The Comstock Club. Goodwin Charles Carroll

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СКАЧАТЬ originally weak, but that is no argument, for human nature is prone to be weak. His was a high-strung, sensitive, generous nature. He never sought gold for the joy it would give him, but for the happiness he dreamed it would give to those he loved. His Nora was a queen in his eyes and he wanted to give her, every day, the surroundings of a queen. He made one mistake and never rallied from it. Had the letter come that fatal Sunday from Nora, as he was expecting it, or had he left for home half an hour earlier, or had he been of coarser clay, that day's performance would have been avoided, or would have been passed as an incident not to be repeated, but not to be seriously minded. But he was of different mold, and then that was a blow from Fate. It is easy enough to say that there is nothing in that thing called luck. Such talk will not do here on the Comstock. There is no luck when a money lender charges five dollars for the use of a hundred for a month and exacts good security. He gets his one hundred and five dollars, and that is business.

      "But in this lead where ore bodies lie like melons on a vine, when ore is reported in the Belcher and in the Savage, when Brown buys stock in the Belcher and Rogers buys in the Savage; when the streak of ore in the Belcher runs into a bonanza and Brown wakes up rich some morning, and when the streak of ore in the Savage runs into a Niagara of hot water which floods the mine and Rogers's stock is sold out to meet an assessment, it will not do to call Brown a shrewd fellow and Rogers an idiot.

      "Still, I do not object to the theory that a man should always keep trying, even if the lack is against him, because luck may change sometime, and if it does not, he sleeps better when he knows that with the lights before him he has done the best he could. A man can stand almost anything when his soul does not reproach him as he tries to go to sleep.

      "Then, too, man is notoriously a lazy animal, and unless he has the nerve to spur himself to work, even when unfortunate, he is liable to fail and get the dry rot, which is worse than death.

      "But my heart goes out in sympathy when I think of the glorified spirits, which on this coast have failed and are failing every day, because from the first an iron fortune has hedged them round and baffled their every effort, struggle as they would."

      Carlin ceased speaking, and the silence which prevailed in the Club for a moment was broken by Miller, who said: "Don't worry about them, Carlin. If they do fail they have lots of fun in trying."

      "I would grave more for your mon Joe," interposed Corrigan, "did I not remember Mrs. Dougherty, who married the gintleman of properthy, and thin your Joe war a fraud onyway. What war there in a bit of a scrap to make a mon grave himself into craziness over it?"

      "Your stock-buying illustration is not fair, Carlin, for that is only a form of gambling at best," suggested Brewster.

      The club winced under this a little, for every member dabbled in stocks sometimes, except Brewster and Harding.

      For two evenings Harding had been scribbling away behind the table, and during a lull in the conversation Ashley asked him what he had been writing. "Letters?" suggested Ashley.

      "No, not letters," answered Harding, sententiously.

      "What is it, then," asked Miller; "won't you read it to us?"

      "Yes, rade it, rade it," said Corrigan, and the rest all joined in the request.

      "You won't laugh?" said Harding, inquiringly.

      They all promised, and Harding read as follows:

THE PROSPECTOR

      How strangely to-night my memory flings

      From the face of the past its shadowy wings,

      And I see far back through the mist and tears

      Which make the record of twenty years;

      From the beautiful days in the Golden State,

      When life seemed sure by long leases from Fate;

      From the wondrous visions of "long ago"

      To the naked shade that we call "now."

      Those halcyon days! There were four with me then —

      Ernest and Ned, Wild Tom and Ben.

      Now all are gone; Tom was first to die.

      I held his hands, closed his glazed eye;

      And many a tear o'er his grave we shed

      As we tenderly pillowed his curly head

      In the shadows deep of the pines, that stand

      Forever solemn, forever fanned

      By the winds that steal through the Golden Gate

      And spread their balm o'er the Golden State.

      And the others, too, they all are dead.

      By the turbid Gila perished Ned;

      Brave, noble Ernest, he was lost

      Amid Montana's ice and frost;

      And out upon a desert trail

      Our Bennie met the spectre pale.

      And I am left – the last of all —

      And as to-night the white snows fall,

      As barbarous winds around me roar,

      I think the long past o'er and o'er —

      What I have hoped and suffered, all,

      From twenty years rolls back the pall,

      From the dusty, thorny, weary track,

      As the tortuous path I follow back.

      In my childhood's home they think me, there,

      A failure, or lost, till my name in the prayer

      At eve is forgot. Well, they cannot know

      That my toil through heat, through tempest and snow,

      While it seemed for naught but a struggle for pelf,

      Was more for them, far more, than myself.

      Ah, well! As my hair turns slowly to snow

      The places of childhood more distantly grow;

      And my dreams are changing. 'Tis home no more,

      For shadowy hands from the other shore

      Stretch nightly down, and it seems as when

      I lived with Tom, Ned, Ernest and Ben.

      And the mountains of Earth seem dwindling down,

      And the hills of Eden, with golden crown,

      Rise up, and I think, in the last great day,

      Will my claim above bear a fire assay?

      From the slag of earth, and the baser strains,

      Will the crucible show of precious grains

      Enough to give me a standing above,

      Where in temples of Peace rock the cradles of Love?

      "That is good, but it is too serious by half," Miller said, critically. "What is a young fellow like you doing with such a melancholy view of things?"

      "It's a heap better to write such things for pleasure in boyhood than to have to feel them for a fact in old age," said Wright.

      "I say, Harding, have you measured all the faet in that poem?" remarked Corrigan, good-naturedly.

      "We have been talking too seriously for two or three evenings and it is influencing Harding," was Miller's comment.

      Brewster thought it was a good way for Sammie to spend his evenings. It would give him discipline, which would help him in writing all his life.

      CHAPTER СКАЧАТЬ