Complete Letters of Mark Twain. Mark Twain

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СКАЧАТЬ away – shan’t re-locate it. It is nothing but bed-rock croppings – too much work to find the ledge, if there is one. Shan’t record the “Farnum” until I know more about it – perhaps not at all.

      “Governor” under the snow.

      “Douglas” and “Red Bird” are both recorded.

      I have had opportunities to get into several ledges, but refused all but three – expect to back out of two of them.

      Stir yourself as much as possible, and lay up $100 or $15,000, subject to my call. I go to work to-morrow, with pick and shovel. Something’s got to come, by G—, before I let go, here.

      Col. Youngs says you must rent Kinkead’s room by all means – Government would rather pay $150 a month for your office than $75 for Gen. North’s. Says you are playing your hand very badly, for either the Government’s good opinion or anybody’s else, in keeping your office in a shanty. Says put Gov. Nye in your place and he would have a stylish office, and no objections would ever be made, either. When old Col. Youngs talks this way, I think it time to get a fine office. I wish you would take that office, and fit it up handsomely, so that I can omit telling people that by this time you are handsomely located, when I know it is no such thing.

      I am living with “Ratio Phillips.” Send him one of those black portfolios – by the stage, and put a couple of pen-holders and a dozen steel pens in it.

      If you should have occasion to dispose of the long desk before I return, don’t forget to break open the middle drawer and take out my things. Envelop my black cloth coat in a newspaper and hang it in the back room.

      Don’t buy anything while I am here – but save up some money for me. Don’t send any money home. I shall have your next quarter’s salary spent before you get it, I think. I mean to make or break here within the next two or three months.

      Yrs.

      Sam.

      The “wars” mentioned in the opening paragraph of this letter were incident to the trouble concerning the boundary line between California and Nevada. The trouble continued for some time, with occasional bloodshed. The next letter is an exultant one. There were few enough of this sort. We cannot pretend to keep track of the multiplicity of mines and shares which lure the gold-hunters, pecking away at the flinty ledges, usually in the snow. It has been necessary to abbreviate this letter, for much of it has lost all importance with the years, and is merely confusing. Hope is still high in the writer’s heart, and confidence in his associates still unshaken. Later he was to lose faith in “Raish,” whether with justice or not we cannot know now.

      To Orion Clowns, in Carson City:

      Esmeralda, May 11, 1862.

      My dear Bro., – To use a French expression I have “got my d – d satisfy” at last. Two years’ time will make us capitalists, in spite of anything. Therefore, we need fret and fume, and worry and doubt no more, but just lie still and put up with privations for six months. Perhaps three months will “let us out.” Then, if Government refuses to pay the rent on your new office we can do it ourselves. We have got to wait six weeks, anyhow, for a dividend, maybe longer – but that it will come there is no shadow of a doubt, I have got the thing sifted down to a dead moral certainty. I own one-eighth of the new “Monitor Ledge, Clemens Company,” and money can’t buy a foot of it; because I know it to contain our fortune. The ledge is six feet wide, and one needs no glass to see gold and silver in it. Phillips and I own one half of a segregated claim in the “Flyaway” discovery, and good interests in two extensions on it. We put men to work on our part of the discovery yesterday, and last night they brought us some fine specimens. Rock taken from ten feet below the surface on the other part of the discovery, has yielded $150.00 to the ton in the mill and we are at work 300 feet from their shaft.

      May 12—Yours by the mail received last night. “Eighteen hundred feet in the C. T. Rice’s Company!” Well, I am glad you did not accept of the 200 feet. Tell Rice to give it to some poor man.

      But hereafter, when anybody holds up a glittering prospect before you, just argue in this wise, viz: That, if all spare change be devoted to working the “Monitor” and “Flyaway,” 12 months, or 24 at furthest, will find all our earthly wishes satisfied, so far as money is concerned – and the more “feet” we have, the more anxiety we must bear – therefore, why not say “No – d – n your ‘prospects,’ I wait on a sure thing – and a man is less than a man, if he can’t wait 2 years for a fortune?” When you and I came out here, we did not expect ’63 or ’64 to find us rich men – and if that proposition had been made, we would have accepted it gladly. Now, it is made.

      Well, I am willing, now, that “Neary’s tunnel,” or anybody else’s tunnel shall succeed. Some of them may beat us a few months, but we shall be on hand in the fullness of time, as sure as fate. I would hate to swap chances with any member of the “tribe”—in fact, I am so lost to all sense and reason as to be capable of refusing to trade “Flyaway” (with but 200 feet in the Company of four,) foot for foot for that splendid “Lady Washington,” with its lists of capitalist proprietors, and its 35,000 feet of Priceless ground.

      I wouldn’t mind being in some of those Clear Creek claims, if I lived in Carson and we could spare the money. But I have struck my tent in Esmeralda, and I care for no mines but those which I can superintend myself. I am a citizen here now, and I am satisfied – although R. and I are strapped and we haven’t three days’ rations in the house.

      Raish is looking anxiously for money and so am I. Send me whatever you can spare conveniently – I want it to work the Flyaway with. My fourth of that claim only cost me $50, (which isn’t paid yet, though,) and I suppose I could sell it here in town for ten times that amount today, but I shall probably hold onto it till the cows come home. I shall work the “Monitor” and the other claims with my own hands. I prospected of a pound of “M,” yesterday, and Raish reduced it with the blow-pipe, and got about ten or twelve cents in gold and silver, besides the other half of it which we spilt on the floor and didn’t get. The specimen came from the croppings, but was a choice one, and showed much free gold to the naked eye.

      Well, I like the corner up-stairs office amazingly – provided, it has one fine, large front room superbly carpeted, for the safe and a $150 desk, or such a matter – one handsome room amidships, less handsomely gotten up, perhaps, for records and consultations, and one good-sized bedroom and adjoining it a kitchen, neither of which latter can be entered by anybody but yourself – and finally, when one of the ledges begins to pay, the whole to be kept in parlor order by two likely contrabands at big wages, the same to be free of expense to the Government. You want the entire second story – no less room than you would have had in Harris and Co’s. Make them fix for you before the 1st of July-for maybe you might want to “come out strong” on the 4th, you know.

      No, the Post Office is all right and kept by a gentleman but W. F. Express isn’t. They charge 25 cts to express a letter from here, but I believe they have quit charging twice for letters that arrive prepaid.

      The “Flyaway” specimen I sent you, (taken by myself from DeKay’s shaft, 300 feet from where we are going to sink) cannot be called “choice,” exactly – say something above medium, to be on the safe side. But I have seen exceedingly choice chunks from that shaft. My intention at first in sending the Antelope specimen was that you might see that it resembles the Monitor – but, come to think, a man can tell absolutely nothing about that without seeing both ledges themselves. I tried to break a handsome chunk from a huge piece of my darling Monitor which we brought from the croppings yesterday, but it all splintered up, and I send you the scraps. I call that “choice”—any d – d fool would. Don’t ask if it has been assayed, for it hasn’t. It don’t need it. It is amply СКАЧАТЬ