will you do one thing first to please me?"
"Yes, a dozen."
"No, only this one thing."
"Well, what is it? Come, let's get it done and be off, for ain't it just the bulliest weather you ever saw to be out?"
"Well, Mollie, this is it. Don't tell the count where you are going. We will go to the Capuchin monks — tell him that if you like — after that we will take in the Tarpeian Rock."
"Right; mum's the motto," and here Mollie laid her finger on her pouting lips, and reaching down for another handful of sweets, she led into the parlour.
Mrs. Wopsus burst into tears, as usual, and the general came forward quoting some snatches of poetry, which showed that his mind was not on his railroads, or anything of the kind, that day at least. Paolini turned pale. Yet he recovered himself in an instant, and in the softest and sweetest voice, so well modulated that in the sweet Italian tongue it was music in itself, he passed the compliments of the day as he came up and reached his hand, for he was standing all ready as if waiting to go.
In a moment he was talking over the ordinary topics of the day, and showed no concern at all whatever he may have felt. And perhaps after the first flush of sudden apprehension he felt none, but leaned steadily upon fortune with all the confidence of youth and inexperience, and left all to the fates and his leaders who had this matter in hand. He tapped his sword hilt with his gloved fingers, dusted the least bit of down from off his sleeve, and lifting his cap, after one or two low soft sweet speeches to Mollie he passed out, promising to return in the evening.
In a few minutes more Murietta, Mrs. Wopsus, and Mollie left the old general on his shaded balcony with his papers, and taking the carriage at the door, were on their way to the strange and gloomy cave known as the monastery of the Capuchin monks.
It was a fearful place to take a young girl just contemplating her near wedding day, and yet for the purposes of Murietta was perhaps the best in all the world. On their way they picked up the good Carlton, who was a great favourite with Mrs. Wopsus, and in fact with all the family. Under some trees in a little square that opens on to the broad, desolate plaza of Barbarini, with its one hideous figure blowing a fountain in the centre, then under an arch, then up a wide court, and then, pulling a bell in a low wall to the left, they found themselves at the door of the Capuchins. Very dark, and very damp and deathlike. Mushrooms grow here, and what is very strange and fearful to tell, these mushrooms that grow out of these bones and half rotten men are sometimes extremely like a death's head. Here were lamps and dim lights, just light enough to see the dead men hanging up around the walls only half dried, as if the place had been a sort of Cincinnati smoke house for curing hams and whole hogs.
The monk who opened this was a brown monk in a brown gown and brown sandals. He kept coughing all the time, and was only skin and bone. Poor devil! what a desolate life was his! He looked as if he had unhooked himself from a place on the wall alongside of another fellow who hung up there, all skin and bone, with his hair and beard hanging loose about his face, and his toes and finger bones hanging in strings down there, as if they were a sort of ornament to him, like an Indian's beads. Now and then this poor lean monk, with a brown beard and a brown gown and a consumptive cough, would look back and up at the other fellow hanging there, and would look as if he was very tired, and would like to hang himself up there, and stay there all the time, and quit telling strangers about whose bones this sunflower was made of, and how many thigh bones it took to build this monk's monument sleeping there in the dust brought from Jerusalem, or just how many monks had to die and have their back bones wired together, in order to make this beautiful ornament now suspended from the low ceiling and doing service as a chandelier.
"I want some of this dirt from Jerusalem," said Carlton. "Will you not, good father, let me have just one little pinch of this dirt from Jerusalem?"
"Impossible!" cough, cough, cough.
Then the little bell rang again, and the monk went to the door, yet all the time kept looking back over his shoulder.
There was a commotion at the door, and a staring crowd poured in and began to deluge the monk with questions.
Carlton began slowly and carelessly to roll a cigarette. In this cigarette was the sacred earth. The monk's little black eyes glistened. He had his suspicions, but was not certain that he was right. Would this Carlton go on with that cigarette — would he roll it up, turn down the end of it? Would he then dare place the sacred dust — still damp and reeking with dead men's flesh — between his teeth?
The monk's eyes glistened, and his outstretched hand trembled like a leaf in the wind.
Would he go on and finish the cigarette, and put the dust between his teeth? Carlton, too, was more than nervous, he was pale; but he did not hesitate. His hands trembled and rattled the paper as he rolled it tight and smoothly, and then he slowly fastened down the end, and then slowly raised it up and deliberately set it between his teeth.
The monk was satisfied; or at least he felt that whether this man was guilty or not, he was too audacious to interfere with, and leaving a pile of bones rather to the right, he hastened around in that direction and began to look furtively at the missionary, who had also found these goods wired to the shop and impossible to purloin.
Mrs. Wopsus was all the time in tears. Mollie did not say one word, but kept all the time back in the dark and half hidden out of sight. Murietta sought her out at last, for he feared this unearthly sight might have an unpleasant influence on her young spirits, and possibly sit on her nervous nature too heavily. She was leaning up against the damp wall eating a bun, and trying to count by the dim grating light the number of bones that there were in an exquisite figure worked on the ceiling just over her head.
Carlton seemed to be getting cold and chilly and nervous. The brown monk kept looking at him, too, as a dog will look and growl at a man he has seen doing some crime, and he wanted to go at once.
At last the party filed out through the narrow door of death into the open day, and once more breathed the open air, as the little monk stood by, taking his toll, as if they were passing on a bridge from one world to the other, and looking at the party all the time as if to warn them off the premises.
You are now going to visit the palace of a prince," said Murietta as he took his seat, and the carriage passed under the arch and out into the street. Mollie looked up, for she knew he was addressing her.
"And oh, won't that be jolly! Pictures as old as St. Luke, old swords and lances on the wall, helmets hanging all around, great armour, men of steel standing in every comer. Oh, I know just what it's like. Bet your life I know all about it. I've read all the books and novels that ever was, and —"
"Nay, but this is nothing of that sort, Miss Mollie," broke in Murietta, for he wanted to prepare her mind for something unpleasant, instead of allowing it to run riot in such imaginings. "No, nothing of that sort at all." And the artist shook his head gravely.
"Well, there is at least a secret stair case and a skeleton or two, and some pretty story about a cruel old father and a faithful maiden and a brave knight."
"Like Paolini, for instance," chimed in Carlton.
"Like Count Paolini, if you please, Mr. Carlton," said Mollie, tossing her pretty head half haughtily at Carlton.
"I protest," urged Murietta once more and very gravely, "this house where I live, and this old prince lives, and some others that you happen to know, is nothing of the sort. It is a rotten, tumbledown old barracks, or anything you choose to call it that is vile, and we who live there are beggars."
"Beggars!" cried Mollie, catching her breath.
"Yes, beggars. That is, we are not all beggars; some of us are only thieves and robbers."
Mollie's eyes were wide with wonder as she sat gazing at the earnest and immovable face of the artist.
"But speak! you look as if you meant it!"
"I mean it; every word of it." Then leaning over towards the half frightened, honest hearted girl, he said, "Mollie, you have often asked to see my home in Rome."
"Yes," answered the girl.
"I promised you that pleasure, or whatever you may be polite enough to call it, often time."
"Well?"
"I also once said to you that Prince Trawaska was a villain!"
"You did, and he is the gentlest of men. Why, he is the bosom friend of Count Paolini!"
"One moment. Here we are. Here we get out, climb these broken steps, and then up a narrow court, and then up a narrower stair, and we are in the palace of the old prince, where I and Prince Trawaska and Count Paolini, singularly enough, have been thrown together. And Mollie, listen."
The girl looked eagerly in his face as the carriage stopped, and the footman opened the door, and the artist went on hurriedly, "Were you not a Californian, and the full hearted whole souled little creature that you are, I would not waste my time and risk being run through for this. Nay, I would not dare bring anyone in all the world but you face to face with the truth, as I shall to-day!"
The others had descended and were waiting for Murietta to lead up the broken steps. "Why, this would make a pretty good pasture for cattle," said Mrs. Wopsus, as they went up the broken steps and brushed the long strong grass that was growing up between the cracks in the rocks and out of the crevices. Carlton, light hearted and careless as ever, tapped a little curly headed boy on his head as he politely lifted his cap with its crown and gold band, which showed he belonged to the newly established schools of Rome, and the party began to ascend the narrow, dirty steps.
"How dark it is!" said Mollie.
"Perhaps this is the secret staircase of the palace where we are to find the skeletons" said Carlton as they still climbed and climbed one after the other in Indian file.
"What a smell of onions!" said Mrs. Wopsus behind her handkerchief, as she panted and caught her breath at every step.
