Of the notable men I met in the mines in the early days, there was one who piqued and puzzled my curiosity.  He had the face of a saint with the habits of a debauchee.  His pale and student-like features were of the most classic mold, and their expression singularly winning, save when at times a cynical sneer would suddenly flash over them like a cloud-shadow over a quiet landscape.  He was a lawyer, and stood at the head of the bar.  He was an orator whose silver voice and magnetic qualities often kindled the largest audiences into the wildest enthusiasm.  Nature had denied him no gift of body or mind requisite to success in life; but there was a fatal weakness in his moral constitution.  He was an inveterate gambler, his large professional earnings going into the coffers of the faro and monte dealers.  His violations of good morals in other respects were flagrant.  He worked hard by day, and gave himself up to his vices at night.  Public opinion was not very exacting in those days, and his failings were condoned by a people who respected force and pluck, and made no close inquiries into a man’s private life, because it would have been no easy thing to find one who, on the score of innocence, was entitled to cast the first stone.  Thus he lived from year to year, increasing his reputation as a lawyer of marked ability, and as a politician whose eloquence in every campaign was a tower of strength to his party.  His fame spread until it filled the State, and his money still fed his vices.  He never drank, and that cool, keen intellect never lost its balance, or failed him in any encounter on the hustings on at the bar.  I often met him in public, but he never was known to go inside a church.  Once, when in a street conversation I casually made some reference to religion, a look of displeasure passed over his face, and he abruptly left me.  I was agreeably surprised when, on more than one occasion, he sent me a substantial token of goodwill, but I was never able to analyze the motive that prompted him to do so.  This remembrance softens the feelings with which these lines are penciled.  He went to San Francisco, but there was no change in his life.

“It is the old story,” said an acquaintance of whom I made inquiry concerning him:  “he has a large and lucrative practice, and the gamblers get all he makes.  He is getting gray, and he is failing a little.  He is a strange being.”

It happened afterward that his office and mine were in the same building and on the same floor.  As we met on the stairs, he would nod to me and pass on.  I noticed that he was indeed “failing.”  He looked-weary and sad, and the cold or defiant gleam in his steel-gray eyes, was changed into a wistful and painful expression that was very pathetic.  I did not dare to invade his reserve with any tender of sympathy.  Joyless and hopeless as he might be, I felt instinctively that he would play out his drama alone.  Perhaps this was a mistake on my part:  he may have been hungry for the word I did not speak.  God knows.  I was not lacking in proper interest in his well-being, but I have since thought in such cases it is safest to speak.