n expectations and
plans. Ah, well! we have all written such letters home at one time and
another-of gold-mines of one form or another.

He closes at last with a bit of pleasantry for his mother.

Ma says: "It looks like a man can't hold public office and be
honest." Why, certainly not, Madam. A man can't hold public office
and be honest. Lord bless you, it is a common practice with Orion
to go about town stealing little things that happen to be lying
around loose. And I don't remember having heard him speak the truth
since we have been in Nevada. He even tries to prevail upon me to
do these things, Ma, but I wasn't brought up in that way, you know.
You showed the public what you could do in that line when you raised
me, Madam. But then you ought to have raised me first, so that
Orion could have had the benefit of my example. Do you know that he
stole all the stamps out of an 8-stamp quartz-mill one night, and
brought them home under his overcoat and hid them in the back room?

XXXV. THE MINER

He had about exhausted his own funds by this time, and it was necessary
that Orion should become the financier. The brothers owned their
Esmeralda claims in partnership, and it was agreed that Orion, out of
his modest depleted pay, should furnish the means, while the other would
go actively into the field and develop their riches. Neither had the
slightest doubt but that they would be millionaires presently, and both
were willing to struggle and starve for the few intervening weeks.

It was February when the printer-pilot-miner arrived in Aurora, that
rough, turbulent camp of the Esmeralda district lying about one hundred
miles south of Carson City, on the edge of California, in the Sierra
slopes. Everything was frozen and covered with snow; but there was no
lack of excitement and prospecting and grabbing for "feet" in this ledge
and that, buried deep under the ice and drift. The new arrival camped
with Horatio Phillips (Raish), in a tiny cabin with a domestic roof
(the ruin of it still stands), and they cooked and bunked together
and combined their resources in a common fund. Bob Howland joined them
presently, and later an experienced miner, Calvin H. Higbie (Cal),
one day to be immortalized in the story of 'Roughing It' and in the
dedication of that book. Around the cabin stove they would gather, and
paw over their specimens, or test them with blow-pipe and "horn" spoon,