At last they stopped at the head of the stairs and looked at each other, for here was an open window looking out towards St. Peter's.
"Well, 'tis not so dreadful bad after all," said Mollie as she leaned against the wall and looked out and over the Tiber towards St. Peter's.
Murietta threw back his cloak, and fumbled a moment in his pocket. Then the door flew open, or rather groaned open, and stepping back, he beckoned his friends to enter. They went in, headed by Mollie, and passed on down the narrow hall in single file.
"First door to the right," called out the artist. The door stood ajar, and Mollie peeped in.
"No thank you, I will stop here and take a peep at St. Peter's." So saying she turned to the open window and leaned over and looked out and away to the north. A little yellow bird was hopping against the wall in its wire cage, and the merry hearted girl searched in her pocket, drew forth a handful of sweets, and began to feed the bird, while the party entered and sat down in the little parlour and studio of the artist, with its single picture.
Carlton saw this picture, cried "By Jove!" and then sat down before it in silence, and sat and looked as if he would continue so for hours without once lifting his eyes from the great moving and wonderful face before him. Mrs. Wopsus occupied herself in looking out from the studio window to the south, and watching the innumerable cats along the top of the walls.
"Is the prince your father in?" asked Murietta.
"Oh yes, he is always in at this hour, the dear good old father, he is always in at this hour for his lunch."
"Have a goodie?"
"No thanks; no candies for me this morning, my little school girl."
"My little school girl! My little school girl! Now look here, Mr. Murietta, I'm seventeen come next May, I'm not a school girl, I've finished. Bet your life I'm done. And, Mr. Murietta, I'm not going back to school any more. And here she danced and spun about, and whistled at the bird, and then wound up by once more reaching out her hand to the artist and asking him if he would "have a goodie.
He shook his head. "And so you will not go back to school any more?"
"Of course I won't. Why do you know, Mr. Murietta," and here she looked about her and then reaching her head and letting her voice fall, "do you know I've had seven offers of marriage! Seven! Seven! And I go back to school! Ha, ha! Now I like that. Why you know I am engaged!"
"But you will not marry Paolini?"
"Then I will die an old maid. I will enter a convent, or a what-do-you-call-it a nunnery, a monkery — anything, everything. No, I will drown myself, Murietta, if I do not marry Count Paolini." Again the light hearted girl left the little bird to hop about on his wires, and again she spun around and danced till tears came into her eyes, and then she came back and looked at the little yellow bird bouncing around on his wires, and laughed. There had nearly been an April shower in the full springtime of this girls life, but it blew over in an instant, and now the sun was shining brighter than before. Murietta went close up to the girl as she began again to feed the little yellow bird as he fluttered about on his wires. "What in the world makes you look so serious?" exclaimed Mollie, as she stopped her hand half way to the cage with a bit of candy, for she had just caught sight of the artist's face.
"It is nothing, Mollie," he said, assuming a careless air, "you know I told you they were all either beggars or thieves in this palace."
"Well, beggars you might be from the looks of things; but thieves and robbers I reckon hardly."
"Yes," said Murietta emphatically, "Prince Trawaska is a robber. And then there is Giuseppe, he is only a thief and an assassin; and then there is the prince of this palace, you will see the prince in a moment, and then myself— only we are only gentle beggars — while Count Paolini is perhaps by turns all three!"
The little maiden dropped the nut which she held half way to the fluttering little yellow habitant of the wire house, and opened her soft and earnest eyes wider than ever before.
"I do not trifle Mollie. I have brought you here to see for yourself. First see for yourself, and then act for yourself. Your good sense will not fail you. You have been very ready to believe all that these strangers and men of another land and another religion have had to say. They were interested. I have no interest but to serve you, and save an honest and happy girl from crime and misery. It is because you are so good and so trustful, and so ready and willing to believe anything that you must now suffer. And yet it is only because you have these qualities that I dare be so frank and plain with you. Will you trust me?"
The girl put out her hand in a helpless sort of a manner, and still stared at the artist. Her mind was floundering beyond its depth.
"Delighted, delighted, and doubly honoured!" The old prince came shuffling forth and bowing almost to the floor as he said this. "And will the lady do me the honour to remember the old prince she saw in the ancient Theatre of Marcellus among his antiquities"
Mollie reached her hand and smiled at the humility of the old prince, who now stood before her uncovered.
"And you still have a store of antiquities on hand?"
"Oh most fortunate, fair lady, most fortunate for me and for your most noble and generous father, I have just received a small ship load from Egypt, and the Holy Land, and elsewhere. Oh, I have now enough to flood all America if I could only find the buyers. If I could only find the buyers," mused the old man half to himself, "if I could only find the buyers, then might my daughters all have a dowry and the crooked be made straight."
"Then you have daughters," said Mollie, once more looking up, for she had, again began to feed the yellow little captive in the wire house.
"Daughters!" The old man's face lighted up with parental pride, and he looked at Murietta as if he wished him to confirm his story, and tell the young lady, while he stood there bowing very humbly, and all the time rubbing his hands as if to wash them free from the stains of acids and colours used in making his antiquities.
"Yes indeed, and most beautiful and interesting children they are too," said the artist, and he passed into his parlour and pulled the bell.
A beautiful young lady came as if borne in a cloud of hair. Murietta presented his young friend, and then the two began to feed the yellow little prisoner together as they talked in a friendly fashion of their favourite birds.
"And is the Count Paolini well?"
"He is well, I believe; but I doubt if he yet has risen." The lady laughed but did not blush.
The artist stepped again into his parlour and again pulled the bell. Then another beautiful lady entered, noiseless and airy as if she too moved in a cloud. The artist presented his friend, and Mollie handed her a handful of candies at once, and then all three fell to feeding the little yellow prisoner. "Is the Count Paolini fond of birds?" asked the artist, with well disguised concern.
"Oh, very fond of birds," answered the second lady in the cloud, as she looked up from feeding the little favourite. But she did not blush. Again the artist stepped to the bell. The door opened, another dark and airy cloud, with a beautiful face half hidden away, came drifting dreamily through the door. Murietta stepped back to give her room, and she too in a little time had passed through the ceremony of an introduction, and had been presented with a handful of nuts, and now was also feeding the little yellow favourite.
"The Count Paolini is late this morning," began the artist. The lady dropped the bit of candy behind the bars and blushed to the roots of her glorious hair, and hid her face behind her sister. "Your husband," began the artist in a cold, clear voice, "your husband, the Count Paolini, rises late, my lady."
"True, he is late, and — but what is the matter with the beautiful Inglese?"
Mollie had dropped her handful of sweets on the floor, and pale and startled stood looking at Murietta. The artist turned to the old prince, who again began to bow when he saw that he was about to be spoken to, and in a clear, deliberate voice began: "I happen to know your son, the Count Paolini, better than you suppose; and so does this lady know him; and we desire to see him."
"With the greatest pleasure. With the greatest pleasure. You honour him, you honour us."And the old prince shuffled up the hall and out of the door, and in a moment was ringing at the door of the room of the Count Paolini and the Prince Trawaska.
Singular as it may seem, Mollie in a moment had recovered her self possession, and reaching in her pocket for a handful of candies, she now stood leaning out of the window with the other ladies and whistling at the little yellow captive in the wire prison. The little Californian maiden was utterly hidden by the many dark clouds that hung over and about her. Yet the sky seemed clearing up again. The April shower of tears was passing over. The sun and sunshine of May was once more filling her heart. The Count Paolini came forward at the call of his father in law with a great deal of confidence. There was a little swagger and banter in his air as he came in, in advance of the old prince, who shuffled on after him, as his eyes fell upon the artist. But he did not flinch. He came boldly forward, bowed with that perfect hollow politeness peculiar only to the Latin races, and waited for Murietta's reply.
Soon the dark ladies, in their storms of hair, turned from the bird to the count, for they perhaps knew his step, or what is more likely they felt his presence, as we often feel the presence of our friends long before either seeing or hearing them.
Then as the ladies turned and the clouds cleared away, the eyes of the count fell upon the form of Mollie as she leaned from the window and whistled still at the yellow little flutterer. The artist lifted his finger into the face of the count and said almost savagely, "That is all I have to say, Count Paolini, and this is all I have to do."
Mollie had sprung back from the window, and now stood looking over the shoulder of one of the ladies right into the face of the count.
The artist continued: "I have nothing further to do or to say. I bring you all together here — the husband and the wife and the promised wife, — the little confiding school girl that a hundred base Italians have been trying half a year to entrap. I only wish you all to know the truth, and then to do precisely as you please."
