Roughing It
split open and flattened out like codfish, and came from China in that
shape, and the latter were plastered over with some kind of paste which
kept them fresh and palatable through the long voyage.
We found Mr. Hong Wo, No. 37 Chow-chow street, making up a lottery
scheme—in fact we found a dozen others occupied in the same way in
various parts of the quarter, for about every third Chinaman runs a
lottery, and the balance of the tribe “buck” at it. “Tom,” who speaks
faultless English, and used to be chief and only cook to the
_Territorial Enterprise_, when the establishment kept bachelor’s hall
two years ago, said that “Sometime Chinaman buy ticket one dollar hap,
ketch um two tree hundred, sometime no ketch um anything; lottery like
one man fight um seventy—may-be he whip, may-be he get whip heself,
welly good.”
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However, the percentage being sixty-nine against him, the chances are,
as a general thing, that “he get whip heself.” We could not see that
these lotteries differed in any respect from our own, save that the
figures being Chinese, no ignorant white man might ever hope to succeed
in telling “t’other from which;” the manner of drawing is similar to
ours.
Mr. See Yup keeps a fancy store on Live Fox street. He sold us fans of
white feathers, gorgeously ornamented; perfumery that smelled like
Limburger cheese, Chinese pens, and watch-charms made of a stone
unscratchable with steel instruments, yet polished and tinted like the
inner coat of a sea-shell. As tokens of his esteem, See Yup presented
the party with gaudy plumes made of gold tinsel and trimmed with
peacocks’ feathers.
We ate chow-chow with chop-sticks in the celestial restaurants; our
comrade chided the moon-eyed damsels in front of the houses for their
want of feminine reserve; we received protecting Josh-lights from our
hosts and “dickered” for a pagan God or two. Finally, we were impressed
with the genius of a Chinese book-keeper; he figured up his accounts on
a machine like a gridiron with buttons strung on its bars; the different
rows represented units, tens, hundreds and thousands. He fingered them
with incredible rapidity—in fact, he pushed them from place to place as
fast as a musical professor’s fingers travel over the keys of a piano.
They are a kindly disposed, well-meaning race, and are respected and
well treated by the upper classes, all over the Pacific coast. No
Californian _gentleman or lady_ ever abuses or oppresses a Chinaman,
under any circumstances, an explanation that seems to be much needed in
the East. Only the scum of the population do it—they and their children;
they, and, naturally and consistently, the policemen and politicians,
likewise, for these are the dust-licking pimps and slaves of the scum,
there as well as elsewhere in America.
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CHAPTER LV.
I began to get tired of staying in one place so long.
There was no longer satisfying variety in going down to Carson to report
the proceedings of the legislature once a year, and horse-races and
pumpkin-shows once in three months; (they had got to raising pumpkins
and potatoes in Washoe Valley, and of course one of the first
achievements of the legislature was to institute a ten-thousand-dollar
Agricultural Fair to show off forty dollars’ worth of those pumpkins
in—however, the territorial legislature was usually spoken of as the
“asylum”). I wanted to see San Francisco. I wanted to go somewhere. I
wanted—I did not know _what_ I wanted. I had the “spring fever” and
wanted a change, principally, no doubt. Besides, a convention had framed
a State Constitution; nine men out of every ten wanted an office; I
believed that these gentlemen would “treat” the moneyless and the
irresponsible among the population into adopting the constitution and
thus well-nigh killing the country (it could not well carry such a load
as a State government, since it had nothing to tax that could stand a
tax, for undeveloped mines could not, and there were not fifty developed
ones in the land, there was but little realty to tax, and it did seem as
if nobody was ever going to think of the simple salvation of inflicting
a money penalty on murder). I believed that a State government would
destroy the “flush times,” and I wanted to get away. I believed that the
mining stocks I had on hand would soon be worth $100,000, and thought if
they reached that before the Constitution was adopted, I would sell out
and make myself secure from the crash the change of government was going
to bring. I considered $100,000 sufficient to go home with decently,
though it was but a small amount compared to what I had been expecting
to return with. I felt rather down-hearted about it, but I tried to
comfort myself with the reflection that with such a sum I could not fall
into want. About this time a schoolmate of mine whom I had not seen
since boyhood, came tramping in on foot from Reese River, a very
allegory of Poverty. The son of wealthy parents, here he was, in a
strange land, hungry, bootless, mantled in an ancient horse-blanket,
roofed with a brimless hat, and so generally and so extravagantly
dilapidated that he could have “taken the shine out of the Prodigal Son
himself,” as he pleasantly remarked.
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He wanted to borrow forty-six dollars—twenty-six to take him to San
Francisco, and twenty for something else; to buy some soap with, maybe,
for he needed it. I found I had but little more than the amount wanted,
in my pocket; so I stepped in and borrowed forty-six dollars of a banker
(on twenty days’ time, without the formality of a note), and gave it
him, rather than walk half a block to the office, where I had some
specie laid up. If anybody had told me that it would take me two years
to pay back that forty-six dollars to the banker (for I did not expect
it of the Prodigal, and was not disappointed), I would have felt
injured. And so would the banker.
