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Life In California Excerpted From 'Roughing It' By Mark Twain - Mark Twain · The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain

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  Speaker 1: Part one of Life in California, excerpted from Roughing It
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  Speaker 1: by Mark Twain. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox
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  Speaker 1: recordings are in the public domain. For more information or
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  Speaker 1: to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by David Wales.
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  Speaker 1: Life in California, excerpted from Roughing It by Mark Twain,
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  Speaker 1: Part one, chapter fifty six. We rumbled over the plains
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  Speaker 1: and valleys, climbed the sierras to the clouds, and looked
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  Speaker 1: down upon summer clad California. And I will remark here
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  Speaker 1: in passing that all scenery in California requires distance to
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  Speaker 1: give it its highest charm. The mountains are imposing in
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  Speaker 1: their sublimity and their majesty of form and altitude from
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  Speaker 1: any point of view, but one must have distance to
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  Speaker 1: soften their ruggedness and enrich their tintings. A Californian forest
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  Speaker 1: is best at a little distance, for there is a
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  Speaker 1: sad poverty of variety in species, the trees being chiefly
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  Speaker 1: of one monotonous family redwood pine spruce fir, and so
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  Speaker 1: at a near view there is a wearisome sameness of
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  Speaker 1: attitude in their rigid arms stretched downward and outward in
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  Speaker 1: one continued and reiterated appeal to all men to sh
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  Speaker 1: don't say a word, you might disturb somebody close at hand. Too,
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  Speaker 1: there is a reliefless and relentless smell of pitch and turpentine.
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  Speaker 1: There is a ceaseless melancholy in their sighing and complaining foliage.
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  Speaker 1: One walks over a soundless carpet of beaten yellow bark
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  Speaker 1: and dead spines of the foliage till he feels like
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  Speaker 1: a wandering spirit, bereft of a footfall. He tires of
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  Speaker 1: the endless tufts of needles and yearns for some substantial,
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  Speaker 1: shapely leaves. He looks for moss and grass to loll upon,
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  Speaker 1: and finds none. For where there is no bark, there
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  Speaker 1: is naked clay and dirt, enemies to pensive, musing and
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  Speaker 1: clean apparel. Often a grassy plain in California is what
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  Speaker 1: it should be, But often too it is best contemplated
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  Speaker 1: at a distance, because although its grass blades are tall,
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  Speaker 1: they stand up vindictively straight and self sufficient, and are
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  Speaker 1: unsociably wide apart with uncomely spots of barren sand between.
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  Speaker 1: One of the queerest things I know of is to
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  Speaker 1: hear tourists from the States go into ecstasies over the
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  Speaker 1: loveliness of ever blooming California. And they always do go
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  Speaker 1: into that sort of ecstasies. But perhaps they would modify
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  Speaker 1: them if they knew how old Californians, with the memory
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  Speaker 1: full upon them of the dust covered and questionable summer
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  Speaker 1: greens of Californian verdure, stand astonished and filled with worshiping
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  Speaker 1: admiration in the presence of the lavish richness, the brilliant green,
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  Speaker 1: the infinite freshness, the spendthrift variety of form as, species,
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  Speaker 1: and foliage that make an Eastern landscape a vision of
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  Speaker 1: paradise itself. The idea of a man falling into raptures
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  Speaker 1: over grave and somber California, when that man has seen
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  Speaker 1: New England's meadow expanses and her maples, oaks and cathedral
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  Speaker 1: windowed elms decked in summer attire, or the opaline splendors
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  Speaker 1: of autumn descending upon her forests, comes very near being
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  Speaker 1: funny would be, in fact, but that it is so pathetic.
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  Speaker 1: No land with an unvarying climate can be very beautiful.
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  Speaker 1: The tropics are not. For all the sentiment that is
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  Speaker 1: wasted on them. They seem beautiful at first, but sameness
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  Speaker 1: impairs the charm. By and by change is the handmaiden
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  Speaker 1: Nature requires to do her miracles. With the land that
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  Speaker 1: has four well defined seasons, it cannot lack beauty or
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  Speaker 1: paul with monotony. Each season brings a world of enjoyment
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  Speaker 1: and interest in the watching of its unfolding, its gradual,
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  Speaker 1: harmonious development, its culminating graces, And just as one begins
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  Speaker 1: to tire of it, it passes away, and a radical
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  Speaker 1: change comes with new witcheries and new glories in its strain.
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  Speaker 1: And I think that to one in sympathy with nature,
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  Speaker 1: each season, in its turn, seems the loveliest. San Francisco,
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  Speaker 1: a truly fascinating city to live in, is stately and
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  Speaker 1: handsome at a fair distance, but close at hand one
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  Speaker 1: notes that the architecture is mostly old fashioned. Mini streets
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  Speaker 1: are made up of decaying smoke grimed wooden houses, and
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  Speaker 1: the barren sand hills toward the outskirts ubtrude themselves too prominently.
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  Speaker 1: Even the kindly climate is sometimes pleasanter when read about
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  Speaker 1: than personally experienced, For a lovely, cloudless sky wears out
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  Speaker 1: its welcome by and by, and then when the long
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  Speaker 1: form rained does come, it stays. Even the playful earthquake
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  Speaker 1: is better contemplated at a dizz However, there are varying
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  Speaker 1: opinions about that. The climate of San Francisco is mild
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  Speaker 1: and singularly equable. The thermometer stands at about seventy degrees
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  Speaker 1: the year round. It hardly changes at all. You sleep
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  Speaker 1: under one or two light blankets summer and winter, and
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  Speaker 1: never use a mosquito bar. Nobody ever wear summer clothing.
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  Speaker 1: You wear black broadcloth if you have it in August
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  Speaker 1: and January just the same. It is no colder and
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  Speaker 1: no warmer in the one month than the other. You
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  Speaker 1: do not use overcoats, and you do not use fans.
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  Speaker 1: It is as pleasant a climate as could well be contrived.
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  Speaker 1: Take it all around, and is doubtless the most unvarying
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  Speaker 1: in the whole world. The wind blows there a good
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  Speaker 1: deal in the summer months, but then you can go
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  Speaker 1: over to Oakland if you choose three or four miles away,
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  Speaker 1: it does not blow there. It has only snowed twice
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  Speaker 1: since San Francisco, in nineteen years, and then it only
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  Speaker 1: remained on the ground long enough to astonish the children
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  Speaker 1: and set them to wondering what the feathery stuff was.
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  Speaker 1: During eight months of the year straight along the skies
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  Speaker 1: are bright and cloudless, and never a drop of rain falls.
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  Speaker 1: But when the other four months come up long, you
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  Speaker 1: will need to go and steal an umbrella, because you
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  Speaker 1: will require it not just one day, but one hundred
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  Speaker 1: and twenty days in hardly varying succession. When you want
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  Speaker 1: to go visiting or attent church or the theater. You
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  Speaker 1: never look up at the clouds to see whether it
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  Speaker 1: is likely to rain or not. You look at the almanac.
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  Speaker 1: If it is winter, it will rain, and if it
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  Speaker 1: is summer, it won't rain, and you cannot help it.
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  Speaker 1: You never need a lightning rod, because it never thunders
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  Speaker 1: and it never lightens. And after you have listened for
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  Speaker 1: six or eight weeks every night to the dismal monotony
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  Speaker 1: of those quiet rains, you will wish in your heart
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  Speaker 1: the thunder would leap and crash and roar along those
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  Speaker 1: drowsy skies once and make everything alive. You will wish
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  Speaker 1: the prisoned lightnings would cleave the dull firmament that's under
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  Speaker 1: and lighted with a blinding glare. For one little instant,
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  Speaker 1: you would give anything to hear the old familiar thunder again,
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  Speaker 1: and see the lightning strike somebody. And along in the summer,
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  Speaker 1: when you have suffered about four months of lustrous, fitiless sunshine,
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  Speaker 1: you are ready to go down on your knees and
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  Speaker 1: plead for rain, hail, snow, thunder and lightning, anything to
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  Speaker 1: break the monotony. You will take an earthquake if you
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  Speaker 1: cannot do any better, and the chances are that you'll
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  Speaker 1: get it too. San Francisco is built on sand hills,
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  Speaker 1: but they are prolific sand hills. They yield a generous vegetation.
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  Speaker 1: All the rare flowers which people in the States rear
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  Speaker 1: with such patient care in parlored flower pots and greenhouses
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  Speaker 1: flourish luxuriantly in the open air there all the year round.
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  Speaker 1: Caliiies all sorts of geraniums, passion flowers, moss, roses. I
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  Speaker 1: do not know the names of a tenth part of them.
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  Speaker 1: I only know that while New Yorkers are burdened with
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  Speaker 1: banks and drifts of snow, Californians are burdened with banks
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  Speaker 1: and drifts of flowers. If they only keep their hands
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  Speaker 1: off and let them grow. And I have heard that
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  Speaker 1: they have also the rarest and most curious of all flowers,
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  Speaker 1: the beautiful Espirituthanto, as the Spaniards call it, or flower
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  Speaker 1: of the Holy Spirit. Though I thought it grew only
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  Speaker 1: in Central America, down on the Isthmus. In its cup,
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  Speaker 1: is the daintiest little fac simile of a dove, as
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  Speaker 1: pure as snow. The Spaniards have a superstitious reverence for it.
