e functions presently were added the treasurerships of
the Masons' and Odd Fellows' charitable funds,--the old man being far
advanced in their respective degrees,--and even the position of almoner
of their bounties was super-added. Here, unfortunately, Daddy's habits
of economy and avaricious propensity came near making him unpopular,
and very often needy brothers were forced to object to the quantity and
quality of the help extended. They always met with more generous
relief from the private hands of the brothers themselves, and the
remark, "that the ol' man was trying to set an example,--that he meant
well,"--and that they would yet be thankful for his zealous care and
economy. A few, I think, suffered in noble silence, rather than bring
the old man's infirmity to the public notice.

And so with this honor of Daddy and Mammy, the days of the miners were
long and profitable in the land of the foot-hills. The mines yielded
their abundance, the winters were singularly open and yet there was no
drouth nor lack of water, and peace and plenty smiled on the Sierrean
foothills, from their highest sunny upland to the trailing falda of
wild oats and poppies. If a certain superstition got abroad among the
other camps, connecting the fortunes of Rough-and-Ready with Daddy and
Mammy, it was a gentle, harmless fancy, and was not, I think,
altogether rejected by the old people. A certain large, patriarchal,
bountiful manner, of late visible in Daddy, and the increase of much
white hair and beard, kept up the poetic illusion, while Mammy, day by
day, grew more and more like somebody's fairy godmother. An attempt
was made by a rival camp to emulate these paying virtues of reverence,
and an aged mariner was procured from the Sailor's Snug Harbor in San
Francisco, on trial. But the unfortunate seaman was more or less
diseased, was not always presentable, through a weakness for ardent
spirits, and finally, to use the powerful idiom of one of his
disappointed foster-children, "up and died in a week, without slinging
ary blessin'."

But vicissitude reaches young and old alike. Youthful Rough-and-Ready
and the Saints had climbed to their meridian together, and it seemed
fit that they should together decline. The first shadow fell with the
immigration to Rough-and-Ready of a second aged pair. The landlady of
the Independence Hotel had not abated her malevolence towards the
Saints, and had imported at considerable expense her grand-