fever, long before the advent of the railroad.  They had trekked across the plains from Omaha, and up through the mountainous passes of the Oregon trail; or, a little later, they had come by steamboat from St. Louis up the twelve-hundred-mile stretch of the Missouri until their progress had been stopped by the Great Falls in the very foothills of the Rockies.  What heroes were these graybeards of the mountains!  What possibilities in knowing them, of listening to the recounting of tales of the early days,—­of running fights with the Indians on the plains, of ambushments by desperadoes in the mountain passes, of the lurid life of the early mining camps, and the desperate deeds of the Vigilantes!  And here, before me, was a man of that type.  You could read the main facts of his history in the very lines of his face.  And this man—­one of that small band whom the whole country united to honor—­this man wanted to become a student,—­to sit among adolescent boys and girls, listening to the lectures and discussions of instructors who were babes in arms when he was a man of middle life.

But there was no doubt of his determination.  With the eagerness of a boy, he outlined his plan to me; and in doing this, he told me the story of his life,—­just the barest facts to let me know that he was not a man to do things half-heartedly, or to drop a project until he had carried it through either to a successful issue, or to indisputable defeat.

And what a life that man had lived!  He had been a youth of promise, keen of intelligence and quick of wit.  He had spent two years at a college in the Middle West back in the early sixties.  He had left his course uncompleted to enter the army, and he had followed the fortunes of war through the latter part of the great rebellion.  At the close of the war he went West.  He farmed in Kansas until the drought and the grasshoppers urged him on.  He joined the first surveying party that picked out the line of the transcontinental railroad that was to follow the southern route along the old Santa Fe trail.  He carried the chain and worked the transit across the Rockies, across the desert, across the Sierras, until, with his companions, he had—­

    “led the iron stallions down to drink
  Through the canons to the waters of the West.”

And when this task was accomplished, he followed the lure of the gold through the California placers; eastward again over the mountains to the booming Nevada camp, where the Comstock lode was already turning out the wealth that was to build a half-dozen colossal fortunes.  He “prospected” through this country, with varying success, living the life of the camps,—­rich in its experiences, vivid in its coloring, calling forth every item of energy and courage and hardihood that a man could command.  Then word came by that mysterious wireless and keyless telegraphy of the mountains and the desert,—­word that back to the eastward, ore deposits of untold wealth had