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  Speaker 1: The blossom has been conveyed to the States, submerged in ether,
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  Speaker 1: and the bulb has been taken thither also, But every
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  Speaker 1: attempt to make it bloom after it arrived has failed.
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  Speaker 1: I have elsewhere spoken of the endless winter of Mono, California,
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  Speaker 1: and but this moment of the eternal spring of San Francisco. Now,
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  Speaker 1: if we travel one hundred miles in a straight line,
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  Speaker 1: we come to the eternal summer of Sacramento. One never
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  Speaker 1: sees summer clothing or mosquitoes in San Francisco, but they
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  Speaker 1: can be found in Sacramento, not always and unvaryingly, but
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  Speaker 1: about one hundred and forty three months out of twelve years,
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  Speaker 1: Perhaps flowers bloom there always. The reader can easily believe
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  Speaker 1: people suffer and sweat and swear morning, noon and night,
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  Speaker 1: and wear out their staunches energies fanning themselves. It gets
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  Speaker 1: hot there, but if you go down to fort Yuma
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  Speaker 1: you will find it hotter. Fort Yuma is probably the
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  Speaker 1: hottest place on Earth. The thermometer stays at one hundred
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  Speaker 1: and twenty in the shade there all the time, except
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  Speaker 1: when it varies and goes higher. It is a US
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  Speaker 1: military post, and its occupants gate so used to the
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  Speaker 1: terrific heat that they suffer without it. There is a
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  Speaker 1: tradition attributed to John Phoenix. It has been purloined by
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  Speaker 1: fifty different scribblers who were too poor to invent a
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  Speaker 1: fancy but not ashamed to steal one empty that a
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  Speaker 1: very very wicked soldier died there once, and of course
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  Speaker 1: went straight to the hottest corner of perdition, and the
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  Speaker 1: next day he telegraphed back for his blankets. There is
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  Speaker 1: no doubt about the truth of his statement. There can
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  Speaker 1: be no doubt about it. I have seen the place
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  Speaker 1: where that soldier used to board in Sacramento. It is
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  Speaker 1: fiery summer always, and you can gather roses and eat
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  Speaker 1: strawberries and ice cream and wear white linen clothes and
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  Speaker 1: pant and perspire at eight or nine o'clock in the morning,
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  Speaker 1: and then take the cars and at noon put on
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  Speaker 1: your furs and your skates and go skimming over frozen
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  Speaker 1: Donner Lake, seven thousand feet above the valley, among snow
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  Speaker 1: banks fifteen feet deep, and in the shadow of grand
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  Speaker 1: Mountain peaks that lift their frosty crags ten thousand feet
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  Speaker 1: above the level of the sea. There is a transition
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  Speaker 1: for you. Where will you find another like it? In
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  Speaker 1: the Western Hemisphere? And some of us have swept around
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  Speaker 1: snow walled curves of the Pacific Railroad in that vicinityate
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  Speaker 1: six thousand feet above the sea, and looked down as
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  Speaker 1: the birds do, upon the deathless summer of the Sacramento Valley,
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  Speaker 1: with its fruitful fields, its feathery foliage, is silver streams,
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  Speaker 1: all slumbering in the mellow haze of its enchanted atmosphere,
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  Speaker 1: and all infinitely softened and spiritualized by distance. A dreamy,
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  Speaker 1: exquisite glimpse of fairyland, made all the more charming and
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  Speaker 1: striking that it was caught through a forbidden gateway of
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  Speaker 1: ice and snow and savage crags and precipices. End of
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  Speaker 1: Part one, Part two of Life in California, excerpted from
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  Speaker 1: roughing it by Mark Twain. His LibriVox recording is in
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  Speaker 1: the public domain. Part two, chapter fifty seven. It was
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  Speaker 1: in this Sacramento Valley just referred to that a deal
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  Speaker 1: of the most lucrative of the early gold mining was done,
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  Speaker 1: And you may still see in places its grassy slopes
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  Speaker 1: and levels, torn and guttered and disfigured by the avaricious
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  Speaker 1: spoilers of fifteen and twenty years ago. You may see
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  Speaker 1: such disfigurements far and wide over California, and in some
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  Speaker 1: such places where only meadows and forests are visible, not
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  Speaker 1: a living creature, not a house, no stick or stone
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  Speaker 1: or remnant of a ruin, and not a sound, not
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  Speaker 1: even a whisper, to disturb the sabbath stillness. You will
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  Speaker 1: find it hard to believe that there stood at one
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  Speaker 1: time a fiercely flourishing little city of two thousand or
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  Speaker 1: three thousand souls, with its newspaper, fire company, brass band,
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  Speaker 1: volunteer militia, bank, hotels, busy Fourth of July processions and speeches,
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  Speaker 1: gambling hells crammed with tobacco, smoke, privanity, and rough bearded
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  Speaker 1: men of all nations, and collars with tables heaped with
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  Speaker 1: gold dust sufficient for the revenues of a German principality.
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  Speaker 1: Streets crowded and rife with business, town lots worth four
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  Speaker 1: hundred dollars of front foot labor, laughter, music, dancing, swearing, fighting, shooting, stabbing,
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  Speaker 1: a bloody in quest and a man for breakfast every morning,
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  Speaker 1: and everything that delights and adorns existence, all the appointments
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  Speaker 1: and impertinences of a thriving and prosperous and promising Yon city.
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  Speaker 1: And now nothing is left of it but a lifeless,
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  Speaker 1: homeless solitude. The men are gone, the houses have vanished.
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  Speaker 1: Even the name of the place is forgotten. In no
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  Speaker 1: other land and modern times have towns so absolutely dyed
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  Speaker 1: and disappeared as in the old mining regions of California.
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  Speaker 1: It was a driving, vigorous, restless population. In those days.
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  Speaker 1: It was a curious population. It was the only population
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  Speaker 1: of the kind that the world has ever seen gathered together,
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  Speaker 1: and it is not likely that the world will ever
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  Speaker 1: see its like again. For observe, it was an assemblage
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  Speaker 1: of two hundred thousand young men, not simpering, dainty, kid
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  Speaker 1: gloved weaklings, but stalwart, muscular, dauntless young braves, brim full
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  Speaker 1: of push and energy, and royally endowed with every attribute
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  Speaker 1: that goes to make up a peerless and magnificent manhood.
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  Speaker 1: The very pick and choice of the world's glorious ones.
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  Speaker 1: No women, no children, No gray and stooping veterans. None
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  Speaker 1: but erect, bright eyed, quick moving, strong handed young giants.
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  Speaker 1: The strangest population, the finest population, the most gallant host
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  Speaker 1: that ever trooped down the startled solitudes of an unpeopled land.
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  Speaker 1: And where are they now? Scattered to the ends of
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  Speaker 1: the earth, or prematurely aged and decrepit, or shot or
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  Speaker 1: stabbed in street a phrase or dead of disappointed hopes
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  Speaker 1: and broken hearts, all gone, or nearly all victims devoted
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  Speaker 1: upon the altar of the golden calf, the noblest holocaust
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  Speaker 1: that ever wafted its sacrificial incense heavenward. It is pitiful
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  Speaker 1: to think upon it was a splendid population for all
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  Speaker 1: the slow, sleepy, sluggish brained sloths stayed at home. You
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  Speaker 1: never find that sort of people among pioneers. You cannot
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  Speaker 1: build pioneers out of that sort of material. It was
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  Speaker 1: that population that gave to California a name for getting
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  Speaker 1: up astounding enterprises and rushing them through with a magnificent
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  Speaker 1: dash and daring, and a recklessness of costs or consequence,
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  Speaker 1: which she bears unto this day. And when she projects
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  Speaker 1: a new surprise, the grave world smiles as usual and says, well,
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  Speaker 1: that is California all over. But they were rough in
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  Speaker 1: those times. They fairly reveled in gold, whiskey, fights and fandangos,
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  Speaker 1: and were unspeakably happy. The honest miner raked from one
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  Speaker 1: hundred to one thousand dollars out of his claim a day,
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  Speaker 1: and what with the gambling dens and the other entertainments,
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  Speaker 1: he hadn't as cent the next morning if he had
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  Speaker 1: any sort of luck. They cooked their own bacon and beans,
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  Speaker 1: rode on their own buttons, washed their own shirts blue
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  Speaker 1: woolen ones, and if a man wanted to fight on
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  Speaker 1: his hands without any annoying delay, all he had to
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  Speaker 1: do was to appear in public in a white shirt
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  Speaker 1: or a stovepipe hat, and he would be accommodated. For
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  Speaker 1: those people hated aristocrats. They had a particular and malignant
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  Speaker 1: animosity toward what they called a biled shirt. It was
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  Speaker 1: a wild, free, disorderly, grotesque society. Men only swarming hosts
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  Speaker 1: of stalwart men. Nothing juvenile, nothing feminine visible anywhere in
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  Speaker 1: those days. Miners would flock in crowds to catch a
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  Speaker 1: glimpse of that rare and blessed spectacle. A woman old
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  Speaker 1: inhabitants tell how in a certain camp the news went
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  Speaker 1: abroad early in the morning that a woman was come.
