Lyon County times. [volume] (Silver City, Nev.) 1874-1907, 1888-02-18

The first intimation given of the eccentieity
the teStator was, think, i'll the spring Of
.S54 He was at that time in possession OF
considerable property, heavily mortgaged to
ne friend, and wife Of some attraction, on
hose affections another friend held an i'll
,umbeIing lien. One day it was found that
te had secretly dug, or caused to be dug,
leop trap before the front door Of his dwell
ing, into which a few friends, in the course
Of the evening, casually and familiarly
lropped. This circumstance, slight in itself,
,eemed to point to tire existence OF a certain
aumor in the man, which might eventuaily
get into literature, although his wife's lover
a man of quick diseegnmcnt, whcse leg was
broken by the fall-tooll other views. 1t was
some weeks later that while dining with GER
ain other friends OF his wife, he excused him
self from the table 10 quietly reappear at the
'ront window with a three-quarter inch hy-
lraulic pipe, and q stream of water projected
ut the assembled company. An attempt was
made to take pubkS, s9gnizance Of this; buta
majority of the Citizens of Red Dog, who
were not at dinner, decided that man had
right to choose his own methods of diverting
his company. Nevertheless, there were some
hints of his insanity; his wife recalled other
acts clearly attributable to dementia; the
crippled lover argued from his own experience
that the integrity Of her limbs could only be
secured by leaving her husbands house; and
the mortgage, fearing further damage to
his property, foreclosed But here the cause
of all this anxiety took matters into his own
hands and disappeared.
When we next heard from him he had, in
some mysterious way, been relieved alike of
his wife and property, and was living alone at
Rockville, fifty miles away, and editing a
newspaper. But that originality he had dis
played when dealing with the problems of his
own private life, when applied to politics in
the columns Of The Rockville Vanguard was
singularly unsuccessful. An amusing eXag-
geration, purporting to be an exact account
of the manner in which the opposing candi-
date had murdered his Chinese laundryman,
was, regret TO say, answered only 10y as
sault and battery. y gratuitous and purely
imaginative description of a great religious
revival in Calaveras, in which the sheriff of
the county-a notoriously profane skeptic-
was alleged to have been the chief exhorter,
resulted only in the withdrawal of the county
advertising from the paper. In the midst of
this practical confusion he suddenly died
1t was then discovered, as crowning proof
of his absurdity, that he had left will be-
queathing his entire effects to freckle faced
maid servant at the Rockville hotel. But
that absurdity became serious when it was
also discovered that among these effects were
a thousand shares in the Rising Sun Mining
company, which a day or two after his de-
mise and while people were still laughing at
his grotesQue benefaction, suddenly sprang
into opulence and celebrity. Three millions
Of dollars was roughly estimated as the value
of the estate thus wantonly sacrificed For
it is only fair to state, as just tribute to the