Higbie and I cleared out on a new mining excitement
the next morning, glad to get away from the scene
of our sufferings, and after a month or two of hardship
and disappointment, returned to Esmeralda once more.
Then we learned that the Wide West and the Johnson
companies had consolidated; that the stock, thus united,
comprised five thousand feet, or shares; that the
foreman, apprehending tiresome litigation, and considering
such a huge concern unwieldy, had sold his hundred
feet for ninety thousand dollars in gold and gone
home to the States to enjoy it. If the stock
was worth such a gallant figure, with five thousand
shares in the corporation, it makes me dizzy to think
what it would have been worth with only our original
six hundred in it. It was the difference between
six hundred men owning a house and five thousand owning
it. We would have been millionaires if we had
only worked with pick and spade one little day on
our property and so secured our ownership!
It reads like a wild fancy sketch, but the evidence
of many witnesses, and likewise that of the official
records of Esmeralda District, is easily obtainable
in proof that it is a true history. I can always
have it to say that I was absolutely and unquestionably
worth a million dollars, once, for ten days.
A year ago my esteemed and in every way estimable
old millionaire partner, Higbie, wrote me from an
obscure little mining camp in California that after
nine or ten years of buffetings and hard striving,
he was at last in a position where he could command
twenty-five hundred dollars, and said he meant to
go into the fruit business in a modest way. How
such a thought would have insulted him the night we
lay in our cabin planning European trips and brown
stone houses on Russian Hill!
CHAPTER XLII.
What to do next?
It was a momentous question. I had gone out
into the world to shift for 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,
Copyrights
Roughing It from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