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  Speaker 1: They had seen a calico dress hanging in out of
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  Speaker 1: a wagon down at the camping ground, sign of immigrants
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  Speaker 1: from over the Great Plains. Everybody went down there, and
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  Speaker 1: a shout went up when an actual bonafide dress was discovered,
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  Speaker 1: fluttering in the wind. The male immigrant was visible. The
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  Speaker 1: miner said, fetch her out. He said, it is my wife, gentlemen,
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  Speaker 1: she is sick. We have been robbed of money, provisions,
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  Speaker 1: everything by the Indians. We want to rest. Fetch her out.
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  Speaker 1: We've got to see her. But gentlemen, the poor thing.
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  Speaker 1: She fetch her out. He fetched her out, and they
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  Speaker 1: swung their hats and sent up three rousing cheers and
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  Speaker 1: a tiger, and they crowded around and gazed at her,
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  Speaker 1: and touched her dress and listened to her voice with
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  Speaker 1: the look of men who listened to a memory rather
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  Speaker 1: than her present reality. And then they collected twenty five
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  Speaker 1: hundred dollars in gold and gave it to the man,
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  Speaker 1: and swung their hats again, and gave three more cheers,
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  Speaker 1: and went home satisfied. Once I dined in San Francisco
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  Speaker 1: with a family of a pioneer and talked with his daughter,
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  Speaker 1: a young lady whose first experience in San Francisco was
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  Speaker 1: an adventure, though she herself did not remember it, as
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  Speaker 1: she was only two or three years old at the time.
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  Speaker 1: Her father said that after landing from the ship, they
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  Speaker 1: were walking up the street, a servant leading the party
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  Speaker 1: with the little girl in her arms, and presently a
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  Speaker 1: huge miner, bearded, belted, spurred and bristling with deadly weapons,
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  Speaker 1: just down from a long campaign in the mountains, evidently
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  Speaker 1: barred the way, stopped the servant and stood gazing with
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  Speaker 1: a face all alive with gratification and astonishment. And then
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  Speaker 1: he said, reverently, well, if it ain't a child, And
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  Speaker 1: then he snatched a little leather sack out of his
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  Speaker 1: pocket and said to the servant, there's one hundred and
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  Speaker 1: fifty dollars in dust there, and I'll give it to
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  Speaker 1: you to let me kiss the child. That anecdote is true.
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  Speaker 1: But see how things change. Sitting at that dinner table
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  Speaker 1: listening to that anecdote, if I had offered to double
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  Speaker 1: the money for the privilege of kissing the same child,
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  Speaker 1: I would have been refused. Seventeen added years have far
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  Speaker 1: more than doubled the price. And while upon this subject,
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  Speaker 1: I will remark that once in Star City, in the
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  Speaker 1: Humboldt Mountains, I took my place in a sort of
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  Speaker 1: long post office single file of miners, to patiently await
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  Speaker 1: my chance to peep through a crack in the cabin
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  Speaker 1: and see a sight of the splendid new sensation a
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  Speaker 1: genuine live woman. And at the end of half an
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  Speaker 1: hour my turn came and I put my eye to
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  Speaker 1: the crack, and there she was, with one arm akimbo
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  Speaker 1: and tossing flapjacks in a frying band with the other.
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  Speaker 1: And she was one hundred and sixty five, being in
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  Speaker 1: calmer mood. Now I voluntarily knock off one hundred from
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  Speaker 1: that empty years old, and hadn't a tooth in her head.
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  Speaker 1: And of Part two, Part three of Life in California,
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  Speaker 1: excerpted from Roughing It by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording
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  Speaker 1: is in the public domain, Part three, chapter fifty eight.
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  Speaker 1: For a few months I enjoyed what to me was
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  Speaker 1: an entirely new phase of existence, a butterfly idleness, nothing
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  Speaker 1: to do, nobody to be responsible to, and untroubled with
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  Speaker 1: financial uneasiness. I fell in love with the most cordial
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  Speaker 1: and sociable city in the Union. After the sagebrush and
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  Speaker 1: alkali deserts of Washoe, San Francisco was paradise to me.
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  Speaker 1: I lived at the best hotel, exhibited my clothes and
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  Speaker 1: the most conspicuous places, infested the opera, and learned to
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  Speaker 1: seem enraptured with music, which oftener afflicted my ignorant ear
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  Speaker 1: than enchanted it if I had had the vulgar honesty
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  Speaker 1: to confess it. However, I suppose I was not greatly
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  Speaker 1: worse than the most of my countrymen, in that I
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  Speaker 1: had longed to be a butterfly, and I was one
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  Speaker 1: at last. I attended private parties in sumptuous evening dress,
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  Speaker 1: simpered and aired my graces like a born bow, and
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  Speaker 1: poked and shoddished with a step peculiar to myself and
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  Speaker 1: the kangaroo. In a word, I kept the due state
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  Speaker 1: of a man worth a hundred thousand dollars prospectively and
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  Speaker 1: likely to reach absolute affluence when that silver mine sale
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  Speaker 1: should be ultimately achieved. In the East, I spent money
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  Speaker 1: with a free hand, and meantime I watched the stock
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  Speaker 1: sales with an interested eye, and looked to see what
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  Speaker 1: might happen. In Nevada. Something very important happened. The property
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  Speaker 1: holders of Nevada voted against the state constitution, but the folks,
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  Speaker 1: who had nothing to lose, were in the majority and
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  Speaker 1: carried the measure over their heads. But after all, it
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  Speaker 1: did not immediately look like a disaster, though unquestionably it
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  Speaker 1: was one. I hesitated, calculated the chances, and then concluded
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  Speaker 1: not to sell. Stocks were on rising. Speculation went mad. Bankers, merchants, lawyers, doctors, mechanics, laborers,
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  Speaker 1: even the very washerwomen and servant girls were putting up
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  Speaker 1: their earnings on silver stocks. And every sun that rose
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  Speaker 1: in the morning went down on Paupers enriched and rich
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  Speaker 1: men beggared. What a gambling carnival it was. Gould and
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  Speaker 1: curries so ard to six thousand, three hundred dollars a foot,
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  Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, out went the bottom,
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  Speaker 1: and everything and everybody went to ruin and destruction. The
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  Speaker 1: wreck was complete, the bubble scarcely left a microscopic moisture
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  Speaker 1: behind it. I was an early beggar and a thorough one.
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  Speaker 1: My hoarded stocks were not worth the paper they were
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  Speaker 1: printed on. I threw them all away. I, the cheerful
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  Speaker 1: idiot that had been squandering money like water, and thought
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  Speaker 1: myself beyond the reach of misfortune, had not now as
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  Speaker 1: much as fifty dollars. When I gathered together my various
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  Speaker 1: debts and paid them, I removed from the hotel to
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  Speaker 1: a very private boarding house. I took a reporter's berth
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  Speaker 1: and went to work. I was not entirely broken in spirit,
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  Speaker 1: for I was building confidently on the sale of the
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  Speaker 1: silver mine in the East. But I could not hear
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  Speaker 1: from Dan. My letters miscarried or were not answered. One
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  Speaker 1: day I did not feel vigorous and remained away from
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  Speaker 1: the office. The next day I went down toward noon
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  Speaker 1: as usual, and found a note on my desk, which
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  Speaker 1: had been there twenty four hours. It was signed Marshall,
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  Speaker 1: the Virginia Reporter, and contained a request that I should
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  Speaker 1: call at the hotel and see him in a friend
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  Speaker 1: or two that night, as they would sail for the
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  Speaker 1: East in the morning. A PostScript added that their errand
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  Speaker 1: was a big mining speculation. I was hardly ever so
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  Speaker 1: sick in my life. I abused myself for leaving Virginia
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  Speaker 1: and intrusting to another man a matter I ought to
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  Speaker 1: have attended to myself. I abused myself for remaining away
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  Speaker 1: from the office on the one day of all the
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  Speaker 1: year that I should have been there, and thus berating myself.
