Los Angeles daily herald., 1886-12-25


The first battle of that terrible conflict
found him carrying musket. and in the
forefront of the fight. While his regl-
ment marched across piece of plowed
field, a shot from Confederate battery
struck q rail fence In front of them.
One of the rails was turned and driven
endwise against Private Stanton's breast.
L mis- ended his military career, for many
a long day to come. He lay for months
in Washington hospital, his life hang.
ing by the thinnest of threads. When
well enough to go about, he might have
been discharged but would not. The
thinking him unfit for active
service, sent him out to guard the far
western frontier against the Indians.
In this ignoble and uninteresting sort
of soldering he passed the rest of the
years of the war and won no promotion,
had no chance of distinction-none Of
what perhaps he longed for most, a
soldiers unknown grave.
CHAPTER III.
ANOTHER CHRISTMAS.
Peace came at last aud the old soldiers
were mustered out. Eugene's regiment
had been marched across the continent,
and received their discharge at small
post on the Pacific Ocean.
Equally at home here as any where in
the world, our hero soon drifted to San
Francisco. Here he opened an office
and proceeded to the practice of his pro.
fession.
1t was more than twenty years after
that sunny day by the shore of the
beautiful lake, when an event happened
which brings this little sketch to an end.
While only forty-tive years old, Eu-
gene looked more than ten years Older.
He was accounted one of the
shrewdest operators in stocks
in San Francisco. BE cared little for
but somehow money came t.
him. Restless in disposition and tireless
in energy, as if by force of habit, he
invested in mines, planted vineyards,
built wineries; and still with each for
ward step his thousands grew to tens of
and then to millions.
Cold, hard and impenetrable in his
character, making no new friends, hav.
ing no interests, unmarried, childless,
with none dependent on himvthe won
der of all who knew the man was what
he toiled for, and what he would do
with his great wealth by and by. He
lived alone in magnificent house, sur.
rounded with all the luxury that money
could buy or taste suggest. He was a
connoisseur in score of arts, and one
of his passions was the collecting of
brio brac. Few saw his treasures for
few ever crossed his threshold.
He took a trip to Europe now and
then. He had been in Japan, and Aus
tralia. He was the best lawyer in Cali
fornia, and was known to nearly every
man in the State. Had he opened his
heart and let people come near to him,
he might have had any honor. He wished
none. Hard and cold as he was he was
trusted, and after fashion liked.
But so he passed his life. The inmates
of the mansion ON mob Hip were a
male cook, man who might be called a
butler and coacbman.
1t was d season of great excitement in
mining stocks. Fortunes were made
aud lost in moment. Men were mill
ionaires to-day and beggars tomorrow.
Around the big temple of the tickle
goddess of fortune, on Pine street, men
and jostled each other. Wo-
mtn came to swell the motley throng,
and shrieked themselves hoarse with
their male rivals.
Towards the close of the summer
came the great collapse, when the fools,
who were loaded up awake one morn
ing and found themselves penniless.
Among those who came to the great
lottery was little man with shuffiing
gait, uncertain looks, closely shaved,
bald, and with niser's anxiety to make
That he was rich was evil
denced by the magnitude of his ven.
lures. He seemed to have no more clear
what he did in the market,
than he had a fixed object to rest his
indefinite eyes on, or a fixed place
to stand for five consecutive seconds.
He and Eugene had met, and looked
each at the other. They bowed as if
they had met every day for the past
twenty years, and that was all. In fact
they had not met once for more they
twenty years. But that cold bow seemed
to satisfy all there was of fellowship be.
tween them.
$50 he is here speculating in stocks!"
Eugene had said to himself.
Making more money! Well, no
doubt, she is better pleased with him.
for each million he marks up in his bank
account.
81 wonder if she finds in money all
she hoped it would bring her p
Bangs muttered: "Stanton here, and
they say as rich as Cresusl Well, l
never thought he had sense enough to
make money or to keep it! But he is
said to do both. They say he has more
than have now.
Thus they met daily and thus they
passed, with no more intimacy than the
nod in the street, above all, with no
word of the past.
Eugene, after wards saw Leila-at the
play or in the park. They had one child
"a girl of some fourteen years old, and
as like the mother as two beings could
be.
The day after the gret crash came, the
in reconnting the terrible
ruin of hundreds, which enriched half
a dozen, among other paragraphs had
one which told how "John Bangs, a
New Yorker, and one of the heaviest
operators on change, had lost his every
dollar. by being long on Sierra Nevada;
and that unable to bear the blow, or face
his family. he had gone to his office, and
swallowed enough laudanum to kill two
men, where he was found late in the
night stone cold.
Eugene read it, and if anyone had
looked in his face as he slipped his coffee
when he laid down the paper, no
mark of interest or feeling would have
been traceable in those clear cut, hard
features. He merely gave low whis-
tie. and said, just above his breath:
"Lost ever dollar, and then killed him.
self! Well, l suppose she will 60 home
to her brother or sister in New York;"
The crash and its victims were forgot
ten, excepting in some poor houses
where the chill winds and rains of the
San Francisco winter, made the memory