myself, at the age of thirteen (for my father had endorsed for friends;
and although he left us a sumptuous legacy of pride in his fine Virginian
stock and its national distinction, I presently found that I could not
live on that alone without occasional bread to wash it down with). I had
gained a livelihood in various vocations, but had not dazzled anybody
with my successes; still the list was before me, and the amplest liberty
in the matter of choosing, provided I wanted to work–which I did not,
after being so wealthy. I had once been a grocery clerk, for one day,
but had consumed so much sugar in that time that I was relieved from
further duty by the proprietor; said he wanted me outside, so that he
could have my custom. I had studied law an entire week, and then given
it up because it was so prosy and tiresome. I had engaged briefly in the
study of blacksmithing, but wasted so much time trying to fix the bellows
so that it would blow itself, that the master turned me adrift in
disgrace, and told me I would come to no good. I had been a bookseller’s
clerk for awhile, but the customers bothered me so much I could not read
with any comfort, and so the proprietor gave me a furlough and forgot to
put a limit to it. I had clerked in a drug store part of a summer, but
my prescriptions were unlucky, and we appeared to sell more stomach pumps
than soda water. So I had to go. I had made of myself a tolerable
printer, under the impression that I would be another Franklin some day,
but somehow had missed the connection thus far. There was no berth open
in the Esmeralda Union, and besides I had always been such a slow
compositor that I looked with envy upon the achievements of apprentices
of two years’ standing; and when I took a “take,” foremen were in the
habit of suggesting that it would be wanted “some time during the year.”
I was a good average St. Louis and New Orleans pilot and by no means
ashamed of my abilities in that line; wages were two hundred and fifty
dollars a month and no board to pay, and I did long to stand behind a
wheel again and never roam any more–but I had been making such an ass of
myself lately in grandiloquent letters home about my blind lead and my
European excursion that I did what many and many a poor disappointed
miner had done before; said “It is all over with me now, and I will never
go back home to be pitied–and snubbed.” I had been a private secretary,
a silver miner and a silver mill operative, and amounted to less than
nothing in each, and now–
What to do next?
I yielded to Higbie’s appeals and consented to try the mining once more.
We climbed far up on the mountain side and went to work on a little
rubbishy claim of ours that had a shaft on it eight feet deep. Higbie
descended into it and worked bravely with his pick till he had loosened
up a deal of rock and dirt and then I went down with a long-handled
shovel (the most awkward invention yet contrived by man) to throw it out.
You must brace the shovel forward with the side of your knee till it is
full, and then, with a skilful toss, throw it backward over your left
shoulder. I made the toss, and landed the mess just on the edge of the
shaft and it all came back on my head and down the back of my neck.
I never said a word, but climbed out and walked home. I inwardly
resolved that I would starve before I would make a target of myself and
shoot rubbish at it with a long-handled shovel.
I sat down, in the cabin, and gave myself up to solid misery–so to
speak. Now in pleasanter days I had amused myself with writing letters
to the chief paper of the Territory, the Virginia Daily Territorial
Enterprise, and had always been surprised when they appeared in print.