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  Speaker 1: I trotted a mile to the steamer wharf and arrived
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  Speaker 1: just in time to be too late. The ship was
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  Speaker 1: in the stream and underway. I comforted myself with the
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  Speaker 1: thought that maybe the speculation would amount to nothing poor
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  Speaker 1: comfort at best, and then went back to my slavery,
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  Speaker 1: resolved to put up with my thirty five dollars a
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  Speaker 1: week and forget all about it. A month afterward, I
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  Speaker 1: enjoyed my first earthquake. It was one which was long
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  Speaker 1: called the Great earthquake, and is doubtless so distinguished till
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  Speaker 1: this day. It was just after noon on a bright
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  Speaker 1: October day. I was coming down Third Street, the only
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  Speaker 1: objects in motion anywhere in sight in that thickly built
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  Speaker 1: and populous quarter were a man in a buggy behind me,
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  Speaker 1: and a street car wending slowly up the cross street. Otherwise,
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  Speaker 1: all was solitude and a sabbath stillness. As I turned
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  Speaker 1: the corner around a frame house, there was a great
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  Speaker 1: raffle and jar, and it occurred to me that here
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  Speaker 1: was an item out a fight in that house. Before
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  Speaker 1: I could turn and seek the door, there came a
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  Speaker 1: really terrific shock. The ground seemed to roll under me
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  Speaker 1: in waves, interrupted by a violent jogging up and down,
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  Speaker 1: and there was a heavy grinding noise as of brick
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  Speaker 1: houses rubbing together. I fell up against the frame house
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  Speaker 1: and hurt my elbow. I knew what it was now,
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  Speaker 1: and from mere repertorial instinct nothing else. Took out my
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  Speaker 1: watch and noted the time of day. At that moment
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  Speaker 1: a third and still severer shock came, and as I
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  Speaker 1: reeled about on the pavement trying to keep my footing,
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  Speaker 1: I saw a sight. The entire front of a tall,
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  Speaker 1: four story brick building in Third Street sprung outward like
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  Speaker 1: a door and fell sprawling across the street, raising a
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  Speaker 1: dust like a great volume of smoke, and here came
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  Speaker 1: the buggy. Overboard went the man, and in less time
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  Speaker 1: than I can tell it, the vehicle was distributed in
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  Speaker 1: small fragments along three hundred yards of street. One could
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  Speaker 1: have fancied that somebody had fired a charge of chair
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  Speaker 1: rounds and rags down the thoroughfare. The street car had stopped,
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  Speaker 1: the horses were rearing and plunging, the passengers were pouring
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  Speaker 1: out at both ends, and one fat man had crashed
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  Speaker 1: halfway through a glass window on one side of the car,
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  Speaker 1: got wedged fast and was squirming and screaming like an
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  Speaker 1: impaled madman. Every door of every house, as far as
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  Speaker 1: the eye could reach, was vomiting a stream of human beings.
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  Speaker 1: And almost before one could execute a wink and begin another,
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  Speaker 1: there was a massed multitude of people stretching in endless
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  Speaker 1: procession down every street. My position commanded, never was solemn
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  Speaker 1: solitude turned into teeming life, quicker of the wonders wrought
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  Speaker 1: by the great earthquake. These were all that came under
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  Speaker 1: my eye. But the tricks it did elsewhere, and far
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  Speaker 1: and wide over the town, made toothsome gossip. For nine days.
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  Speaker 1: The destruction of property was trifling the injury to it
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  Speaker 1: was widespread and somewhat serious. The curiosities of the earthquake
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  Speaker 1: were simply endless. Gentlemen and ladies who were sick, or
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  Speaker 1: were taking a siesta, or had dissipated till a late
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  Speaker 1: hour and were making up lost sleep thronged into the
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  Speaker 1: public streets in all sorts of queer apparel, and some
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  Speaker 1: without any at all. One woman who had been washing
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  Speaker 1: a naked child ran down the street, holding it by
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  Speaker 1: the ankles as if it were addressed Turkey. Prominent citizens
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  Speaker 1: who were supposed to keep the Sabbath strictly rushed out
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  Speaker 1: of saloons in their shirt sleeves, with billiard cues in
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  Speaker 1: their hands. Dozens of men with necks swathed in napkins
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  Speaker 1: rushed from barber shops, lathered to the eyes, or with
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  Speaker 1: one cheek clean shaved and the other still bearing a
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  Speaker 1: hairy stubble. Horses broke from stables, and a frightened dog
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  Speaker 1: rushed up a short attic ladder and out onto a roof,
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  Speaker 1: and when his scare was over, had not the nerve
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  Speaker 1: to go down again the same way he had gone up.
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  Speaker 1: A prominent editor flew downstairs in the principal hotel, with
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  Speaker 1: nothing on but one brief undergarment, met a chambermaid and exclaimed, Oh,
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  Speaker 1: what shall I do? Where shall I go? She responded
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  Speaker 1: with naive serenity. If you have no choice, you might
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  Speaker 1: try a clothing store. A certain foreign consuls lady was
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  Speaker 1: the acknowledged leader of fashion, and every time she appeared
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  Speaker 1: and anything new or extraordinary, the ladies in the vicinity
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  Speaker 1: made a raid on their husband's purses and arrayed themselves. Similarly,
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  Speaker 1: One man, who had suffered considerably and growled accordingly, was
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  Speaker 1: standing at the window when the shocks came, and the
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  Speaker 1: next instant the consul's wife, just out of the bath,
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  Speaker 1: fled by, with no other apology for clothing than a
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  Speaker 1: bath towel. The sufferer rose superior to the terrors of
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  Speaker 1: the earthquake and said to his wife, now that is
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  Speaker 1: something like get out your towel, my dear. The plastering
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  Speaker 1: that fell from ceilings in San Francisco that day would
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  Speaker 1: have covered several acres of ground. For some days afterward,
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  Speaker 1: groups of eyeing and pointing men stood about many a building,
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  Speaker 1: looking at long zigzag cracks that extended from the eaves
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  Speaker 1: to the ground. Four feet of the tops of three
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  Speaker 1: chimneys on one house were broken square off and turned
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  Speaker 1: round in such a way as to completely stop the draft.
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  Speaker 1: A crack a hundred feet long gaped open six inches
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  Speaker 1: wide in the middle of one street, and then shut
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  Speaker 1: together again with such force as to ridge up the
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  Speaker 1: meeting earth like a slender grave. A lady sitting in
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  Speaker 1: her rocking and quaking parlor saw the wall part at
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  Speaker 1: the ceiling open and shut twice like a mouth, and
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  Speaker 1: then drop the end of a brick on the floor
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  Speaker 1: like a tooth. She was a woman easily disgusted with foolishness,
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  Speaker 1: and she arose and went out of there. One lady
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  Speaker 1: who was coming downstairs was astonished to see a bronze
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  Speaker 1: hercules lean forward on its pedestal, as if to strike
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  Speaker 1: her with its club. They both reached the bottom of
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  Speaker 1: the flight at the same time. The woman, insensible from
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  Speaker 1: the fright. Her child, born some little time afterward, was
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  Speaker 1: club footed. However, on second thought, if the reader sees
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  Speaker 1: any coincidence in this, he must do it at his
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  Speaker 1: own risk. The first shock brought down two or three
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  Speaker 1: huge organ pipes in one of the churches. The minister
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  Speaker 1: with uplifted hands, was just closing the services. He glanced up, hesitated,
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  Speaker 1: and said, however, we will omit the benediction, and the
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  Speaker 1: next instant there was a vacancy in the atmosphere where
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  Speaker 1: he had stood. After the first shock, an Oakland minister said,
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  Speaker 1: keep your seats. There is no better place to die
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  Speaker 1: than this, and added after the third, but outside is
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  Speaker 1: good enough. He then skipped out at the back door.
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  Speaker 1: Such another destruction of mantle, ornaments and toilet bottles as
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  Speaker 1: the earthquake created San Francisco never saw before. There was
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  Speaker 1: hardly a girl or a matron in the city, but
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  Speaker 1: suffered losses of this kind. Suspended pictures were thrown down,
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  Speaker 1: but oftener still. By a curious freak of the earthquake's humor,
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  Speaker 1: they were whirled completely round with their faces to the wall.
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  Speaker 1: There was great difference of opinion at first as to
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  Speaker 1: the course or direction the earthquake traveled, but water that
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  Speaker 1: splashed out of various tanks and buckets settled back. Thousands
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  Speaker 1: of people were made so seasick by the rolling and
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  Speaker 1: pitching of floors and streets that they were weak and
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  Speaker 1: bedridden for hours, and some few for even days. Afterward,
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  Speaker 1: hardly an individual escaped nausea entirely. The queer earthquake episodes
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  Speaker 1: that formed the staple of San Francisco gossip for the
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  Speaker 1: next week would fill a much larger book than this,
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  Speaker 1: and so I will diverge from the subject by and
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: by in the due course of things. I picked up
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  Speaker 1: a copy of The Enterprise one day and fell under
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  Speaker 1: this cruel blow. Nevada Mines in New York. G. M. Marshall,
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  Speaker 1: Sheba Hers and Amos H. Rose, who left San Francisco
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  Speaker 1: last July for New York City with ores from mines
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  Speaker 1: in Pinewood District, Humboldt County and on the Rhees River Range,
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  Speaker 1: have disposed of a mine containing six thousand feet and
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  Speaker 1: called the Pine Mountains consolidated for the sum of three
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  Speaker 1: million dollars. The stamps on the deed, which is now
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  Speaker 1: on its way to Humboldt County from New York, for record,
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  Speaker 1: amounted to three thousand dollars, which is said to be
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  Speaker 1: the largest amount of stamps ever placed on one document.
