ent but vigorous policy
in developing the vast property when the mill should be fairly in
operation.

All this time I felt an undercurrent of anxiety lest I might sustain
spiritual loss by my sudden accession to great wealth, and continued to
fortify myself with good resolutions.

As a matter of special caution, I sent for a parcel of the ore, and had
a private assay made of it. The assay was good.

The new superintendent notified us that on a certain date we might look
for a report of the result of the first great crushing and cleanup of
the seventy tons of rock. The day came. On Kearny street I met one of
the stockholders--a careful Presbyterian brother, who loved money. He
had a solemn look, and was walking slowly, as if in deep thought.
Lifting his eyes as we met, he saw me, and spoke:

"It is lead!"

"What is lead?"

"Our silver mine in Deep Spring Valley."

Yes; from the seventy tons of rock we got eleven dollars in silver, and
about fifty pounds of as good lead as was ever molded into bullets.

The board held a meeting the next evening. It was a solemn one. The
fifty-pound bar of lead was placed in the midst, and was eyed
reproachfully. I resigned my trusteeship, and they saw me not again.
That was my first and last mining speculation. It failed somehow--but
the assays were all very good.

Mike Reese.

I had business with him, and went at a business hour. No introduction
was needed, for he had been my landlord, and no tenant of his ever had
reason to complain that he did not get a visit from him, in person or by
proxy, at least once a month. He was a punctual man--as a collector of
what was due him. Seeing that he was intently engaged, I paused and
looked at him. A man of huge frame, with enormous hands and feet,
massive head, receding forehead, and heavy cerebral development, full
sensual lips, large nose, and peculiar eyes that seemed at the same time
to look through you and to shrink from your gaze--he was a man at whom
a stranger would stop in the street to get a second gaze. There he sat
at his desk, too much absorbed to notice my entrance. Before him lay a
large pile of one-thousand-dollar United States Government bonds, and he
was clipping off the coupons. That face! it was a study as he sat using
the big pair of scissors. A hungry boy in the act of taking into his
mouth a ripe cherry, a mother gazing down into the face of her pretty
sleeping child, a lover looking into the eyes of his cha