se, in those days, nor even an applicant,
although he was quite willing to transact law business for nothing and
furnish the stationery himself. He was always liberal that way.

[Sidenote: (1861.)]

Presently he moved to a wee little hamlet called Alexandria, two or
three miles down the river, and he put up that sign there. He got no
custom. He was by this time very hard aground. But by this time I was
beginning to earn a wage of two hundred and fifty dollars a month as
pilot, and so I supported him thenceforth until 1861, when his ancient
friend, Edward Bates, then a member of Mr. Lincoln's first cabinet, got
him the place of Secretary of the new Territory of Nevada, and Orion and
I cleared for that country in the overland stage-coach, I paying the
fares, which were pretty heavy, and carrying with me what money I had
been able to save--this was eight hundred dollars, I should say--and it
was all in silver coin and a good deal of a nuisance because of its
weight. And we had another nuisance, which was an Unabridged Dictionary.
It weighed about a thousand pounds, and was a ruinous expense, because
the stage-coach Company charged for extra baggage by the ounce. We could
have kept a family for a time on what that dictionary cost in the way of
extra freight--and it wasn't a good dictionary anyway--didn't have any
modern words in it--only had obsolete ones that they used to use when
Noah Webster was a child.

The Government of the new Territory of Nevada was an interesting
menagerie. Governor Nye was an old and seasoned politician from New
York--politician, not statesman. He had white hair; he was in fine
physical condition; he had a winningly friendly face and deep lustrous
brown eyes that could talk as a native language the tongue of every
feeling, every passion, every emotion. His eyes could outtalk his
tongue, and this is saying a good deal, for he was a very remarkable
talker, both in private and on the stump. He was a shrewd man; he
generally saw through surfaces and perceived what was going on inside
without being suspected of having an eye on the matter.

When grown-up persons indulge in practical jokes, the fact gauges them.
They have lived narrow, obscure, and ignorant lives, and at full manhood
they still retain and cherish a job-lot of left-over standards and
ideals that would have been discarded with their boyhood if they had
then moved out into the world and a broader life. There were many
practical jokers