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  Speaker 1: A working capital of a million dollars has been paid
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  Speaker 1: into the treasury, and machinery has already been purchased for
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  Speaker 1: a large quartz mill, which will be put up as
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  Speaker 1: soon as possible. The stock in this company is all
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  Speaker 1: full paid and entirely unaccessible. The ores of the mines
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  Speaker 1: in this district somewhat resemble those of the Sheba mine
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  Speaker 1: in Humboldt. Sheba Hearst the discovery of the mines, with
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  Speaker 1: his friends, corralled all the best leads and all the
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  Speaker 1: land and timber they desired, before making public their whereabouts.
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  Speaker 1: Ores from there assayed in this city showed them to
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  Speaker 1: be exceedingly rich in silver and gold, silver predominating. There
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  Speaker 1: is an abundance of wood and water in the district.
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  Speaker 1: We are glad to know that New York Capital has
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  Speaker 1: been enlisted in the development of the minds of this region.
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  Speaker 1: Having seen the ores and assays, we are satisfied that
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  Speaker 1: the minds of the district are very valuable. Anything but wildcat.
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  Speaker 1: Once more, native imbecility had carried the day, and I
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  Speaker 1: had lost a million. It was the blind lead over again.
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  Speaker 1: Let us not dwell on this miserable matter. If I
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  Speaker 1: were inventing these things, I could be wonderfully humorous over them.
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  Speaker 1: But they are too true to be talked of with
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: hearty levity. Even at this distant day true, and yet
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  Speaker 1: not exacts exactly as given in the above figures. Possibly
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  Speaker 1: I saw Marshall months afterwards, and although he had plenty
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  Speaker 1: of money, he did not claim to have captured an
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  Speaker 1: entire million. In fact, I gathered that he had not
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  Speaker 1: then received fifty thousand dollars Beyond that figure. His fortune
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: appeared to consist of uncertain, vast expectations rather than prodigious certainties. However,
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  Speaker 1: when the above item appeared in print, I put full
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  Speaker 1: faith in it, and incontinently wilted, and went to seed
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  Speaker 1: under it. Suffic said that I so lost heart, and
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  Speaker 1: so yielded myself up to repinings and sighings and foolish regrets,
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  Speaker 1: that I neglected my duties and became about worthless as
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  Speaker 1: a reporter for a brisk newspaper. And at last one
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  Speaker 1: of the proprietors took me aside with a charity I
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  Speaker 1: still remember with considerable respect, and gave me an opportunity
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  Speaker 1: to resign my birth and so save myself the disgrace
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  Speaker 1: of a dismissal. And of Part three, Part four of
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: Life in California, excerpted from roughing it by Mark Twain.
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  Speaker 1: This Libribox recording is in the public domain, Part four,
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  Speaker 1: chapter fifty nine. For a time I wrote literary screes
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  Speaker 1: for the Golden era. C. H. Webb had established a
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  Speaker 1: very excellent literary weekly called The Californian, but high merit
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: was no guarantee of success. It languished, and he sold
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: out to three printers, and Brett Hart became editor at
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: twenty dollars a week, and I was employed to contribute
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: an article a week at twelve dollars. But the journal
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: still languished, and the printers sold out to Captain Ogden,
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  Speaker 1: a rich man and a pleasant gentleman who chose to
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  Speaker 1: amuse himself with such an expensive luxury without much caring
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: about the cost of it. When he grew tired of
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: the novelty, he resold to the printers. The paper presently
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  Speaker 1: died a peaceful death, and I was out of work again.
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  Speaker 1: I would not mention these things but for the fact
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  Speaker 1: that they so aptly illustrate the ups and downs that
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  Speaker 1: characterized life on the Pacific coast. A man could hardly
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: stumble into such a variety of queer vicissitudes in any
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: other country. For two months, my sole occupation was avoiding acquaintances.
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: For during that time I did not earn a penny,
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: or by an article of any kind, or pay my board.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: I became a very adept at slinking. I slunk from
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: back street to back street. I slunk away from approaching
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: faces that looked familiar. I slunk to my meals, ate
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: them humbly and with a mute apology for every mouthful.
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: I robbed my generous landlady of and at midnight, after
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: wanderings that were but slinkings, away from cheerfulness and light,
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: I slunk to my bed. I felt meaner and lowlier,
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  Speaker 1: and more despicable than the worms. During all this time
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  Speaker 1: I had but one piece of money, a silver ten
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  Speaker 1: cent piece, and I held to it and would not
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  Speaker 1: spend it on any account, lest the consciousness coming strong
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  Speaker 1: upon me that I was entirely penniless, might suggest suicide.
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: I had pawned everything but the clothes I had on,
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: so I clung to my dime desperately till it was
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  Speaker 1: smooth with handling. However, I am forgetting. I did have
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  Speaker 1: one other occupation besides that of slinking. It was the
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  Speaker 1: entertaining of a collector, and being entertained by him who
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: had in his hands the Virginia banker's bill for forty
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  Speaker 1: six dollars, which I had loaned my schoolmate. This man
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  Speaker 1: used to call regularly once a week and done me
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: and sometimes oftener. He did it from sheer force of habit,
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  Speaker 1: for he knew he could get nothing. He would get
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  Speaker 1: out his bill, calculate the interest for me at five
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  Speaker 1: percent a month, and show me clearly that there was
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  Speaker 1: no attempt at fraud in it, and no mistakes, and
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: then plead and argue, and done with all his might
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  Speaker 1: for any sum, any little trifle, even a dollar, even
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: half a dollar on account. Then his duty was accomplished
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: and his conscience free. He immediately dropped the subject there
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: always got out a couple of cigars and divided, put
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: his feet in the window, and then we would have
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: a long, luxurious talk about everything and everybody, and he
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  Speaker 1: would furnish me a world of curious dunning adventures out
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: of the ample store in his memory, I am by.
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  Speaker 1: He would clap his hat on his head, shake hands
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  Speaker 1: and say briskly, well, business's business can't stay with you always,
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: and was off in a second the idea of pining
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: for a dun And yet I used to long for
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: him to come, and would get as uneasy as any
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  Speaker 1: mother if the day went by without his visit when
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: I was expecting him. But he never collected that bill
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: at last, nor any part of it. I lived to
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  Speaker 1: pay it to the banker myself. Misery loves company now.
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: And then at night, in out of the way, dimly
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: lighted places, I found myself happening on another child of misfortune.
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: He looked so seedy and forlorn, so homeless and friendless
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: and forsaken, that I yearned toward him as a brother.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: I wanted to claim kinship with him and go about
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: and enjoy our wretchedness together. The drawing toward each other
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: must have been mutual at any rate. We got to
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: falling together oftener, though still seemingly by accident, And although
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: we did not speak or events any recognition, I think
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: the dull anxiety passed out of both of us when
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: we saw each other. And then for several hours we
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: would idle along contentedly, wide apart and glancing furtively in
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: at home lights and fireside gatherings out of the night shadows,
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: and very much enjoying our dumb companionship. Finally we spoke
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: and were inseparable after that, For our woes were identical. Almost.
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: He had been a reporter too, and lost his berth.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: And this was his experience, as nearly as I can
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: recollect it. After losing his birth, he had gone down, down, down,
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: with never a halt, from a boarding house on Russian
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: Hill to a boarding house in Carney Street, from thence
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: to DuPont, from thence to a low sailor den, and
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: from thence to lodgings in goods boxes and empty hogsheads
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: near the wharves. Then, for a while he had gained
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: a meager living by sewing up bursted sacks of grain
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: on the piers. When that failed, he had found food
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: here and there as chance threw it in his way.
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: He had ceased to show his face in daylight. Now,
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: for a reporter knows everybody rich and poor, high and low,
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: and I cannot well avoid familiar faces in the broad
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: light of day. This mendicant blucher, I call him that
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: for convenience, was a splendid creature. He was full of hope,
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: pluck and philosophy. He was well read and a man
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: of cultivated taste. He had a bright wit, and was
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: a master of satire. His kindliness and his generous spirit
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: made him royal in my eyes, and changed his curbstone
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: seat to a throne, and his damaged hat to crown.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: He had an adventure once which sticks fast in my
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: memory as the most pleasantly grotesque that ever touched my sympathies.
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: He had been without a penny for two months. He
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: had shirked about obscure streets among friendly dim lights till
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: the thing had become second nature to him. But at
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: last he was driven abroad in daylight. The cause was sufficient.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: He had not tasted food for forty eight hours, and
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: he could not endure the misery of his hunger. In
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: idle hiding. He came along a back street, glowering at
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: the loaves and bake shop windows, and feeling that he
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: could trade his life away for a morsel to eat.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: The sight of the bread doubled his hunger, but it
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: was good to look at anyhow, and imagine what one
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: might do if one only had it. Presently, in the
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: middle of the street, he saw a shining spot, looked again,
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: did not and could not believe his eyes, turning away
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: to try them. Then looked again. It was a verity,
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: no vain, hunger inspired delusions. It was a silver dime.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: He snatched it, gloated over it, doubted it, bit it,
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: found it genuine, choked his heart down and smothered an allelujah.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: Then he looked around, saw that nobody was looking at him,
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: threw the dime down where it was before, walked away
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: a few steps, and approached again, pretending he did not
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: know it was there, so that he could re enjoy
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: the luxury of finding it. He walked around it, viewing
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: it from different points, then sauntered about with his hands
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: in his pockets, looking up at the signs and now
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: and then glancing at it and feeling the old thrill again. Finally,
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: he took it up and went away, fondling it in
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: his pocket. He idled through unfrequent streets, stopping in doorways
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: and corners to take it out and look at it
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: by and bye. He went home to his lodgings, an
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: empty Queensware hogshead, and employed himself till night, trying to
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: make up his mind what to buy with it. But
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: it was hard to do to get the most for
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: it was the idea he knew that at the miner's restaurant,
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: he could get a plate of beans and a piece
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: of bread for ten cents, or a fishball and some
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: few trifles, but they gave no bread with one fishball.