"Come let us go, let us go, where is my mother? Let us go away, I shall go wild." Mollie had been standing still all the time. Her hand was full of sweets. She lifted them up, looked at them, and then threw them through the window.
What if in that moment standing there, this young woman, this girl, had crossed the line that lies somewhere between the girl and the woman?
"Yes, lady, yes. But oh, do not blame him too much. It is so, so hard. You do not know what it is to fight day by day, day by day, with nothing to fight with, to go hungry in order that you may hold your place in the world, the place you are born to, and to appear respectable. Oh, you have fortune, you people of the New World, and you know not what we have to endure! "
Mollie forgot herself in a moment. The emotions, the beautiful sorrow of this woman touched her heart.
"Get your antiquities together for tomorrow. Be there early. I shall be there, and I shall bring my Californian friends. Now come!" And without one word to Paolini, who stood as if struck dumb, she led down the narrow step and left the artist to bring her mother and Carlton, and in a little time they were back to the Hotel Ville as if nothing had happened.
Come here, Carlton; come here, Murietta." Mollie came bounding by, after kissing the old general, who was all the time running his mind down the iron grooves of his railroads, to the neglect of everything else, and took the two men with her on to the balcony.
"Now, look here," she said, in something of a flurry, as she dived her hand down into her pocket, drew up a handful of sweets, looked at them a second, and then sent them through the air, "I've got a little game, and you're to help me."
"Well, Mollie, but what is it?"
"None of your business; won't you help me?"
"Certainly, I will help you. We both will help you. But you must tell us what it is, or we will not know what to do."
"Well, I will tell you what to do and how to do it. You know Jones?"
"Yes," answered Murietta.
"And you know McCreavy, the man who used to be head porter in the Oriental Hotel, in San Francisco?"
"Yes," said Carlton, "I know him very well. He's a millionaire, and a wonderfully conceited Irishman he is too, and a bit proud for one who began life as a day labourer."
"No matter about how he began his life, or how he spends it. His money is as good as any man's, and I want him to spend his money. That's all. I don't want him to carry trunks or wheel dirt on the railroad. I want him to buy, and I want them all to buy."
"To buy?"
"Yes, to buy. You see, they all want little sphinxes, and Egyptian cats, and copper crocodiles, and brazen serpents, and tear bottles, and Etruscan coins; and I know a place where they are cheap and plenty. I know where there's a whole ship load, and, bet your life, I am going to buy out the whole lot."
"But I do not know anything about this," protested Murietta, who felt that he had done enough, and, at all events, preferred to keep clear of any freak of the charming and disappointed little Californian.
"Well now, you look here." The little lady laid hold of the artist's coat, and drew him and Carlton close together. "You know the old prince — call him the prince of humbugs, if you like — who keeps the stall of old wares in the Marcellus?"
"Where your father bought a supply?"
"The very place. Well now, I'm going to buy out Old Antiquities, and if you don't like this business, you have only to go to your friends and my friends, and all mutual friends, who have plenty of money, and tell them that Miss Mollie Wopsus wants to see them. You have both promised to help me, and now will you do this much to start on?"
The men both cheerfully agreed.
"Very good, now go, and be sure and deliver my orders, and be sure that these men promise to come to me, and to come at once."
Carlton gave the young girl his word, and passed into the parlour, and began to talk with the general and his wife. Murietta lingered a time, and when he finally and firmly refused to go with her on her speculation in the old theatre, next day, she simply said, half laughing "Very well, then, call tomorrow, at this time, and I will tell you all about it."
He stood a moment, passed then slowly through the half open door, to join the other party, but looking back over his shoulder, saw the girl weeping as if her heart would break.
Then, with that impulsiveness and suddenness of action that was always getting him into trouble, he turned back, took the child of nature in his arms and as the great white moon descended in the west, bent his head and kissed her tenderly as a brother might kiss a lonely and weeping sister, and then promising certainly to join her the next day in her little enterprise, he led her into the parlour, and there, in a little time, had her laughing at some trifling remark, and so passed on and out to do the little maiden's will.
Mr. McCreavy came, as she expected. "I have found the dearest old place yea know!" began the little Californian maiden, looking around, as if she feared some one would get at the secret she was about to reveal. "Ah, it is the dearest old place in all the world to buy antiquities. And Mr. McCreavy, knowing how learned you are, I want your opinion."
The Irish millionaire bowed in profound acknowledgement, and with an air that seemed to say, "You arc perfectly right, young woman, else how could a day labourer rise to be head porter in a hotel? and then how could an Irish head porter rise to be a millionare and the companion of Irish kings and Italian princes?
"Well as I was saying," and again she looked around as if she feared her secret might escape her, "I have found this place all by myself, I and the governor, and he has bought a great deal, and we intend to buy a great deal more tomorrow, and you see they will not last, these antiquities, they will all be gone by tomorrow night. And don't you know, Mr. McCreavy, that they have got some of the original brazen serpents that Moses set upon a pole, when he got into trouble crossing the plains? Well, they have got some of these very serpents."
The Irishman was not certain that he precisely cared to have any serpents in his house, whether brazen or what not, yet he was all the time secretly resolving in hia heart, that if the old railroad king bought any of this collection of antiquities, he too would have his share, at any cost, for no man from California should surpass the man they were accustomed to sneer at as the porter of the Oriental Hotel.
"Oh! here comes Jones; now Jones, you know, is father's bosom friend," said Mollie, and of course he, too, must be with us, but I have promised father to let no one know a word about it but Californians."
"Good, that is best, for barring a few more crosses, and a few more baskets of beads that have been blessed by the Holy Father, which I must take home for my Irish servant girls — you know how exacting the Irish servant girls are, and how much they always expect; — well, as I was saying, barring a few crosses and beads, I know of nothing I want now but a few more antiquities of the far past middle ages of the period of Moses."
"Well, now," said Mollie, in a whisper, and still looking around, as if in great fear of listeners, "this is the only place in Rome where no foreigners ever go. It is away down there among the thieves and robbers, and where they have the fevers, — and look here!" The Irishman leaned eagerly forward. "It is kept by a prince!"
"No!"
"Not a word."
"And you will please not go too early in the morning. Meet us there at about twelve; for you know the governor has not yet had half his supply."
"O, never fear. I may be a little early," said the shrewd Irishman, "but still I will not take anything that your governor wants. The general is too dear to me for that." And then the millionaire took his leave and went home determined to be the first in the field next morning and show the general and Jones too, that he really did understand antiquities and prize them too.
"And now," said the designing little Mollie to herself, "I shall proceed to doctor Mr. Jones," and so she did. And as the general dilated on what he had bought, and exhibited his collection of coins to be taken back to California and presented to the university at his death, Jones fairly groaned to think how he had frittered away his time, and that how he had really nothing at all to take back with him of the Old World and show his taste and industry to his countrymen. For the first time he began to see how very important a personage in the eyes of his fellow citizens is the antiquarian who has spent his time abroad buying and acquiring relics of the dead past.
"By Jove!" said Jones, as he drove his hat unnecessarily hard over his head that evening after bidding an early good evening to the old general and his good wife and daughter, "by Jove! Now here's a chance to buy a lot of this infernal antiquarian stuff by the wholesale, and hanged if I don't do it!" Jones reached home early that evening, filled his pockets with all kinds of money and plenty of it, and ordered his carriage for an unusually early hour.
It was past the appointed hour when the artist came to the hotel next morning, and he found Mollie sitting with her mother in the carriage waiting in the court for his coming. The general had grown tired of waiting, and had gone back to his study and his railroads. Perhaps he had not wanted to go in the first place. They drove rapidly to the Theatre of Marcellus.
"The dear old prince," said Mollie, still pouting a little over the tardiness of the artist, "the dear old prince of antiquities, he will begin to think I did not intend to keep my word."
Soon they drew up before the shop. "This is not the place," said Mollie.
"It looks like the place," said Murietta; "but it is shut up. Perhaps the old man is sick."
"No, no, no," remonstrated Mollie, "he is not sick, unless he is sick at heart and disgusted that I did not keep my promise. Come, we will drive there. We will see your palace again;" and the California girl gave the order, as only a California girl can, without asking the consent or opinion of any one, and in a moment they were turning around a corner and making their way through the crowd of peasants in the streets of the Via Montenare. Under the low arch, up the broken steps with the long grass, up by the blue Madonna with the perpetual lamp at her feet, up the narrow stone steps, and the artist threw back his cloak, fumbled in his pocket, and then the old door groaned and opened its wide mouth and admitted the party without a word.
