Once more native imbecility had carried the day, and I had lost a
million! It was the "blind lead" over again.

Let us not dwell on this miserable matter. If I were inventing these
things, I could be wonderfully humorous over them; but they are too true
to be talked of with hearty levity, even at this distant day. [True, and
yet not exactly as given in the above figures, possibly. I saw Marshall,
months afterward, and although he had plenty of money he did not claim to
have captured an entire million. In fact I gathered that he had not then
received $50,000. Beyond that figure his fortune appeared to consist of
uncertain vast expectations rather than prodigious certainties. However,
when the above item appeared in print I put full faith in it, and
incontinently wilted and went to seed under it.] Suffice it that I so
lost heart, and so yielded myself up to repinings and sighings and
foolish regrets, that I neglected my duties and became about worthless,
as a reporter for a brisk newspaper. And at last one of the proprietors
took me aside, with a charity I still remember with considerable respect,
and gave me an opportunity to resign my berth and so save myself the
disgrace of a dismissal.

CHAPTER LIX.

For a time I wrote literary screeds for the Golden Era. C. H. Webb had
established a very excellent literary weekly called the Californian, but
high merit was no guaranty of success; it languished, and he sold out to
three printers, and Bret Harte became editor at $20 a week, and I was
employed to contribute an article a week at $12. But the journal still
languished, and the printers sold out to Captain Ogden, a rich man and a
pleasant gentleman who chose to amuse himself with such an expensive
luxury without much caring about the cost of it. When he grew tired of
the novelty, he re-sold to the printers, the paper presently died a
peaceful death, and I was out of work again. I would not mention these
things but for the fact that they so aptly illustrate the ups and downs
that characterize life on the Pacific coast. A man could hardly stumble
into such a variety of queer vicissitudes in any other country.

For two months my sole occupation was avoiding acquaintances; for during
that time I did not earn a penny, or buy an article of any kind, or pay
my board. I became a very adept at "slinking." I slunk from back street
to back street, I slunk away from approaching faces that looked familiar,
I slunk