The Press., 1890-03-27
mora than all, from all to the drink

and the poison is down. As it rasps, they call "Ahemi'' with varied degrees of modulation. But this is careful and prudent miner, and he now repairs to the store There his dust is weighed, sold, and the weeks provision ordered. His combined partners "divvys" are put aside in lump and safely stored. Now the weight is off his mind. He re- turns to the attractions of camp.
 These are not numerous. There is the Magnolia, the Bella Union, the Court Exchange, the post and express office. There are the "boys." He learns the news of the county or district. The Mount Vernon is paying $4 per day. Long Shortman has gone on another spree and hasn't done any work for the last ten days. Jimmy McNeil has sent for his wife's sister. She is unmarried. Sullivan has had another row with his wife and she has complained to the authorities. Sam Gedney is going to run for county clerk on the Democratic ticket. Bob Delmame lost $2OO at the game the other night. A San Francisco company have bought the Crazy gulch quartz lead and will put a ten-stamp mill on it. The schoolmaster was drunk last Friday night. Ford shot at McGillis the other night, but did not hit him. There is scandal and talk concerning the Frenchwoman who keeps the peanut stand, and the justice of the peace. The Wiley girls, two sisters, who have re- gently moved into camp, are making a sensation, and their small parlor at times !, In of In unconsciously middle aged miners and others who are calling on them with pos sible natrimony in prospective.
 . They may pass along the street about the middle of the afternoon, and such "ragging out'' was never seen before in this camp. The curious have investigat- ed the tracks made by their little gaiters in the red dust of the upper road. and report them the smallest feet ever seen in this section. Billy Devins, of the Blue-jay claim, is thought to have the best show with the eldest, and Goldber- ry, of the livery stable, with the young est. No. He won't let his best horse and buggy to anybody now, and takes her out riding three times week. But they're snappy and uncertain, and mo- body can count on them for a certainty. So runs the weeks news, which he picks up with sundry drinks.
 He enjoys the luxury of hotel din ner-a dinner he is not obliged to pre- pare with his own hands-a decidedly plain dinner in metropolitan estimation, but to him, commencing with soup and ending with pie, sumptuous repast. It is moonlight, and he takes his way back by the old trail home. Old not in years, but in association. It is but the track of twenty years or so, yet for him how old is it in thought. How many, many times he has travelled over it.
 That poker game is going on in one corner of the Magnolia. The s'hard case" from over the hill is trying to beat it. He has been SO trying every Sunday night in that same saloon and in that same corner for the last twenty years. He has grown old in trying. It has kept him poor, yet he thinks he can play poker. He is encouraged in this im- pression by considerate few. He works for them. They ''scoop him in" regularly. He will go home tomorrow morning, and during the week wash out couple of ounces more for the benefit of '.Scotty" and "Texas.'' ! .s, It is ii o'clock and time to go home. That three mile walk is before him; he has taken as many drinks as is prudent, possibly one or two more. The camp saloon revelries are beginning to quiet down. Most of the prominent drunks have fallen in the cause. The chronic drunk of the camp is talking at the bar. But he will thus talk all night; he never stops talking -or drinking. He has been here more or less drunk ever since 1852. He is phenomenal and not astandard for ordinary incorporates. Almost every camp has known such a drunkard. Some are alive yet. They are of the immortal few not born to die. It would be mad ness to compete with such.
 So he sets out on his lonely walk. Of how much has he thought while plod- dingover it. Here the same big buck eye brushes against his face as it did in the 'sspring of '50," when he was twenty years younger and had sweetheart in the Estates" whose memory was fresh and warm. It has all died out since. The letters became less and less, the years more and more, and then all came to dead standstill, and he received the village paper, and there, appropriately below the column of deaths, he read of her marriage, whereat he went to camp and plunged wildly into all the concert saloon could give, and made things howl and boldly challenged the chronic poker game and won.
 The trail turns suddenly. It has run over the rocks by the river, it's trail at times for many feet almost illegible, a vague, smoothly worn streak over ledge and loose powders, polished and strewn with new white sand and pebbles by some unusually high freshet. But here the shelving bank suddenly ceases. It becomes precipice. Up the hard worn path in the red earth he climbs forty, fifty, sixty feet. It is closely hedged with chemisal Now he emerges near the brow of the high, rocky bluff. In all it's moonlit glory surges, bubbles and roars the river below. Its yellow muddi- ness of the day is now changed to dark shade of brown, with tremulous silver bars. Night and the moon are the art fists. <, PRENTICE MULFoRD.
 Save money by buying bars of Brussel soap for 50 cents, at N. c. Moore's.