"Well, that's incomprehensible!" said the artist. "I must have some one to explain," and he again pulled the bell. The artist scratched his head. Then, not knowing what else to do, and possibly not really knowing what he did, he reached and once more pulled the bell as if he would break its heart strings. This time there was a shuffling noise and the old prince stood in the door in his slippers, while the count stood looking over his shoulder at the scene before him. The old prince had a great roll of bank notes and Italian money of many colours in his hand.
"You did not keep your promise," cried Mollie as she saw the prince, for she was glad to have something to say to break this singular gathering of black clouds that had quite alarmed her.
"Keep my promise, lady! lady, you are my patron saint! Surely you are the Madonna in disguise!" And here the old man himself fell down on his knees, and left the Count Paolini standing all alone.
"You are an angel! I am a devil, but you are an angel!" cried the count, and then he too fell upon his knees before her.
"What in the world does it all mean? Come, old prince, get up. I want to buy your antiquities."
"Buy my worthless antiquities, lady! Thank heaven, they have all been sold these two hours, and the shop is shut. I am now indeed a prince. And I have also escaped the sin of selling to you, my dearest friend, these worthless wares, for your friends have bought them all, and at my own price." The dark clouds about the feet of the new Madonna had gently gathered to one side, and some of them were leaning out of the window by the yellow little bird as the old man finished this speech and rose up with Count Paolini; and Mollie now stood quite alone and seemed a little embarrassed at the thought of how much good she had done to this really good old man and his grateful and beautiful daughters.
She, too, turned to feed the little bird as before, and then, suddenly unfastening the hanging cage, she turned to the prince and the count, and holding it up before her while the yellow little captive flew from wire to wire, and chirped and bowed and said pretty things to every one at once, she said, "I have nothing to love now but this little yellow bird. I will take this bird!" And then she turned to go; and as her mother and Murietta followed, the ladies crowded around and kissed her hands as she held the cage up as if to ward them off, but the count did not dare to speak, and the old prince stood in the door bowing profoundly, and all the time washing his hands as if he now would really like to wash off the stain of the acids, and forget that he had ever had to do with them.
"Murietta," said Mollie with a sigh, "I have one more favour to ask," as they drove up past the bottom of the great stairs leading to the top of the Capitoline by the little she wolf.
"And if it is in my power I will grant it. Tell me what it is."
"I want you to buy me that she wolf; for I have nothing now in the world to love but this little yellow bird." The delicate little chin of the girl quivered as she spoke and looked down at the chirping yellow creature springing from wire to wire, and Mrs. Wopsus burst into tears.
"Why, my dear Mollie, that wolf bears the weight of the New Italy on its back. Rome would part rather with the pope than that little she wolf. But here!" He called out to the driver, and, dismounting at a well known turn in the street, soon had a whole menagerie of pets sent to the carriage. Mollie was not hard to please. She chose an enormous white winged cockatoo from Africa and a little brown poodle dog not much larger than a mouse, and the party soon drew up at the hotel.
Mollie remained very thoughtful for hours. After dinner she said to her father suddenly: "You wish me to return to school?"
"Ah, my daughter," said the general affectionately, "if you only would return to school for a few years!"
"Say no more about it. I am going. I am going back to school in the morning. And you are to take me, take me and the little yellow fidgetty, the brown mouse bull dog, and the great big screaming cockatoo and all!"
"And all," cried the happy old general. "Everything you want in the world, Mollie, only go back again to school and get away from these hollow, cunning, and cold hearted fortune hunters!"
Mollie promised to do everything that could be done or that was necessary, and then turned to the cage and pretended to be talking to the loud and garrulous cockatoo with its lifted crest and yellow curve of gold, while in reality she was talking to Carlton. He slept late next day, as indeed did all of his party, as well as the new arrivals, and, in fact, as did and does all Venice at this season of the year. and then Mollie and Carlton will have a gondola; and then the general and Mrs. W. will have another, and so you see it will be roomy and pleasant enough. Come, you will rest on the water and be refreshed." "I propose a fine of a dozen bottles," answered Carlton, "on the first man, woman, or child who quotes or misquotes Byron for the remainder of the evening."
"O, which were best, To roam or rest, Land's lap, or ocean's breast?" said Mollie, looking sideways under her falling hair to the lover at her side, while her hand trailed down in the warm sea water over the side of the little gliding gondola.
The old general sat planning a railroad in the sea, and Mrs. W. wiped her eyes and looked at her delighted daughter, and still maintained, without effort, her reputation for eloquent silence.
He was bidding Carlton good-bye one evening as he stood with the inseparable lovers on one end of the marble balcony, while the general and Mrs. W. occupied the other end, and looked out over the sea or fed from their hands the doves that fluttered about the balcony.
"And so you leave us in the morning for Como" sighed Carlton, with an effort.
"Oh! won't it be jolly, Carlton," chimed in the merry hearted Mollie. "Everybody will be at Como but us. I declare it is too bad! Come, let us go to Como, too."
"I have not the least objection to going to Como, my dear, as your gallant knight; but what will the general say?"
"Ask him!" answered the mischievous Mollie, looking up sideways from under her little sailor's hat.
"Ah! that's what I have been thinking about for a month. I declare I have got real thin over the agony and the anxiety. Ask him! yes that's easily said."
"Shall I ask him for you?" said Murietta kindly.
"No, but we will do it together. Come! all three of us abreast."
With Carlton supported between them they moved down upon the general, who sat there feeding the doves of Saint Mark from his hand, and forgetting for the nonce all about his gridiron of railroads.
"There now! softly you young people. and don't frighten them. There now! See what you have done! I had three of them feeding out of my hand at once."
"Most potent, grave, and reverend seignior," began Carlton at last in a faltering voice.
"Go on, go on," whispered Mollie, as she punched him affectionately with her elbow, "go on, that's all right, that's bully, bet your life! that's just the thing, for this is Desdemona's palace, where the bloody Moor told his piteous tale."
"Most potent, grave, and reverend seignior," again faltered Carlton, "rude am I in speech — "
"Now don't frighten my doves, do — "
"And but little gifted with the set phrases of—"
"Why what in the name of sense does the man mean to frighten away my doves? Well go on."
"I mean, general, that I want this particular dove of yours for my own."
The great railroad man fell into a brown study. At last he raised his head and said, " Well, I reckon I had better give her to a Saxon painter than a Latin prince. But how, my dear Carlton, about your weakness for wine?"
"General Wopsus, I will reform tomorrow, won't I, Mollie?"
The innocent, light hearted girl from the great West looked, up through her tears, half laughing, from under her sailor's hat, and leaning affectionately on Carlton's arm as she turned her eyes to his, said saucily, "Bet your life!"
The great city lies trembling, panting, quivering in her wild, white heat of intoxication, excitement, madness drunken and devilish pursuits of power, pleasure, and gold.
It is the old story of the destruction of one whom the gods love. Never grew a city so great, so suddenly great. And her glory, her greatness, her sudden power and splendor have made her mad. She is drunk; not drunk entirely with drink, but she is drunk with riches and with the love of pleasure. Altogether, she is madly, desperately drunk.
This wonderful city this marvellous city here by the sea seems to me like the sudden blossom and flower of a germ planted far back in the dawn of time. Rome has her certain and definite days of carnival. This wonderful new city of New York has three hundred and sixty-five days of mad, maddening, wild, and delirious carnival every year.
Her merriment is a type of madness. She never rests. She never sleeps. She has not slept since the days of her birth and baptism. Even her people scarcely seem to sleep. They run forward day and night, night and day, until each one, in the impetuous rushing, comes suddenly to the end of his road, and so falls headlong in his grave. And falling so, rushing forward so, you sometimes see, in the twilight, in the dusky evening of the carnival, that two are rushing, running, hand in hand. The one falls suddenly; the hand lets go the kind earth closes her lips and says no word; and the next year the place of the grave, the face of the dead all are for gotten. Forgotten, because in the place of the one that has perished, however beautiful, however brave, gifted, good, ten others have poured in from the countless forces of the earth; ten others, all equally brave, good, gifted, beautiful.
Away to the right, down the busy bay, ships of far-off lands went to and fro, seeking the golden fleece of commerce; great, stately ships, with a thousand happy souls, came sailing in from Europe: little steam-tugs shot in and out, vicious and piratical-looking; revenue ships sent to lay tribute on the strangers the weary travellers coming to their rest forbidding the landing of those who thought to come to a land of liberty, laying tribute on all who come to our white sea-doors seeking peace and the right; thousands of men with officers over them, with oaths fashioned to be broken, bribes in one hand and Bibles, "greasy with oaths," in the other; and so all these things to the right, to the left, the silver Hudson sliding to the ocean; the city rising in glory in the east as the sun settled in the west.
