ire a certain ecstasy of sadness in the miner's breast as it
was to excite an envy in the hearts of the others.

Next to Jim, he loved Tintoretto--that joyous, irresponsible bit of
pup-wise gladness whose tail was so utterly inadequate to express his
enthusiasm that he wagged his whole fuzzy self in the manner of an
awkward fish. Never was the tiny man seated with his doll on the floor
that the pup failed to pounce upon him and push him over, half a dozen
times. Never did this happen that one of the men, or Jim himself, did
not at once haul Tintoretto, growling, away by the tail or the ear and
restore their tiny guest to his upright position. Never did such a
good Samaritan fail to raise his hand for a cuff at the pup, nor ever
did one of them actually strike. It ended nearly always in the pup's
attack on the hand in question, which he chewed and pawed at and
otherwise befriended as only a pup, in his freedom from worries and
cares, can do.

With absolutely nothing prepared, and with nothing but promises made
and forgotten, old Jim beheld the glory of Sunday morning come, with
the bite and crystalline sunshine of the season in the mountain air.

God's thoughts must be made in Nevada, so lofty and flawless is the
azure sky, so utterly transparent is the atmosphere, so huge, gray, and
passionless the mighty reach of mountains!

Man's little thought was expressed in the camp of Borealis, which
appeared like a herd of small, brown houses, pitifully insignificant in
all that immensity, and gathered together as if for company, trustfully
nestling in the hand of the earth-mother, known to be so gentle with
her children. On the hill-sides, smaller mining houses stood, each one
emphasized by the blue-gray heap of earth and granite--the dump--formed
by the labors of the restless men who burrowed in the rock for precious
metal. The road, which seemed to have no ending-place, was blazed
through the brush and through the hills in either direction across the
miles and miles of this land without a people. The houses of Borealis
stood to right and left of this path through the wilderness, as if by
common consent to let it through.

Meagre, unknown, unimportant Borealis, with her threescore men and one
decent woman, shared, like the weightiest empire, in the smile, the
care, the yearning of the ever All-Pitiful, greeting the earth with
another perfect day.

Intelligence of what could be expected, in the way of a celebration