mfortless of places. The
saloon and gambling-house furnished the only real warmth and cheer. Our
Aurora miners would have been less than human, or more, if they had not
found diversion now and then in the happy harbors of sin. Once there was
a great ball given at a newly opened pavilion, and Sam Clemens is
said to have distinguished himself by his unrestrained and spontaneous
enjoyment of the tripping harmony. Cal Higbie, who was present, writes:

In changing partners, whenever he saw a hand raised he would grasp
it with great pleasure and sail off into another set, oblivious to
his surroundings. Sometimes he would act as though there was no use
in trying to go right or to dance like other people, and with his
eyes closed he would do a hoe-down or a double-shuffle all alone,
talking to himself and saying that he never dreamed there was so
much pleasure to be obtained at a ball. It was all as natural as a
child's play. By the second set, all the ladies were falling over
themselves to get him for a partner, and most of the crowd, too full
of mirth to dance, were standing or sitting around, dying with
laughter.

What a child he always was--always, to the very end? With the first
break of winter the excitement that had been fermenting and stewing
around camp stoves overflowed into the streets, washed up the gullies,
and assailed the hills. There came then a period of madness, beside
which the Humboldt excitement had been mere intoxication. Higbie says:

It was amazing how wild the people became all over the Pacific
coast. In San Francisco and other large cities barbers, hack-
drivers, servant-girls, merchants, and nearly every class of people
would club together and send agents representing all the way from
$5,000 to $500,000 or more to buy mines. They would buy anything.
in the shape of quartz, whether it contained any mineral value or
not.

The letters which went from the Aurora miner to Orion are humanly
documentary. They are likely to be staccato in their movement; they
show nervous haste in their composition, eagerness, and suppressed
excitement; they are not always coherent; they are seldom humorous,
except in a savage way; they are often profane; they are likely to be
violent. Even the handwriting has a terse look; the flourish of youth
has gone out of it. Altogether they reveal the tense anxiety of the
gambling mania of which mining is the u