At last she came to the great, throbbing, pulsing artery of the mighty city. This was an impassable river. It had been impassable to many a stouter heart than hers at a time like this, when all the world seemed pouring up Broadway to the upper city. The sidewalk was a rushing river of humanity, flowing upward and on, with thundering vehicles, which packed and blocked the strong, roaring street.
On either hand down the short streets toward the rivers you could see the elevated railway cars, with their lights of many colors, shoot and thunder through the air. Now and then, a little farther on, the wide, white wings of a ship glistened and gleamed in the breeze as it sailed slowly across the end of the street. The sailors would lift their hats and salute the two mighty lights of the city at Madison and Union squares as they poured their new-found glory away out over the waters and over the decks of the ships. Around the island of Manhattan, and even far away at sea, men lifted their faces and marvelled at this wonderful work of man glowing here in the heart of the mighty city. Commerce had reared her proudest altar here on this most opulent island in all history. These two mighty lights were two colossal candles set up on the altar of commerce.
Suddenly there was a cry of fire, and engines, in a stream of fire, poured up the avenue. The flying horses, with their engines scattering fire and leaving streaks of sparks and flame behind.
He crossed over to the west, past the Victoria, across Broadway, across Sixth Avenue, and so on down that dreadful block on Twenty-seventh Street to Seventh Avenue. The place was dimly lighted. The police were studiously invisible. Strange, pitiful faces met his, and looked up and begged for money. From every door, window, cellar, or garret peered painted faces of all shades of complexion. All kinds of voices, in all tongues, appealed to the man to enter as he hastened on down the dark and bewildering street.
Horsemen, ladies, too, on horseback, dashed in a dizzy crescent of deep and hanging greenwood around the little hill, close to where they sat. Some of the horses feet sent the gravel flying and rattling on the iron bench. About four o clock in the afternoon, when the great drive was at full tide, and where the horses were finest and fastest, there was a sensation, a buzz and murmur of excitement all along the line and clapping of hands from the crowds that lined the dense and endless crush of carriages. There sat Stone, the impassive, black and tranquil, cold and bloodless Stone, the great Wall Street speculator and wrecker of railroads. He held his reins with precision, and drove straight ahead and swiftly, with calm and affected unconcern. Many remarks were passed as the small, black, cold, and constantly shivering speculator passed. But close after Stone came the richest railroad mag nate in the world. He was the hero, the sensation of the day. He was holding tight to his reins with his two big red hands, smiling a vast and massive smile on the crowds. His hands were closed tight so tight! So close and tight, hard and close and tight constantly and forever. Hard and tight and close, never to be opened this side the door of death, lest one of the hundred millions might slip from his hand and fall at the feet of the people who deified him for his gold. This was the heart and soul of the great city. Hours had gone by. The shadows lay long and restful within the park. Some of these shadows seemed sinking into the earth as in a grave. They seemed so tired, ready to lie down forever. The flock of sheep had moved like a white cloud quite across the green fields and gone to rest.
Off the Battery this sweet and sunny morning a school of dolphins tumbled up the noble bay, racing, revelling, rejoicing, glistening in the sun; but not a soul about the splendid Battery to look at them or delight in them save an old sailor or two. In England men seek the sea. The Bay of Naples is not more beautiful than is this scene from the once famous Battery of New York. Yet the people of this city retreat inland. They never see the ocean. We do not love the sea; let us confess it. Let us no longer affect a love we have not. Let others love the sea, for it is their inheritance, as the plains, the mountains, mighty forests, are our inheritance. This deserted Battery park, benches, all that invites to rest and large diversion as the ships sweep by looked, as it always looks now, like a deserted garden. One majestic old gentleman walked up and down near the sea. But his face was not set to the sea. The sun glanced gloriously on a thousand sails. Tall and sombre ships, black with the smoke of a million tons of coal, weary and creaking from thousands of miles of travel, slid by with stately grace. The sea was silver and gold, but the impressive old gentleman did not look in that direction. He had his rosy face set toward Wall Street.
In the ordinary New York hall, born of the most vicious style of architecture ever seen since the savages gave up this island, you are fired like a wad shot out of the muzzle of a gun. Out of this dark, narrow, hideous hall you are shot into the full glare of gaslight right at the head of the short, fat hostess, with red face and arms, nursing a hideous bouquet, with the stems of the poor flowers tied tight with wires. There is a hideous brass band in your ears; the glass glares in your eyes; the popping of champagne in the rear appeals to you to escape all this barbarism by pouring in there with the crowd of red-faced and reckless women pouring down wine and getting drunk; drunk as the others are drunk.
But this house, around which so many carriages clustered this afternoon, and from which the great awnings stretched over the broad pavement to welcome the quiet comers, was no ordinary house. It was new, noble in its appointments. The vast, round, roomy hall was of Moorish fashion, and at first glance seemed to be mounted and inlaid with soft, hammered copper. There was no crowding, no haste. The people coming here and there took time to be polite. There was no noise. For savages did not have possession of this hall. There was no brass band, suggesting the possibility of a war-dance as the day wore on.
There was room here for guests to melt gradually and unobserved away into waiting-rooms, and appear finally in all their splendor a moment later before the unobtrusive hostess in the deep glory of the heart of the house.
You heard only a murmur of voices here. Shoddy was here, she is indeed everywhere but she was awed into silence now. She could not talk of the things talked of here. It was to her as if the people spoke in a strange tongue. The names of beautiful and antique things were new to her. She could not pronounce them. She could not place them. She could not remember them when she got home. She did not like this language. She rarely came a second time.
You were not fired into this paradise at the sound of a brass band and the popping of corks: you rather melted into it. If you, by nature, or birth, or breeding, belonged there, you became a part of it. From this great, generous Moorish hall you came to something more generous, subdued, glorious. You proceeded tranquilly, silently, from a little fairyland to a larger fairyland.
Here was a glowing fireplace. The smell of burning oak, the incense of our land, blended sweetly with the restful odors of the Orient. The sickening smell and offensive display of sickly flowers entirely out of season was absent. It is absurd to copy past styles, unless we can also copy the conditions under which they flourished. In our country fireplaces should be in every house and nearly every room they are beautiful, because they are harmonious to our needs but flowers and fireplaces in the same apartment are discordant.
Here the guests were not all in full view, but hidden, or partly hidden. They seemed to appear and disappear. The dado of this room was of repousse work in copper of conventional design. The mural work was of Cordova leather, fastened with large, flat-headed nails of curiously wrought arabesque design, placed on the leather singly and sometimes in irregular masses.
The not notably high ceiling had the appearance of a thin metal sheet, also fastened with nail-heads in antique designs. Every hue of bronze, brass, gold, silver, and copper was employed in the decoration. The woodwork was dark and rather plain. The furniture was of teak and other dark woods, all carved and of elegant and substantial form. Springing from the floor and up through designs in bronze or marble, singly and in groups, tall trees of gas lit up the place with unobtrusive splendor. The soft light lay on the walls, so that they glittered and sparkled with a brilliant but subdued radiance of a thousand hues, while on the ceiling, the floor, the drapery, and statuary it fell but dimly, dreamful, restful. In this light the few and rare pictures seemed to stand out from the wall to await you, to welcome you. Heavy curtains, with open-work metal disks, so that when they were touched or pushed to and fro the metals clashed quietly, and yielded their soft musical melody to the sense, draped the alcoves. Over the floor dark and brown and amber-colored silken Persian rugs were strewn in studied carelessness.
Mexican Camp was a nest of snow white miners' tents huddled down in a dimple of the Sierras. If you had stood near the flag pole in the center of the camp, on which the Stars and Stripes were raised or lowered on the arrival or departure of the Mustang express,— the only regular thread connecting the camp with the outer world,—and looked intently west, you might have seen, on a day of singular clearness, beyond some new born cities, the lash of the Pacific in the sun. At your back, mountains black with pine and cedar, then bald and gray with granite, basalt, and cinder, then white with everlasting snow, had made you feel strong and secure of intrusion in the rear. Close about you, on the hillsides and in the gulch, you had seen trees lifting their limbs above the heads of thousands, of men who knew for the time no other shelter; while at your feet in the gulch, and as far down as the eye could follow it, the little muddy stream struggled on through little fleets of tin and iron pans, great Mexican wooden bowls, and through cradles, toms, and sluices. You had seen long gray lines of Mexican mules stringing around the mountain, winding into the camp with their heavy burdens; you had heard the shouts, spiced thick with oaths, of the tawny packers. You had heard the sound of the hammer and ax on every hand, for a new city had been born, as it were, the night before, and this was its first struggle cry and reaching of uncertain hands. All day on either side the stream sat a wall of men washing for gold. The Mexican and the American were side by side that had been breast to breast at Monterey; the lawyer wrought beside his client; the porter found his strong arms made him the superior here to the dainty gentleman to whose wants he had once ministered.