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: There at French Peace, he could get a veal, cutlet
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: plane and some radishes and bread for ten cents, or
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: a cup of coffee a pint at least, and a
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: slice of bread, but the slice was not thick enough
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: by the eighth of an inch, and sometimes they were
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: still more criminal than that in the cutting of it.
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: At seven o'clock, his hunger was wolfish, and still his
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: mind was not made up. He turned out and went
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: up Urchant Street, still cyphering and chewing a bit of stick,
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: as is the way of starving men. He passed before
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: the lights of Martin's restaurant, the most aristocratic in the city,
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: and stopped. It was a place where he had often
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: dined in better days, and Martin knew him well. Standing aside,
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: just out of the range of the light, he worshiped
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: the quails and stakes in the show window, and imagined
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: that maybe the fairy times were not gone yet, and
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: some prince in disguise would come along presently and tell
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: him to go in there and take whatever he wanted.
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: He chewed his stick with a hungry interest as he
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: warmed to his subject. Just at this juncture he was
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: conscious of someone at his side, sure enough, and then
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: a finger touched his arm. He looked up over his
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: shoulder and saw an apparition, a very allegory of hunger.
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: It was a man six feet high, gaunt, unshaven, hung
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: with rags, with a haggard face and sunken cheeks and
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: eyes that pleaded piteously. This phantom said, come with me, please.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: He locked his arm in bluecher's and walked up the
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: street to where the passengers were few and the light
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: not strong, and then, facing about, put out his hands
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: in a beseeching way and said, friend, stranger, look at me.
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: Life is easy to you. You go about placid and content,
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: as I did once in my day. You have been
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: in there and eaten your sumptuous supper, and pict your teeth,
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: and hummed your tune, and thought your pleasant thoughts, and
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: said to yourself it is a good world. But you've
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: never suffered. You don't know what trouble is. You don't
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: know what misery is, nor hunger. Look at me, stranger,
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: have pity on a poor friendless homely dog. As God
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: is my judge. I have not tasted food for eight
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: and forty hours. Look in my eyes and see if
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: I lie. Give me the least trifle in the world
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: to keep me from starving anything twenty five cents. Do it, stranger,
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: Do it please. It will be nothing to you but
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: life to me. Do it, and I will go down
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: on my knees and lick the dust before you. I
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: will kiss your footprints. I will worship the very ground
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: you walk on. Only twenty five cents. I am famishing, perishing,
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: starving by inches. For God's sake, don't desert me. Blucher
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: was bewildered and touched too, stirred to the depths. He reflected,
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: thought again. Then an idea struck him, and he said,
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: come with me. He took the outcast's arm and walked
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: him down to Martin's restaurant, seated him at a marble tape,
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: placed the bill of fare before him, and said, order
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: what you want, friend, Charge it to me, mister Martin.
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: All right, mister Blucher, said Martin. Then Blucher stepped back
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: and leaned against the counter and watched the man stow away.
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: Cargo after cargo of buckwheat cakes at seventy five cents,
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: a plate, cup after cup of coffee, and porterhouse steaks
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: worth two dollars apiece. And when six dollars and a
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: half's worth of destruction had been accomplished and the stranger's
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: hunger appeased, Blucher went down to French peats, bought a
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: veal cutlet plane, a slice of bread, and three re
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: reddishes with his dime, and set two and feasted like
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: a king. Take the episode all around. It was as
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: odd as any that can be called from the myriad
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: curiosities of California life. Perhaps end of Part four, Part
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: five of Life in California, excerpted from Roughing It by
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: Part five, chapter sixty by and by an old friend
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: of mine. A miner came down from one of the
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: decayed mining camps of Tuolumny, California, and I went back
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: with him. We lived in a small cabin on a
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: verdant hillside, and there were not five other cabins in
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: view over the wide expanse of hill and forest, yet
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: a flourishing city of two or three thousand population had
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: occupied this grassy, dead solitude during the flush times of
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: twelve or fifteen years before, and where our cabin stood
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: had once been the heart of the teeming hive, the
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: center of the city. When the mines gave out, the
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: town fell into decay, and in a few years wholly disappeared, streets, dwellings, everything,
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: and left no sign. The grassy slopes were as green
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: and smooth and desolate of life as if they had
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: never been disturbed. The mere handful of miners still remaining
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: had seen the towns springing up, spread, grow and flourish
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: in its pride, and they had seen it sicken and
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: die and pass away like a dream. With it, their
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: hopes had died, and their zest of life. They had
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: long ago resigned themselves to their exile and ceased to
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: correspond with their distant friends or turn longing eyes toward
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: their early homes. They had accepted banishment, forgotten the world,
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: and been forgotten of the world. They were far from
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: telegraphs and railroads, and they stood, as it were, in
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: a living grave, dead to the events that stirred the
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: globes great populations, dead to the common interests of men,
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: isolated and outcasts from brothers with their kind. It was
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: the most singular and almost the most touching and melancholy
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: exile that fancy can imagine. One of my associates in
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: this locality for two or three months was a man
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: who had had a university education, but now for eighteen
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: years he had decayed there by inches a bearded, rough clad,
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: clay stained miner, and at times, among his signs and
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: soliloquisings he unconsciously interjected vaguely remembered Latin and Greek sentences.
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: Dead and musty tongues meet vehicles for the thoughts of
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: one whose dreams were all of the past, whose life
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: was a failure, A tired man burdened with the present
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: and indifferent to the future, a man without ties, hopes, interests,
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: waiting for rest and the end. In that one little
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: corner of California is found a species of mining which
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: is seldom or never mentioned in print. It is called
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: pocket mining, and I am not aware that any of
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: it is done outside of that little corner. The gold
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: is not evenly distributed through the surface dirt, as in
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: ordinary plaster mines, but is collected in little spots, and
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: they are very wide apart and exceedingly hard to find.
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: But when you do find one, you reap a rich
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: and sudden harvest. There are not now more than twenty
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: pocket miners in that entire little region. I think I
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: know every one of them personally. I have known one
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: of them to hunt patiently about the hillsides every day
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: for eight months without finding gold enough to make a
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: snuff box, his grocery bill running up relentlessly all the time,
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: and then find a pocket and take out of it
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: two thousand dollars in two dips of his shovel. I
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: have known him to take out three thousand dollars in
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: two hours, and go and pay up every cent of
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: his indebtedness, then enter on a dazzling spree that finished
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: the last of his treasure before the night was done.
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: And the next day he bought his groceries on credit
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: as usual, and shouldered his pan and shovel and went
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: off to the hills hunting pockets again, happy and content.
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: This is the most fascinating of all the different kinds
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: of mining and furnishes. A very handsome percentage of victims
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: to the lunatic asylum. Pocket hunting is an ingenious process
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: you take a spadeful of earth from the hillside and
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: put it in a large tin pan, and dissolve and
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: wash it gradually away, till nothing is left but a
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: teaspoonful of fine sediment. Whatever gold was in that earth
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: has remained, because being the heaviest, it has sought the bottom.
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: Among the sediment, you will find half a day yellow
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: particles no larger than pin heads. You are delighted. You
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: move off to one side and wash another pan. If
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: you find gold again, you move to one side further
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: and wash a third pan. If you find no gold
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: this time, you are delighted again, because you know you
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: are on the right scent. You lay an imaginary plan
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: shaped like a fan with its handle up the hill
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: for just where the end of the handle is. You
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: argue that the rich deposit lies hidden, whose vagrant grains
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: of gold have escaped and been washed down the hill,
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: spreading farther and farther apart as they wandered. And so
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: you proceed up the hill, washing the earth and narrowing
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: your lines. Every time the absence of gold in the
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: pan shows you that you are outside the spread of
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: the fan, And at last, twenty yards up the hill,
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: your lines have converged to a point. A single foot
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: from that point you cannot find any gold. Your breath
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: comes short and quick. You are feverish with the excitement.
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: The dinner bell may ring its clapper off. You pay
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: no attention. Friends may die, weddings transpire, houses burned down.
