The Wilmington daily Republican. (Wilmington, Del.) 1890-1902, 1892-08-26
GOING HOME.

| He is going homel Going homei That
was the climax of his California dream; the
end of the play-and the work; why, no
body in the mines and the mountains meant
to stay there. Still many a>good man staid.
But all along through the first fifteen
| or twenty years II every man who wanted
to go home could have gone there would
have been nothing left in the Serras but
graves, heaps of gravel, prospect holes and
battered old picks, shovels, TOMS rockers,
boots, broken bottles and so on. The whole
land would have been as quiet and empty
| up there as dead mans hand
But years later, when men left Califor-
mia, still fortune hunting, and went to the
northern mines, they somehow forgot all
about the old world, and when fortune
| found them they came back to California
| to live and to die. There was nothing,
however, very dramatic in this short safe
return from the northern mines In the
| days OF stages, steamers and railroads
back to the Golden Gate. Still 1t was an
event and was enjoyed by all most heart
lily in each camp. And it always seemed
to me that the men who took the deepest
and tenderest interest in the going home"
of one OF their number were the very men
who were most helpless and most incapa-
know that when it began to be whis-
pered about that Fred Adams, of Canyon
City, had made his "pile" and was going
home there was joy in the heart of many
gray headed man who knew right we'll IL
| would never be said of him that he had
made his pile and that he was going
| home" And when Fred Adams quietly
slipped out Of camp down to a friends
house and statd all night and weighed
his gold dust there on the butchers scales
before starting at daybreak the next morn
ing, and when the news came back to town
that the dust weighed well nigh to hum
dred pounds, l tell you there were tears Of
delight in many an old mans eyes at
thought Of Fred's good fortune. We
called him Fred Adams up there, but
his name is Judge Adams by title and
| right, and he is now one of the rich big
lawyers of San Francisco.
| The first 'going home" ever saw was
on Humbug creek, northern California. In
the winter Of 1854. tell you it took men
of grit to get there. The towards had
never started there and the weak died on
the way, 80 they were q powerful and Sc
lect lot of men, and It took nerve, time
and dust, too, 10 get away from there.
Think of i'll Ten miles on foot over a
mountain Of snow to Yreka, then hundreds
of miles through the savages by mule to
Portland, then sailing vessel to San
Francisco, then the steamer Panama, New
Orleans, up the Mississippi. and so on.
| had been blown into this canyon at the
forks of the Humbug, as a bid, by the
winter storms, and had to bridge over a
mighty hard place as cook for my board.
But the provisions gave out pretty soon
and had to go. Then Frank Campbell.
brother Of the late BARLEY Campbell,
dramatist and member of the legislature
when last heard from, got me a place to
| sit up with miner who had been hurt in
slide. got no wages, but as had to sit
up at night and so didn't need bed, and
as the man was too badly hurt to eat the
meals sent him from the hotel, I did not
suffer, but soon made friends with the
poor man by reading to him. Lots Of
miners used to drop in after night and
smoke and listen. The book was Harrison
Ainsworths novels all bound up together,
'Dick Turpin," Jack Sheppard" and SO
on. Never had man or boy such listeners.
And when l. thirty years later. told dear old
Ainsworth in London how he had been read
and listened to In tho heart of the Sierras
he nearly crushed my hand in his two
hands. But this is scattering birdshot,
Let us 70 forward.
1t is marvellous how ignorant those men
were. They were from what was then the
.border," largely MIssourians, and I
doubt IL one-half OF them could write their
names. know right we'll what say, for
wrote many letters for them. or course
there were other men there from other
countries, Pat Flanagan, for instance,
| who kept the store From France, do YOU
sayf No, he was white Irshman, with
very black beard, and now is the rich
of,1 if1ffF ttal 1t r.
bank. He was very popular then, as he is
still, reckon, and seeing the dismal igno-
rance Of the miners he and Frank Camp
bell set committee to work to get up
public library" And this is one of its
methods Tho secretary tackled up the fol-
lowing notice on the door of the saloon
known ns The Howlin Wilderness;
"Know all men that emmy book in this
'ere camp belongs to the publick library
except the holy bibel, and emmy man found
gilty of taking emmy book except said bibel
will be hung for horse stealing so help me
god. lSighned) The librarion of bored of
directors and secretary of said library"
The result was q preacher who went
away as provisions got short left behind
a copy of Josephus. This made three
books in the library now, and Pat Flan-
nigan employed me ut $3.50 n day, or
rather an hour, for the man could not
stand more, to go up the creek and read
Josephus to sick miner there. "You
see he has got the scurvy and rheumatism
and consumption; I'm afraid he's pretty
! sick" said Pat pathetically as we ap-
preached the low little cabin under the
dark FIR trees on the hillside
as Josephus the short for Josephf"
asked the long, slim and bony man, who
lay there with his big. bent and knotty
feet sticking far out from under the blan-
kets and over the pole that served for a
footboard
"Yis, yis, sorr; Josephus is the shorrut
for Joseph, Zeke, moi boy"
as itt Well, by guml Say, know all
about that ere book, sort o religiousIike;
jist suit you, see now; and I'd like to hear
,, 1t again; jlst suit you, See now" and he
looked long aud medtatiyely at his queer,
twisted toes thut were trying to climb up
on top of ono another away down yonder
beyond the other cut' of the narrow little
bed of fir boughs and blankets in the dark
corner Of tho cabin. Then for the third
time he said, talking in a whisper to those
curious and multiJudinous toes, "Jist suit
you, see now"
And SO | read from Josephus, and the
next day l wrote letter for him to his
little sister at home, to Savannah Landing,
Mo, and signed Ezekiel Wells, for although
he had two brothers with him, young
brothers, who were busy cleaning up" in
IL T.. 1.