That was a Democracy pure and simple. Life, energy, earnestness. That was the beginning of a race in life in which all had an even start. What an impulse it was! It inspired the most sluggish. It thrilled the most indifferent, dignified and ennobled the basest soul that was there. Mexican Camp has perished, but it has left its lesson—a verdict clear and unqualified in favor of the absolute equality of men, without any recommendation of mercy to masters.
Each man, peer or peon, had six feet of ground. That was made a law at a miners' meeting held around the flag staff the day it was raised, at which Kangaroo Brown presided with uncommon dignity, considering his long term of service at Sidney, not to mention the many indiscretions laid to his charge before leaving his native country at his country's expense, for his country's good. It was at first passed that a miner should hold five feet only, but a Yankee who had an uncommonly rich claim moved a reconsideration, and without waiting to get a second, made a speech and put his own motion. This was his speech and motion, delivered at the top of his voice: "Boys, I go you a foot better. Blast it, let's give a fellow enough to be buried in, anyhow. All those that say six feet make it manifest by saying aye."
There was a chorus. "The ayes have it, and six feet is the law; and I now declare this meeting adjourned sign die," and the convict chairman descended from the pine stump where he had stood in his shirt sleeves, took up his pick and pan, and, divested of his authority of an hour, entered his claim, and bent his back to the toil, as did the thousands of men around him.
As a truthful chronicler I am bound to say that Sunday never did much for the miner on the Pacific. The fault, of course, was the mode of its observance. But there is a promise. The old order of things is passing away; most of the old miners, too—let this be said with reverence—have passed away with their camps. On that day, as it was, all went to town, and the streets became a sea of bearded men. Not a boy, not a woman in sight. On that day were perpetrated nine tenths of the crimes. Provisions for the week were bought, gold dust sold or sent away by express to the dependent ones at home, and then the miner gave himself up often to the only diversions the country afforded, cards and intoxication. The men of the Pacific were originally a peculiarly grand body of heroes. The weak of nerve never started, and the weak of body died on the journey there, and the result was a selection of men mighty for good or evil. They were unlike all other men. For example, the noisy border ruffian of the Mississippi bar room or Western frontier had no counterpart in California. The desperado of the Pacific disdains words. A half dozen Germans or Irish will make more commotion over the price of a glass than will a camp of Californians in a misunderstanding that ends in as many deaths.
"Are you heeled? Then draw," comes quick as a thought; and unless a sharp negative is thrown in against the question, shot after shot follows till some one falls. "Shootists" of the Pacific also have their rules of etiquette. In the face of a thousand pictures and publications to the contrary, I protest that they rarely carry six shooters except when traveling; and that it is considered in as bad taste to display a pistol as to enter the drawing room wearing spurs. A man who wears a six shooter and bowie knife publishes himself as a verdant immigrant, and is despised for his display. Nor is the desperado of the Pacific the bearded, uncouth ruffian he is represented. He is, in fact, loud neither in dress nor in manner; he is partial to French boots, patronizes the barber, has even been known to wear kid gloves, and is in outward appearance a gentleman.
Mexican Camp flourished like a palm for many years, then, like all placer mining camps, it began to decline. The gold was washed from the best parts of the gulch, and the best men of the camp, one by one, returned to their homes in other lands, or retired to camps deeper in the mountains, as their fortunes directed. As the Saxon went out, the Celestial came in, but gave no new blood to the camp. Vacant cabins and adobe chimneys stood all up and down the gulch, and lizards sunned themselves upon them undisturbed. The butcher, the great autocrat of the mining camp, began to come around with his laden mules but twice a week instead of twice a day. A bad sign for the camp.
But there was one cabin that was never vacant; it stood apart from town, on the brown hillside, and as it was one of the first, so it promised to be the last of the camp. It always had an ugly bull dog tied to the door, and was itself a low, suspicious looking structure that year by year sank lower as the grass grew taller around it, till it seemed trying to hide in the chaparral. It had but one occupant, a silent, selfish man, who never came out by day except to bury himself alone in his claim at work. Nothing was known of him at all, save the story that he had killed his partner in a gambling house away back somewhere in '49. He was shunned and feared by all, and he approached and spoke to no one, except the butcher, the grocer, and expressman; and to these only briefly, on business. I believe, however, that the old outcast known as "Fortynine Jimmy" sometimes sat on the bank and talked to the murderer at work in his claim. It was even said that Fortynine was on fair terms with the dog at the door; but as this was doubted by the man who kept the only saloon now remaining in Mexican Camp, and who was consequently an authority, the report was not believed.
Let it be here observed that when a mining camp sinks to the chronic state of decay that this now presented, the men remaining in it, as a rule, are idlers, and by no means representative miners. Their relation to the real, living, wide awake, energetic miner, is about that which the miserable Indians that consent to settle on a reservation bear to the wild sons of the woods, who retire before their foes to the mountains.
This solitary man of the savage dog was known as "The Gopher." That was not the name given him by his parents; but it was the name Mexican Camp had given him, a generation before, and it was now the only name by which he was known. The amount of gold which he had hoarded and hidden away in that dismal old cabin, through years and years of incessant toil, was computed to be enormous.
Year after year the grass stole farther down from the hilltops to which it had been driven, as it were, in the early settlement of the camp: at last it environed the few remaining cabins, as if they were besieged, and it stood up tall and undisturbed in the only remaining street. Still regularly three times a day the smoke curled up from The Gopher's cabin, and the bull dog kept unbroken sentry at the door.
A quartz lead had been struck a little way farther up the gulch, and a rival town established. The proprietors named the new camp "Orodelphi," but the man of the saloon of Mexican Camp, who always insisted he was born a genius, called it "Hogem." It stuck like wax, and "Hogem" is the only name by which the little town is known to this day.
One evening there was consternation among the idlers of Mexican Camp. It was announced that the last saloon was to be removed to Hogem. A remonstrance was talked of; but when a man known as the "Judge," from his calm demeanor in the face of the gravest trouble, urged that the calamity was not so great after all, since each man could easily transport his blankets and frying pan to the vacant cabins of Hogem, no more was said.
The next winter The Gopher was left utterly alone, and in the January Spring that followed, the grass and clover crept down strong and thick from the hills and spread in a pretty carpet across the unmeasured streets of the once populous and prosperous Mexican Camp. Little gray horned toads sunned themselves on the great flat rocks that had served for hearth stones, and the wild hop vines clambered up and across the toppling and shapeless chimneys.
About this time a closely contested election drew near. It was a bold and original thought of a candidate to approach The Gopher and solicit his vote. His friends shook their heads, but his case was desperate, and he ventured down upon the old gray cabin, hiding in the grass and chaparral. The dog protested, and the office seeker was proceeding to knock his ugly teeth down his throat with a pick handle, when the door opened, and he found the muzzle of a double barreled shotgun in his face. The candidate did not stay to urge his claims, and The Gopher's politics remained a mystery.
I know but one more incident that broke the dreary monotony in the life of this selfish and singular man. One dark night two men of questionable character were found in the trail, trying to drag themselves to Hogem. They were riddled with shot like a tom iron. They had been prospecting around for The Gopher's gold, and had received their "baptism of fire" in attempting to descend his chimney.
Here in this land of the sun the days trench deep into the nights of northern countries, and birds and beasts retire before the sunset: a habit which the transplanted Saxon declines to adopt.
Some idlers sat at sunset on the veranda of the saloon at Hogem, looking down the gulch as the manzanita smoke curled up from The Gopher's cabin.
There is an hour when the best that is in man comes to the surface; sometimes the outcroppings are not promising of any great inner wealth; but the indications, whatever they may be, are not false. It is dulse and drift coming to the surface when the storm of the day is over. Yet the best thoughts are never uttered: often because no fit words are found to array them in; oftener because no fit ear is found to receive them.
A sailor broke silence:"Looks like a Fejee camp on a South Sea island."
"Robinson Crusoe—the last man of Mexican Camp—the last rose of summer." This was said by a young man who had sent some verses to the Hangtown Weekly.
"Looks to me, in its crow's nest of chaparral, like the lucky ace of spades," added a man who sat apart contemplating the wax under the nail of his right forefinger.