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: They are nothing to you. You sweat and dig and
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: delve with a frantic interest, and all at once you
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: strike it up comes as spadeful of earth and quartz,
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: that is all lovely, with soiled lumps and leaves and
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: sprays of gold. Sometimes that one spadeful is all five
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: hundred dollars. Sometimes the nest contains ten thousand dollars, and
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: it takes you three or four days to get it
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: all out. The pocket miners tell of one nest that
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: yielded sixty thousand dollars, and two men exhausted it in
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: two weeks and then sold the ground for ten ti
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: one thousand dollars to a party who never got three
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: hundred dollars out of it afterward. The hogs are good
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: pocket hunters. All the summer. They root around the bushes
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: and turn up a thousand little piles of dirt, and
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: then the miners long for the reins for the rains,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: beat upon these little piles and washed them down and
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: exposed the gold, possibly right over a pocket. Two pockets
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: were found in this way by the same man in
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: one day. One had the five thousand dollars in it,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: and the other eight thousand dollars. That man could appreciate it,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: for he hadn't had a cent for over a year.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: And Tuolemy lived two miners who used to go to
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: the neighboring village in the afternoon and return every night
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: with household supplies. Part of the distance they traversed a
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: trail and nearly always sat down to rest on a
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: great boulder that lay beside the path. In the course
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: of thirteen years they had worn that boy tolerably smooth
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: sitting on it. By and by two vagrant Mexicans came
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: along and occupied the seat. They began to amuse themselves
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: by chipping off flakes from the boulder with a sledge hammer.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: They examined one of these flakes and found it rich
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: with gold. That boulder paid them eight hundred dollars afterward.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: But the aggravating circumstance was that these greasers knew that
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: there must be more gold where that boulder came from.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: And so they went panning up the hill and found
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: what was probably the richest pocket that region has yet produced.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: It took three months to exhaust it, and it yielded
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty thousand dollars. The two American miners
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: who used to sit on the boulder are poor yet,
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: and they take turn about and getting up early in
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: the morning to curse those Mexicans. And when it comes
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: down to pure ornamental cursing, the native American is gifted
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: above the sons of men. I have dwelt at some
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: length upon this matter of pocket mining, because it is
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: a subject that is seldom referred to in print, and
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: therefore I judged that it would have for the reader
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: that interest which naturally attaches to novelty. End of Part five,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: Part six of Life in California, excerpted from roughing it
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: Part six, chapter sixty one. One of my comrades there,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: another of these victims of eighteen years of unrequited toil
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: and blighted hopes, was one of the gentlest spirits that
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: ever bore its patient cross in a weary exile, grave
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: and simple Dick Baker, pocket miner of dead house gulch.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: He was forty six, gray as a rat, earnest, thoughtful,
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: slenderly educated, slouchily dressed, and clay soiled. But his heart
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: was finer metal than any gold. His shovel ever brought
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: to light than any indeed that ever was mined or minted.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: Whenever he was out of luck and a little downhearted,
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: he would fall to mourning over the loss of a
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: wonderful cat he used to own. For where women and
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: children are not, men of kindly impulses take up with pets,
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: for they must love something. And he always spoke of
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: the strange sagacity of that cat, with the air of
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: a man who believed in his secret heart that there
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: was something human about it, maybe even supernatural. I heard
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: him talking about this animal once. He said, gentlemen, I
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: used to have a cat here by the name of
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: Tom Quartz, which you'd took an interest in. I reckon
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: mouth anybody would I had him here a year. He
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: was the remarkable as cat I ever see. He was
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: a large gray one of the Tom specie, and he
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: had more ard natural sense than any man in his camp,
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: and a power of dignity. He wouldn't let the governor
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: of California be familiar with him. He never catched a
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: rat in his life, appeared to be above it. He
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: never cared for nothing but mining. He knowed more about
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: mining that cat did than any man I ever ever see.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: You couldn't tell him nothing about plaster diggings. And as
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: for pocket mining, why he was just born for it.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: He would dig out after me and Jim when we
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: went over the hills prospecting, and he would trot along
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: behind us for as much as five mile if we
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: went suffer, and he had the best judgment about mining ground,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: why you never see anything like it. When we went
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: to work, he'd scatter a glance around, and if he
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: didn't think much of the indications, he would give a
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: look as much as say, well, i'll have to get
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: you to excuse me, and without another word, he'd hist
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: his nose into the air and shove for home. But
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: if the ground suited him, he would lay low and
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: keep dark till the first pan was washed, and then
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: he would cycle up and take a look. And if
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: there was about six or seven grains of gold, he
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: was satisfied. He didn't want no better prospect than that.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: And then he would lay down on our coats and
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: snore like a steamboat till we'd struck the pocket, and
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: then get up and superintend. He was nearly lightening on
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: Superintendent well By. And by up comes this year quartz excitement.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: Everybody was into it. Everybody was picking and blasting instead
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: of shoveling dirt on the hillside. Everybody was putting down
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: a shaft instead of scraping the surface. Nothing would do, Jim,
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: But we must tackle the ledges too, and so we did.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: We commands put it down a shaft, and Tom Quartz
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: he began to wonder what in the dickens it was
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: all about. He had never seen any mining like that before,
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: and he was all upset. As you may say. He
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: couldn't come to a right understanding of it. No way,
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: it was too many for him. He was down on
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: it too, you bet you. He was down on it powerful,
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: and always appeared to consider it because it has foolishness out.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: But that cat, you know, was always again new fangled arrangements.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: Somehow he never could abide him, you know how it
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: is with old habits. But by and by Tom Quartz
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: began to get sort of reconciled a bit, though he
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: never could altogether understand that eternal thinking of a shaft
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: and never panning out anything. At last he got to
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: coming down in the shaft hisself to try to cipher
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: it out. And when he get the blues and feel
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: kind of scruffy and aggravate and disgusted, knowing as he
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: did that the bills was running up all the time
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: and we weren't making a scent, he would curl up
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: on a gunnysack in the corner and go to sleep. Well.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: One day, when the shaft was down about eight foot,
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: the rock got so hard that we had to put
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: in a blast, the first blasting we'd ever done since
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: Tom Quartz was born. And then we let the fuse
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: i'm come out and got off about fifty yards and
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: forgotten left Tom Quartz sound asleep on the gunnysack. In
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: about a minute, we seen a puff of smoke burst
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: up out of the hole, and then everything let go
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: with an awful crash, and about four million ton of
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: rocks and dirt and smoke and splinters shot up about
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: a mile and a half in the air, and by George.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: Right in the dead center of it was old Tom Quartz,
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: a going end over in and a snorting and a sneezing,
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: and the clawn and a reaching for things like all
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: possessed but aren't no use, you know, it warn't no use.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: And that was the last we see of him for
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: about two minutes and a half. And then all of
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: a sudden it began to rain rocks and rubbage, and
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: directly he come down korwop, about ten foot off from
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: where we stood. Well I reckon. He was perhaps the
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: orneriest looking beast you ever see. One ear was sought
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: back on his neck, and his tail was stove up,
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: and his eye whiskers was singed off, and he was
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: all blacked up with powder and smoke, and all sloppy
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: with mud and slush from one end to the other.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: While sir, it warn't no use to try to apologize,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: we couldn't say a word. He took a sort of
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: a disgusted look at himself, and then he looked at us,
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: and it was just exactly the same as if he
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: had said, gents, maybe you think it's smart to take
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: advantage of a cat that ain't got no experience apports mining,
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: but I think different. And then he turned on his
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: heel and marched off home without ever saying another word.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: That was just his style. And maybe you won't believe it,
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: but after that you never see a cat so prejudice
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: against quartz mining as what he was. And by and by,
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: when he did get to goin down in the shaft again,
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: you'd have been astonished at his sagacity. The minute we
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: detach off a blast and the fuse began to sizzle,
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: he'd give a look as much as to say, well,
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: I'll have to get you to excuse me. And it
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: was surprising the way he'd shin out of that hole
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: and go for a tree. Sagacity. It ain't no name
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: for it. Twas inspiration. I said, well, mister Baker, his
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: prejudice against quartz mining was remarkable, considering how he came
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: by it. Couldn't you ever cure him of it? Cure him? No?
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: When Tom Quartz was sought once, he was always sought,
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: and you might have blowed him up as much as
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: three million times, and you'd never broken him of his
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: cussed prejudice again, quartzminmen, the affection and the pride that
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: lit up Baker's face when he delivered. This tribute to
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: the firmness of his humble friend of other days will
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: always be a vivid memory with me. At the end
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: of two months, we had never struck a pocket. We
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: had panned up and down the hillsides till they looked
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: plowed like a field. We could have put in a
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: crop of grain then, but there would have been no
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: way to get it to market. We got many good prospects,
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: but when the gold gave out in the pan and
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: we dug down, hoping and longing, we found only emptiness.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: The pocket that should have been there was as barren
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: as our own. At last we shouldered our pans and
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: shovels and struck out over the hills to try new localities.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: We prospected round Angels Camp in Calaveras County during three weeks,
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: but had no success. Then we wandered on foot among
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: the mountains, sleeping under the trees at night, for the
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: weather was mild, but still we remained as scentless as
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: the last rose of summer. That is a poor joke,
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: but it is in pathetic harmony with the circumstances. Since
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: we were so poor ourselves in accordance with the custom
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: of the country. Our door had always stood open, and
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: our board welcome to tramping miners. They drifted along nearly
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: every day, dumped their post shovels by the threshold, and
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: took pot luck with us. And now on our own
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: tramp we never found cold hospitality. Our wanderings were wide
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: and in many directions. And now I could give the
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: reader a vivid description of the big trees and the
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: marvels of the Yosemite. But what has this reader done
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: to me that I should persecute him. I will deliver
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: him into the hands of less conscientious tourists, and take
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: is blessing. Let me be charitable, though I fail in
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: all virtues. Else Note some of the phrases in the
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: above are mining technicalities purely, and may be a little
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: obscure to the general reader. In plaster diggings, the gold
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: is scattered all through the surface dirt. In pocket diggings,
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: it is concentrated in one little spot. In quartz, the
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: gold is in a solid, continuous vein of rock, enclosed
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: between distinct walls of some other kind of stone. And
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: this is the most laborious and expensive of all the
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: different kinds of mining. Prospecting is hunting for a plaster.