I wanted a change. I wanted variety of some kind. It came. Mr. Goodman
went away for a week and left me the post of chief editor. It destroyed
me. The first day, I wrote my “leader” in the forenoon. The second day,
I had no subject and put it off till the afternoon. The third day I put
it off till evening, and then copied an elaborate editorial out of the
“American Cyclopedia,” that steadfast friend of the editor, all over
this land. The fourth day I “fooled around” till midnight, and then fell
back on the Cyclopedia again. The fifth day I cudgeled my brain till
midnight, and then kept the press waiting while I penned some bitter
personalities on six different people. The sixth day I labored in
anguish till far into the night and brought forth—nothing. The paper
went to press without an editorial. The seventh day I resigned. On the
eighth, Mr. Goodman returned and found six duels on his hands—my
personalities had borne fruit.
Nobody, except he has tried it, knows what it is to be an editor. It is
easy to scribble local rubbish, with the facts all before you; it is
easy to clip selections from other papers; it is easy to string out a
correspondence from any locality; but it is unspeakable hardship to
write editorials. _Subjects_ are the trouble—the dreary lack of them, I
mean. Every day, it is drag, drag, drag—think, and worry and suffer—all
the world is a dull blank, and yet the editorial columns _must_ be
filled. Only give the editor a _subject_, and his work is done—it is no
trouble to write it up; but fancy how you would feel if you had to pump
your brains dry every day in the week, fifty-two weeks in the year. It
makes one low spirited simply to think of it. The matter that each
editor of a daily paper in America writes in the course of a year would
fill from four to eight bulky volumes like this book! Fancy what a
library an editor’s work would make, after twenty or thirty years’
service. Yet people often marvel that Dickens, Scott, Bulwer, Dumas,
etc., have been able to produce so many books. If these authors had
wrought as voluminously as newspaper editors do, the result would be
something to marvel at, indeed. How editors can continue this tremendous
labor, this exhausting consumption of brain fibre (for their work is
creative, and not a mere mechanical laying-up of facts, like reporting),
day after day and year after year, is incomprehensible. Preachers take
two months’ holiday in midsummer, for they find that to produce two
sermons a week is wearing, in the long run. In truth it must be so, and
is so; and therefore, how an editor can take from ten to twenty texts
and build upon them from ten to twenty painstaking editorials a week and
keep it up all the year round, is farther beyond comprehension than
ever. Ever since I survived my week as editor, I have found at least one
pleasure in any newspaper that comes to my hand; it is in admiring the
long columns of editorial, and wondering to myself how in the mischief
he did it!
Mr. Goodman’s return relieved me of employment, unless I chose to become
a reporter again. I could not do that; I could not serve in the ranks
after being General of the army. So I thought I would depart and go
abroad into the world somewhere. Just at this juncture, Dan, my
associate in the reportorial department, told me, casually, that two
citizens had been trying to persuade him to go with them to New York and
aid in selling a rich silver mine which they had discovered and secured
in a new mining district in our neighborhood. He said they offered to
pay his expenses and give him one third of the proceeds of the sale. He
had refused to go. It was the very opportunity I wanted. I abused him
for keeping so quiet about it, and not mentioning it sooner. He said it
had not occurred to him that I would like to go, and so he had
recommended them to apply to Marshall, the reporter of the other paper.
I asked Dan if it was a good, honest mine, and no swindle. He said the
men had shown him nine tons of the rock, which they had got out to take
to New York, and he could cheerfully say that he had seen but little
rock in Nevada that was richer; and moreover, he said that they had
secured a tract of valuable timber and a mill-site, near the mine. My
first idea was to kill Dan. But I changed my mind, notwithstanding I was
so angry, for I thought maybe the chance was not yet lost. Dan said it
was by no means lost; that the men were absent at the mine again, and
would not be in Virginia to leave for the East for some ten days; that
they had requested him to do the talking to Marshall, and he had
promised that he would either secure Marshall or somebody else for them
by the time they got back; he would now say nothing to anybody till they
returned, and then fulfil his promise by furnishing me to them.
It was splendid. I went to bed all on fire with excitement; for nobody
had yet gone East to sell a Nevada silver mine, and the field was white
for the sickle. I felt that such a mine as the one described by Dan
would bring a princely sum in New York, and sell without delay or
difficulty. I could not sleep, my fancy so rioted through its castles in
the air. It was the “blind lead” come again.
Next day I got away, on the coach, with the usual eclat attending
departures of old citizens,—for if you have only half a dozen friends
out there they will make noise for a hundred rather than let you seem to
go away neglected and unregretted—and Dan promised to keep strict watch
for the men that had the mine to sell.
The trip was signalized but by one little incident, and that occurred
just as we were about to start. A very seedy looking vagabond passenger
got out of the stage a moment to wait till the usual ballast of silver
bricks was thrown in. He was standing on the pavement, when an awkward
express employee, carrying a brick weighing a hundred pounds, stumbled