The school master here picked up the ace of hearts, drew out his pencil and figured rapidly.
"There!" He cried, flourishing the card,"I put it at an ounce a day for eighteen years, and that is the result." The figures astonished them all. It was decided that the old miser had at least a mule load of gold in his cabin. "It is my opinion," said the Squire, who was small of stature, and consequently insolent and impertinent," he had ought to be taken up, tried, and hung for killing his partner in '49."
"The time has run out," said the coroner, who now came up, adjusting a tall hat to which he was evidently not accustomed; "the time for such cases, by the law made and provided, has run out, and it is my opinion it can't be did."
Not long after this it was discovered that The Gopher was not at work. Then it came out that he was very ill, and that old Fortynine was seen to enter his cabin.
Early one frosty morning in the fall following, old Fortynine Jimmy sat by the door of the only saloon at Hogem. He held an old bull dog by a tow string, and both man and dog were pictures of distress as they shivered from the keen cold wind that came pitching down from the snow peaks. As I approached, the man shivered till his teeth chattered, and, clutching at his string, looked helplessly over his shoulder at the uncompromising bar keeper, who had just arisen and opened the door to let out the bad odors of his den. The dog shivered, too, and came up and sat down close enough to receive the sympathetic hand of old Fortynine on his broad bowed head. This man was a relic and a wreck. Nearly twenty years of miner's life and labor in the mountains, interrupted only by periodical sprees, governed in their duration solely by the results of his last "clean up," had made him one of a type of men known only to the Pacific. True, he had failed to negotiate with the savage cinnamon headed vender of poison; but he was no beggar. It was simply a failure to obtain a Wall street accommodation in a small way. I doubt if the bristle haired barkeeper himself questioned the honesty of Fortynine. It was merely a question of ability to pay, and the decision of the autocrat had been promptly and firmly given against the applicant. Perhaps, in strict justice to the red haired wretch that washed his tumblers and watched for victims that frosty morning, I should state that appearances were certainly against Fortynine. It is nothing at all against a brave, frugal gold miner, lifting his heart out of and over the Sierras to a group awaiting him away in the East, to be found wearing patches on his clothes, and even patches on the patches: in fact, I have known many who, coupling a quaint humor with economy, wore—neatly stitched on that portion of a certain garment most liable to wear and tear when the owner had only boulders and hard benches to sit upon—the last week's flour sack, bearing this inscription in bold black letters: "Warranted superfine, 50 lbs." But Fortynine had not even a patch, therefore no flour sack, ergo, no flour. The most certain sign of the total wreck of a California miner is the absence of top boots. When all other signs fail, this one is infallible. You can with tolerable certainty, in the placer mines, tell how a miner's claim is paying by the condition and quality of his top boots. Fortynine had no boots, only a pair of slippers improvised from "what had been," and between the top of these and the legs of his pantaloons there was no compromise across the naked, cold blue ankles. These signs, together with a buttonless blue shirt that showed his hairy bosom, a frightful beard, and hair beneath a hat that drooped like a wilted palm leaf, were the circumstantial evidences from which Judge Barkeep made his decision.
It would perhaps be more pleasant for us all if we could know that such men were a race to themselves; that they never saw civilization; that there never was a time when they were petted by pretty sisters, and sat, pure and strong, the central figures of Christian households; or at least we would like to think that they grew upon the border, and belonged there. But the truth is, nine cases out of ten, they came of the gentlest blood and life. The border man, born and bred in storms, never gets discouraged; it is the man of culture, refinement, and sensitive nature who falls from the front in the hard fought battles of the West.
This man's brow was broad and full; had his beard and hair been combed and cared for, his head had looked a very picture. But, after all, there was one weak point in his face. He had a small, hesitating nose.
As a rule, in any great struggle involving any degree of strategy and strength, the small nose must go to the wall. It may have pluck, spirit, refinement, sensitiveness, and, in fact, to the casual observer, every quality requisite to success; but somehow invariably at the very crisis it gives way. Small noses are a failure. This is the verdict of history. Give me a man, or woman either, with a big nose, —not a nose of flesh, not a loose, flabby nose like a camel's lips, nor a thin, starved nose that the eyes have crowded out and forced into prominence, but a full, strong, substantial nose, that is willing and able to take the lead; one that asserts itself boldly between the eyes, and reaches up towards the brows, and has room enough to sit down there and be at home. Give me a man, or woman either, with a nose like that, and I will have a nose that will accomplish something. I grant you that such a nose may be a knave; it may be equally a genius; but it is never a coward nor a fool—never!
In the strong stream of miners' life as it was, no man could stand still. He either went up or down. The strong and not always the best went up. The weak—which often embraced the gentlest and sweetest natures—were borne down and stranded here and there all along the river.
I have noticed that those who stop, stand, and look longest at the tempting display of viands in cook shop windows, are those that have not a penny to purchase with. Perhaps there was something of this nature in old Forty nine that impelled him to look again and again over his shoulder—as he clutched tighter to the tow string—at the cinnamon headed bottle washer behind the bar at Hogem.
As I stood before this man, he turned his eyes from the barkeeper and lifted them helplessly to mine,—
"Charlie is dead."
"Charlie who? Who is 'Charlie'?"
"Charlie Godfrey, The Gopher, and here is his dog;" and as he spoke, the dog, as if knowing his master's name and feeling his loss, crouched close to the old man's legs.
A new commotion in Hogem. Say what you will of gold, whenever any one shuts his eyes and turns forever from it, as if in contempt, his name, for a day at least, assumes a majesty proportionate with the amount he has left behind and seems to despise.
The coroner, who was a candidate for a higher office, marshaled the leading spirits at Hogem and proceeded to the cabin where the dead man lay. He felt that his reputation was at stake, and entering the cabin, said in a solemn voice: "In the name of the law, I take possession of this primeses." Some one at the door, evidently not a friend to the coroner's political aspirations, called out: "O, what a hat!" The officer was not abashed, but towered up till his tall hat touched the roof, and repeated, "In the name of the law, I take possession of this primeses." This time there was no response or note of derision, and it was quietly conceded that The Gopher and all his gold were in the hands of the coroner.
The cabin was a true and perfect relic of what might, geologically speaking, be termed a period in the plastic formation of the Republic. Great pine logs, one above the other, formed three of its walls; the fourth was made up by a fire place, constructed of boulders and adobe. The bed had but one post; a pine slab, supported by legs set in the center of the earthen floor, formed a table; the windows were holes, chiseled out between the logs, that could be closed with wooden plugs in darkness or danger. Let these cabins not be despised. Their builders have done more for the commerce of the world than is supposed. Some day some cunning and earnest hand will picture them faithfully, and they will not be forgotten.
It is to be admitted that the dead man did not look so terrible, even in death, as the mind had pictured him. His unclosed eyes looked straight at those who came only to reproach him, and wonder where his money was buried, till they were abashed.
Standing there, the jury, under direction of the coroner, gave a verdict of "death from general debility." Some one tried to bring the coroner into contempt again, by afterwards calling attention to the fact that he had forgotten to swear the jury; but the officer replied, "It is not necessary in such cases by the law made and provided," and so was counted wise and correct.
They bore the body of the last man of Mexican Camp to the graveyard on the hill— may be a little nearer to heaven. How odd that nearly all graveyards are on a hill. The places of chief mourners were assigned to Fortynine and the dog. Whether these places were given because Fortynine was the only present acquaintance of the deceased, or whether the dog quietly asserted a right that no one cared to dispute, is not certain. Most likely it was one of those things that naturally, and therefore correctly, adjust themselves.
When these bearded men in blue shirts rested their burden at the open grave, they looked at each other, and there was an unpleasant pause. Perhaps they thought of the Christian burial service in other lands, and felt that something was wanting. At last Fortynine stole up close to the head of the grave, hesitated, lifted and laid aside his old slouch hat, and looking straight down into the earth, said, in a low and helpless way:
"Earth to earth and dust to dust!" hesitated again and then continued: "The mustard and the clover seed are but little things, and no man can tell the one from the other; yet bury them in the uttermost parts of the earth, and each will bring its kind perfect and beautiful, —and—and—man is surely more than a little seed—and—and..." here he broke down utterly, and knelt and kissed the face of the dead.
The men looked away for a while, as if to objects in the horizon, and then, without looking at each other, or breaking silence, lowered the unshapely box, caught up the spades, and found a positive relief in heaping the grave.
Then the coroner, as in duty bound, or, as he expressed it, "as required by the law in such cases made and provided," directed his attentions to a search for the buried treasure.