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: Indications are signs of its presence. Panning out refers to
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: the washing process by which the grains of gold are
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: separated from the dirt. A prospect is what one finds
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: in the first panful of dirt, and its value determines
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: whether it is a good or a bad prospect, and
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: whether it is worthwhile to tarry there or seat further
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: end of Part six, Part seven of Life in California,
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: excerpted from Roughing It by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: is in the public domain. Part seven, Chapter seventy eight.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: Returned to California after a trip to Hawaii. After half
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: a year's luxurious vagrancy in the islands, I took shipping
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: in a sailing vessel, and regretfully returned to San Francisco,
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: a voyage in every way delightful, but without an incident,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: unless lying two long weeks in a dead calm eighteen
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: hundred miles from the nearest land may rank as an incident.
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: Schools of whales grew so tame that day after day
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: they played about the ship among the porpoises and the
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: sharks without the least apparent fear of us, and we
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: pelted them with empty bottles for lack of better sport.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: Twenty four hours afterward, these bottles would be still lying
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: on the glassy water under our noses, showing that the
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: ship had not moved out of her place. In all
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: that time. The calm was absolutely breathless, and the surface
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: of the sea absolutely without a wrinkle. For a whole
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: day and part of a night we lay so close
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: to another ship that had drifted to our vicinity that
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: we carried on conversations with her passengers, introduced each other
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: by name, and became pretty intimately acquainted with people we
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: had never heard of before and never heard of, since
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: this was the only vessel we saw during the whole
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: lonely voyage. We had fifteen passengers, and to show how
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: hard pressed they were at last for occupation and amusement,
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: I will mention that the gentlemen gave a good part
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: of their time every day during the calm to try
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: to sit on an empty champagne bottle lying on its
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: side and thread a needle without touching their heels to
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: the deck or falling over. And the lady sat in
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: the shade of the mainsail and watched the enterprise with
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: absorbing interest. We were at sea five Sundays, and yet
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: but for the almanac, we never would have known but
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: that all the other days were Sundays too. I was
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: home again in San Francisco, without means and without employment.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: I tortured my brain for a saving scheme of some kind,
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: and at last a public lecture occurred to me. I
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: sat down and wrote one, in a fever of hopeful anticipation.
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: I showed it to several friends, but they all shook
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: their heads. They said nobody would come to hear me,
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: and I would make a humiliating failure of it. They
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: said that as I had never spoken in public, I
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: would break down in the delivery. Anyhow, I was disconsolate now,
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: but at last an editor slapped me on the back
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: and told me to go ahead. He said, take the
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: largest house in town and charge a dollar a ticket.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: The audacity of the proposition was charming. It seemed fraught
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: with practical, worldly wisdom. However, the proprietor of the several
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: theaters endorsed the advice and said I might have his
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: handsome new opera house at half priced fifty dollars in
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: sheer desperation. I took it on credit for sufficient reasons.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: In three days, I did one hundred and fifty dollars
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: worth of printing and advertising, and was the most distressed
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: and frightened creature on the Pacific coast. I could not sleep.
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: Who could under such circumstances. For other people, there was
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: facetiousness in the last line of my posters, but to
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: me it was plaintive with a pang when I wrote it,
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: doors open at seven and a half, the trouble will
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: begin at eight. That line has done good service since
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: showmen have borrowed it frequently. I have even seen it
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: appended to a newspaper advertisement, reminding school pupils in vacation
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: what time next term would begin. As those three days
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: of suspense dragged by, I grew more and more unhappy.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: I had sold two hundred tickets among my personal friends,
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: but I feared they might not come. My lecture, which
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: had seemed humorous to me at first, grew steadily more
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: and more dreary, till not a vestige of fun seemed left,
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: and I grieved that I could not bring a coffin
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: on the stage and turn the thing into a funeral.
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: I was so panic stricken at last that I went
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: to three old friends, giants in stature, cordial by nature,
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: and stormy voice, and said, this thing is going to
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: be a failure. The jokes in it are so dim
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: that nobody will ever see them. I would like to
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: have you sit in the parquet and help me through.
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: They said they would. Then I went to the wife
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: of a popular citizen and said that as she was
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: willing to do me a very great kindness, I would
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: be glad if she and her husband would sit prominently
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: in the left hand stage box, where the whole house
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: could see them. I explained that I should need help
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: and would turn toward her and smile as a signal
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: when I had been delivered of an obscure joke. And
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: then I added, don't wait to investigate, but respond. She promised.
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: Down the street I met a man I never had
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: seen before. He had been drinking and was beaming with
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: smiles and good nature. He said, my name's Sawyer. You
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: don't know me, but that don't matter. I haven't got
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: a cent, but if you knew how bad I wanted
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: to laugh, you'd give me a time ticket. Come now,
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: what do you say? Is your laugh hung on a
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: hair trigger? That is? Is it critical? Or can you
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: get it off easy? My drawing infirmity of speech so
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: affected him that he laughed as specimen or two. That
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: struck me as being about the article I wanted. And
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: I gave him a ticket and appointed him to sit
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: in the second circle in the center and be responsible
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: for that division of the house. I gave him minute
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: instructions about how to detect indistinct jokes, and then went
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: away and left him chuckling placidly over the novelty of
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: the idea. I ate nothing. On the last of the
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: three eventful days, I only suffered. I had advertised that
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: on this third day the box office would be open
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: for the sake of reserved seats. I crept down to
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: the theater at four in the afternoon to see if
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: any sales had been made. The ticket seller was gone,
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: the box office was locked up. I had the swallow suddenly,
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: or my heart would have got out no sails, I
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: said to myself, I might have known it. I thought
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: of suicide, pretended illness, flight. I thought of these things
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: in earnest, for I was very miserable and scared. But
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: of course I had to drive them away and prepare
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: to meet my fate. I could not wait for half
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: past seven. I wanted to face the horror and end
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: it the feeling of many a man doomed to hang
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: no doubt, I went down back streets at six o'clock
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: and entered the theater by the back door. I stumbled
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: my way in the dark among the ranks of canvas scenery,
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: and stood on the stage. The house was gloomy and silent,
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: and its emptiness depressing. I went into the dark among
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: the scenes again, and for an hour and a half
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: gave myself up to the horrors, wholly unconscious of everything else.
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: Then I heard a murmur. It rose higher and higher,
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: and ended in a crash, mingled with cheers. It made
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: my hair rise. It was so close to me and
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: so loud. There was a pause, and then another. Presently
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: came a third, and before I well knew what I
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: was about, I was in the middle of the stage,
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: staring at a sea of faces, bewildered by the fierce
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: glare of the lights, and quaking in every limb with
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: a terror that seemed like to take my life away.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: The house was full aisles, and all the tumult in
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: my heart and brain and legs continued a full minute
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: before I could gain any command over myself. Then I
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: recognized the charity and the friendliness in the faces before me,
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: and little by little my fright melted away, and I
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: began to talk. Within three or four minutes I was
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: comfortable and even content. My three chief allies, with three
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: auxiliaries were on hand in the parquet, all sitting together,
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: all armed with pludgeons, and all ready to make an
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: onslaught upon the feeblest joke that might show its head,
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: And whenever a joke did fall, their plugeons came down,
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: and their faces seemed to split from ear to ear. Sawyer,
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: whose hearty countenance was seen looming redly in the center
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: of the second circle, took it up, and the house
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: was carried handsomely inferior jokes never fared so royally before.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: Presently I delivered a bit of serious matter with impressive unction.
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: It was my pet, and the audience listened with an
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: absorbed hush that gratified me more than any applause. And
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: as I dropped the last word of the clause, I
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: happened to turn and catch missus Blank's intent and waiting.
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: I my conversation with her flashed upon me, and in
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: spite of all I could do, I smiled. She took
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: it for the signal and promptly delivered a mellow laugh
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: that touched off the whole audience. And the explosion that
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: followed was the triumph of the evening. I thought that
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: that honest man Sawyer would choke himself. And as for
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: the bludgeons, they performed like pile drivers. But my poor
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: little morsel of pathos was ruined. It was taken in
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: good faith as an intentional joke, and the prize one
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: of the entertainment. And I wisely let it go at that.
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: All the papers were kind. In the morning, my appetite
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: return I had an abundance of money. All's well, that
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: ends well. End of Part seven, End of Life in California,
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: excerpted from Roughing It by Mark Twain,