The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1850-1873, 1873-09-12
THE LOVES OF THE GOLD MINERS,

| treasure
To the Printer. be certain-to pay him!
THE LOVES OF THE GOLD MINERS
These men are mostly shy with theil
letters and their tales of love. Tha
was sacred ground, upon which nc
strange, tude feet couldpass. No gold
hunter here, perhaps, but had his love
his only love, without a change OF
| possibility for changing the object Of
his devotion even if he had desired it.
Men must love as we'll as women. It is
the most natural and, consequently the
most proper thing on earth. Imagine
how intensifie and how tender a mans
devotion would become under circum.
stances like these. The one image tc
his heart, the one hope, her. So much
time to think, bending to the work il
the running waters under the trees, on
the trail beneath the shadows of the
forest, by the camp and cabin-fre, he1
face and hers only, with no new face
rising up, crossing her path, confront.
ing him for days, for months, for years,
see how holy a thing his love would
! grow to be. This, you observe, is a
new man, a new manner of lover. Love,
L say, is requirement, a necessity. II
is as necessary for a complete man to
love as it is for him to breathe pure air.
And is as natural.
These men, being so far removed
from any personal contact with the OBJ
! Jects of their affections, and only now
and then at long intervals receive let
/ ters, all marked and remarked across
| the backs from the remailings from
camp to camp, of course, knew no in
terruptiOns In the current of their de-
votion, and loved in a singularly earn
est and sincere way. I doubt if there
be anything like it in history.
When men go to war, they have the
| glory and excitement of battle to al
lure them, then the eyes of many wo-
men are upon them they are not
locked up like these men of the sierras,
| with only their work and the one
thing to think of. When they go to
sea, the sailors find new faces in every
port +; but these men, from the time
! they crossed the Missouri or left the
Atlantic coast, have known no strange
gods, hardly heard wOman's voice till
they returned.
l was in the confidence of one Young
fellow here, very young and very YER
dant, not of the grand type at all in
fact, he was of Pacific growth as far as
he had yet developed, and not a repre-
sentative man at all. But he is the only
one who took me wholly into his conf
dence, and of whom / can truthfully
speak by the card, as they say. He had
three letters, stained, and worn and
torn. They looked as old as some of
| the sacred relics you see under the glass
cases in the British museum. These
letters were his treasures. True, he
had bag or two of gold, bowie knife,
a pistol, pair of blankets, and, what
was really marvel and a mark of ex-
travagance, an extra red flannel shirt :;
but these were trifes. These three let
ters were the boys chief pride. Every
Sunday, up on the hillside, where a lit
tie sun broke through the cedar tops
and split itself in shifting pools and
billOws along the leaves, we two, would
sit and read and re-read these letters,
and talk, and think, and plan, and
prophesy in way that was as earnest
as it was absurd.
/ remember but one of these letters
entirely, the tamest and shortest one.
But that one, no doubt, is quite enough.
1t had no date or postmark, and was
signed Merinda only, with a small ini-
tlal letter. The name was followed by
many stars, the significance of which is
too well known to repeat:
"mi deer love want to see you so
bad was in the hay lofte Yesterday
when you druv the cows past our house
on yore spotid horse and sede you thru
the crack, and think he is so Mise only
he holds his he'd out to mutch and steps
tn longe you must learn him to lift his
legs quiker and not step so longe nor
stik his he'd out killed a rattle snake
to da and about an orr before sun down
i will go out to drive Id the shepe from
of the roxy butte and it will be very Ion
some with mi silver tale pony think mi
silver tale pony and yOre new spOttid
pony will both drive shepe altogether
furst rate mi one dere Low.
There was a hollow tree that stood at
the edge of grove that lay partly be-
tween the parental ranches, which was
fitted up for a post-off1ce. These were
imaginative young lovers, it seemed to
me, with a disposition to make the most
of their limited resources for innocent
amusement. There was an old bushy-
tailed squirrel in the branches, adorned
with side-whiskers like an English mill
tary gentleman, and always civil and
very talkative when they walked to-
gether in the grove, and him they named
their postmaster-general.
A hundred little things like this were
told and related Sunday after Sunday
on the hillside, when the sun split
through the leaves in the majestic calm
of mountain sabbath. That boy had
not the shadow of a doubt. It was his
first love. How royal how earnest
and unselfish
She was the older of the two, and his
| overthrow was, of course, only a ques-
tion of time. Who does not know that
| much now?
How the news came to him at last,
| how it drifted little at a time, vaguely
at first, to this boy in the forest, with
his great faith; how he refused to lis
ten or to believe, the agony of the first
! doubt that struck and lodged like a
/ poisoned arrow up to the feathers in
his heart, would be long to tell and
very sad.
But it came to Linn at last. The great,
| big, ugly fact lay like bowlder in the
trail before him, that he could not get
| around, yet he could not muster cour-
age to mount and so he sat down on
the leaves and hid his face in his hands,
and wept like child that he was. She
had married a man with a beard, a
great, six-foot, raw-boned, musculai
monster. with rancho and herds of hrs
own, and hands like slabs of pine.
This young mans name was Ginger F:
or, at least that is the name, and the
! only name, by which he was known in
the mines.