Yeast powder boxes, oyster cans and sardine boxes, old boots and quicksilver tanks, were carried out to the light and inspected, without results. "In the straw of the bunk," said the coroner;—and blankets, bunk, and straw were carried out to the sun; but not an ounce of gold. To make sure against intrusion of the ill disposed, the unwearied coroner slept on the spot. The next day, the hearth was taken up carefully, piece by piece, but only crickets clad in black, and little pink eyed mice met the eager eyes of the men. At last some one suggested that as the hard baked earthen floor was the last place in which one would look for hidden treasures, that was probably the first and only place in which The Gopher had buried his gold. The thought made the coroner enthusiastic. He sent for picks, and, if I must tell the truth, and the whole truth, he sent for whisky also. By sunset the entire earthen floor had been dug to the depth of many feet and emptied outside the door. Not a farthing's worth of gold was found. The next day the chimney was taken down. Lizards, dust of adobes, but nothing more. I am bound to say that, about this time, the memory of the man just taken to the hill was held in but little respect, and that a good or bad name, so far as the over zealous coroner was concerned, depended entirely on the final results of the search. But one more thing remained to be done: that was to remove the cabin. Shingle by shingle, log by log, the structure was leveled. Wood rats, kangaroo mice, horned toads, a rattlesnake or two that had gone into winter quarters under the great logs, and that was all. Not an ounce of gold was found in the last cabin of Mexican Camp.
The flat was then staked off as mining ground by some enterprising strangers, and they began in the center to sluice it to the bedrock. They sluiced up the gulch for a month, and then down the gulch for a month, until the whole hillside was scalped, as it were, to the bone, and the treasure hunters were bankrupt, but not even so much as the color of the dead man's gold was found.
Hogem was disgusted, and The Gopher was voted a worse man dead than living.
It began to be noticed, however, that Forty nine had mended somewhat in his personal appearance since the death of The Gopher, and it was whispered that he knew where the treasure was. Some even went so far as to say that he had the whole pile of it in his possession. "Some of these nights he'll come up a missing," said the butcher, striking savagely at his steel across his block. In justice to Hogem it must be observed she was not without grounds to go upon in her suspicions. For was not Fortynine near the man at his, death? And if he could get his dog, why not get his gold also?
One night Fortynine, holding tight to a tow string, shuffled up to me in the saloon, and timidly plucking my sleeve, said:
" Going away, I hear?"
"Yes."
"To the States?"
"Yes."
" Near to Boston ? "
"Maybe."
"Well, then, look here: come with me!"— and with an old dog bumping his head against his heels, he led the way out the door down the gulch to his cabin. He pulled the latch string, entered, and finally struck a light, Sticking the candle in a whisky bottle that stood on the greasy table in the center of the earthen floor, he picked up the tow string, and pointing to the bunk in the corner, we sat down together, and the old dog rested his nose between the old man's legs.
After looking about the cabin in nervous silence for a time. Fortynine arose with a look of resolution, handed me his string, stepped to a niche in the wall, and taking an old crevicing knife, struck it in stoutly above the latch.
"This means something," said I to myself.
"Here will be a revelation," and I confess that a vision of The Gopher's gold bags crossed my mind with tempting vividness. After a while the old man came back, took up the whisky bottle, removed the candle from the niche, and holding it up between his face and the light, which he held in the other hand, seemed to decide some weighty proposition, by the run of the beads in the bottle, and then turned and offered it to me in silence. As I declined his kindness, he hurriedly took a long draught, replaced the candle, then came and sat down close at my side, took his string, and the old dog again thrust his nose between his knees.
"You see,"—and the man leaned over to me, and began in a whisper and a strangeness of manner that suggested that his mind was wandering,—"you see, we all come out from Boston together: Godfrey, that's The Gopher, Wilson, that's Curty, and I. Things didn't go right with me there, after I came away, so 1 just let them drift here. Lost my 'grip,' as they say, didn't have any 'snap' anymore, as people call it. Godfrey and Wilson got on very well, though, till Wilson was killed."
"Till The Gopher killed him?" I added.
"Well, now, there's where it is," said old Forty nine, and he shuddered. The dog, too, seemed to grow nervous, and crowded his ugly head up tighter between the old man's legs.
Inartistic as it is, I must add that here he again handed me the string, and rising solemnly, went deliberately through the process of removing the candle, and contemplating the contents of the bottle. Again I declined his offer. I was wondering in which part of that wretched cabin were the bags of gold.
The man sat down and continued his story exactly as before.
"There's where it is. Godfrey did not kill Wilson. The Gopher did not kill Curly no more than did you. You see, Curly was young, a bright, beautiful, sunny faced boy, that had been petted to death by his mother and a house full of sisters, and somehow, out here, he fell to gambling and taking a bit too much, and one night, when Godfrey tried to get him away from a game, a set of roughs got up a row, upset the table, and Curly got knifed by some one of the set, who made a rumpus to get a grab at the money. Godfrey was holding the boy at the time to keep him from striking, for he was mad with drink. Poor Curly only said, 'Don't let them know it at home,' and died in his arms. Everybody was stranger to everybody then, and no one took stock in that which did not directly concern him. People said Godfrey was right—that it was a case of self defense, and Godfrey never said a word, never denied he killed him, but went back to the cabin, took possession of everything, and had it all his own way. He worked like a Chinaman, and never took any part in miners' meetings, or anything of the kind, and people began to fear and shun him. By and by all his old acquaintances had gone but me; and he was only known as The Gopher."
Again Fortynine paused, and the dog crept closer than before, as if he knew the name of his master.
Once more the man arose, lifted the candle, contemplated the beads in the bottle, as before, and returned. He did not sit down, but took up and pulled back the blankets at the end of the bunk.
"I thought as much," said I to myself. "The gold is hidden in the straw."
"Look at them," said he; and he threw down a bundle of papers, and held the dim candle for me to read.
There were hundreds of letters, all written in a fine steel plate lady's hand. Some addressed to Godfrey, and some to Wilson. Now and then was one with a border of black, telling that some one at home no longer waited the return. Some of the letters I read. "Come home, come home," was at the bottom of them all. I chanced on one addressed to Wilson, of a recent date, thanking him with all a mother's and sister's tenderness for the money he had so constantly sent them through all the weary years. I did not understand it and looked up at Fortynine. He bent over me, as I sat on the bunk beside the letters, with his candle.
"That was it, you see; that was it. As Godfrey, that's The Gopher, is dead, and can send them no more money, and as you was a going to the States, I thought best that you should drop in and tell the two families gently, somehow, that they both are dead. Say that they died together. He sent them the last ounce he had the week before he died, and made me take these letters to keep them away from the coroner, so that he might not know his address, and so that they might not know at home that Curly had died long ago, and died a gambler. Take one of the letters along, and that will tell you where they are."
Again old Fortynine resumed the tow string. He looked toward the door, and when I had stepped across the sill he put out the light, and we stood together.
The old dog knew there was but the one place for his master outside his cabin at such a time, and, blind leading the blind, thither he led him through the dark.
As declared in the subtitle, this is not the original Joaquin Miller; this is an attempt to distill the readable and worth preserving Miller from the much larger mass of unreadable and justly forgotten Miller. Most of the prose here has been very heavily edited. First because Miller shamelessly self-plagiarized so, if you read him in the original, you will find yourself reading the same characters and situations over and over. Even worse, when he hits on an image that he likes, he will can't let go of it, repeating it every chance he gets. Worse, usually these are not very good imagery in the first place. In many places I have ruthlessly limited Miller to one adjective per noun.
The poetry I have pretty much left alone with a few exceptions. I have tried to preserve the formatting of the poems as close as possible to that in Miller's Complete Poems because Miller obviously had some definite ideas about how these poems should be presented on the page. This was not easy because Miller had no respect for poetic scansion, rhyming schemes, or typographical conventions. As as result sometimes I have had to guess whether something was an error or a deliberate choice.
If anyone thinks this is an excessive liberty, I offer that Miller in the original is as readily available as it ever was. Miller did write some things that are worth reading today and by slashing a path through the brush to make them accessible I hope to bring these nuggets to the attention of a wider audience.
Dave Driscoll August 2022
The Grant County Historical Association is a non-profit organization dedicated to the support all historically oriented organizations in Grant County Oregon. This book is the first of a number of historically themed books the Association intends to publish. All profits the Association derives from books sales will be devoted to preserving and promoting the history of Grant County Oregon.
Photograph of abandoned cabin on the slopes of Canyon Mountain courtesy of Lynda Jerome.