e, you know, we'll
have a mill-site, water power, and pay-rock, all handy. Then we shan't
care whether we have capital or not. Mill-folks will build us a mill,
and wait for their pay. If nothing goes wrong, we'll strike the ledge in
June--and if we do, I'll be home in July, you know.

Pamela, don't you know that undemonstrated human calculations won't do
to bet on? Don't you know that I have only talked, as yet, but proved
nothing? Don't you know that I have expended money in this country but
have made none myself? Don't you know that I have never held in my hands
a gold or silver bar that belonged to me? Don't you know that it's all
talk and no cider so far? Don't you know that people who always feel
jolly, no matter where they are or what happens to them--who have
the organ of hope preposterously developed--who are endowed with an
uncongealable sanguine temperament--who never feel concerned about the
price of corn--and who cannot, by any possibility, discover any but the
bright side of a picture--are very apt to go to extremes, and exaggerate
with 40-horse microscopic power? Of course I never tried to raise these
suspicions in your mind, but then your knowledge of the fact that some
people's poor frail human nature is a sort of crazy institution anyhow,
ought to have suggested them to you. Now, if I hadn't thoughtlessly got
you into the notion of coming out here, and thereby got myself into a
scrape, I wouldn't have given you that highly-colored paragraph about
the mill, etc., because, you know, if that pretty little picture should
fail, and wash out, and go the Devil generally, it wouldn't cost me the
loss of an hour's sleep, but you fellows would be so much distressed on
my account as I could possibly be if "circumstances beyond my control"
were to prevent my being present at my own funeral. But--but--

"In the bright lexicon of youth,
There's no such word as Fail--"
and I'll prove it!

And look here. I came near forgetting it. Don't you say a word to me
about "trains" across the plains. Because I am down on that arrangement.
That sort of thing is "played out," you know. The Overland Coach or the
Mail Steamer is the thing.

You want to know something about the route between California and Nevada
Territory? Suppose you take my word for it, that it is exceedingly
jolly. Or take, for a winter view, J. Ross Brown's picture, in Harper's
Monthl