“Gentlemen,” said I, “I don’t
say anything—I haven’t been around,
you know, and of course don’t know anything—but
all I ask of you is to cast your eye on that, for
instance, and tell me what you think of it!”
and I tossed my treasure before them.
There was an eager scramble for it, and a closing
of heads together over it under the candle-light.
Then old Ballou said:
“Think of it? I think it is nothing but
a lot of granite rubbish and nasty glittering mica
that isn’t worth ten cents an acre!”
So vanished my dream. So melted my wealth away.
So toppled my airy castle to the earth and left me
stricken and forlorn.
Moralizing, I observed, then, that “all that
glitters is not gold.”
Mr. Ballou said I could go further than that, and
lay it up among my treasures of knowledge, that nothing
that glitters is gold. So I learned then, once
for all, that gold in its native state is but dull,
unornamental stuff, and that only low-born metals excite
the admiration of the ignorant with an ostentatious
glitter. However, like the rest of the world,
I still go on underrating men of gold and glorifying
men of mica. Commonplace human nature cannot
rise above that.
True knowledge of the nature of silver mining came
fast enough. We went out “prospecting”
with Mr. Ballou. We climbed the mountain sides,
and clambered among sage-brush, rocks and snow till
we were ready to drop with exhaustion, but found no
silver—nor yet any gold. Day after
day we did this. Now and then we came upon holes
burrowed a few feet into the declivities and apparently
abandoned; and now and then we found one or two listless
men still burrowing. But there was no appearance
of silver. These holes were the beginnings of
tunnels, and the purpose was to drive them hundreds
of feet into the mountain, and some day tap the hidden
ledge where the silver was. Some day! It
seemed far enough away, and very hopeless and dreary.
Day after day we toiled, and climbed and searched,
and we younger partners grew sicker and still sicker
of the promiseless toil. At last we halted under
a beetling rampart of rock which projected from the
earth high upon the mountain. Mr. Ballou broke
off some fragments with a hammer, and examined them
long and attentively with a small eye-glass; threw
them away and broke off more; said this rock was quartz,
and quartz was the sort of rock that contained silver.
Contained it! I had thought that at least it
would be caked on the outside of it like a kind of
veneering. He still broke off pieces and critically
examined them, now and then wetting the piece with
his tongue and applying the glass. At last he
exclaimed:
“We’ve got it!”
