n the alleged auriferous value of "Jules'." Of this he had been by
no means impressed as he looked down upon the submerged cabins from the
box-seat of the coach and listened to the driver's lazy recital of
the flood, and of the singularly patient acceptance of it by the
inhabitants.

It was the old story of the southwestern miner's indolence and
incompetency,--utterly distasteful to his northern habits of thought
and education. Here was their old fatuous endurance of Nature's wild
caprices, without that struggle against them which brought others
strength and success; here was the old philosophy which accepted the
prairie fire and cyclone, and survived them without advancement,
yet without repining. Perhaps in different places and surroundings a
submission so stoic might have impressed him; in gentlemen who tucked
their dirty trousers in their muddy boots and lived only for the gold
they dug, it did not seem to him heroic. Nor was he mollified as
he stood beside the rude refreshment bar--a few planks laid on
trestles--and drank his coffee beneath the dripping canvas roof, with an
odd recollection of his boyhood and an inclement Sunday-school picnic.
Yet these men had been living in this shiftless fashion for three weeks!
It exasperated him still more to think that he might have to wait there
a few days longer for the water to subside sufficiently for him to make
his examination and report. As he took a proffered seat on a candle-box,
which tilted under him, and another survey of the feeble makeshifts
around him, his irascibility found vent.

"Why, in the name of God, didn't you, after you had been flooded out
ONCE, build your cabins PERMANENTLY on higher ground?"

Although the tone of his voice was more disturbing than his question, it
pleased one of the loungers to affect to take it literally.

"Well, ez you've put it that way,--'in the name of God!'"--returned the
man lazily, "it mout hev struck us that ez HE was bossin' the job, so
to speak, and handlin' things round here generally, we might leave it to
Him. It wasn't OUR flood to monkey with."

"And as He didn't coven-ant, so to speak, to look arter this higher
ground 'speshally, and make an Ararat of it for us, ez far ez we
could see, we didn't see any reason for SETTLIN' yer," put in a second
speaker, with equal laziness.

The secretary saw his mistake instantly, and had experience enough
of Western humor not to prolong the disadvantage of his unfortunate
ad