The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1897-03-13


grades, by walking over the now al
most obliterated pathway which
formed q wagering hypothenuse across
the angle made by the junction OF the
trail with the county road. A fond
ness for flowers led the young man TO
stop to pluck one Of the great creamy.
blossoms that fingered On the rubus
bush; an,! then, idly beating with his
heel at the unnoticed rock below while
he waited for his companions to over
take him, lie laid bare the secret which
had been hidden from the .beginning OF
the world. A bit OF the stone c1'u1n bled
away under his feot; idly glancing
down, his eyes We're caught By the SHIN
mer of free gold; aud the Mascot mine,
as he chose to call it, was discovered.
Harvey Neil was q type Of adventurer
by no means uncommon III the west.
His father had been Il large woolen man
ufacturer in Connecticut, who. had
failed i'll business and died Of heart
failure--of a broken heart, his widow
Away, contended just at the close Of
the boys college course. It had always
been tacit}s' accepted in the family that
Harvey. the only son, should eventual
ly devote himself to the mills, as his
father and his grandfather had done
before him; but new. hampered by lack
OF both capital and experience, this
conrsc appeared scarcely practicable,
while his mother, moreover, evinced g
deep repugnance for the calling to which
she charged his fathers untin1ely death.
What with the nlischieyous tinkering
with the tariff which was forever
menace to the business, and the labor
troubles to contribute endless turmoil,
she would have her son look to some
other field for the success which she
could not doubt must ultimately be his
whichever way he turned. And the lad,
full Of youths longing for adventure,
was only too glad to leave the hac]lneyed
paths he had known all his life, electing
to go west aud grow up with the coun-
try.
It was something OF a shock to him
to find the country rather more grown
up, and the opportunities for profitable
adventure decidedly more 1neager, than
his dreams had pictured. He had chosen
Colorado as his field Of operations and
in his eagerness to attain riches no
turned naturally to mining, where in FL
few brief months the little money he
had brought with him had gone in allur-
ing ventures which, returned him moth
ing beyond the experiences he SO surely
needed, but for which he was anything
but grateful And now, wholly UNI
equipped by education Or training for
any labor open to him here, Knowing
70 moro than a pampered child OF any
principle of economy, Harvey Neil ex-
perienced few years of very hard times
indeed. The insurance Oh his fathers
life Lad placed his mother in co,npara-
tive comfort; but, after the Injuries by
which he had always seen her surround
ed, it seemed to the son SO neal to the
bordcrland OF poverty that not for the
world would he allow her to coz
tribute another dollar to the undertake
ings in which he had come to feel him
self fairly predestined to failure. He
would not even grieve her by telling OF
the ill-lucll which had pursued him; and
more than one letter he wrote dilating
upon the glorious chances which the
great west offered, chances which he led
her to infer he held in his grasp-when
he had to wait for days merely to COM
pass the purchase of Il postage stamp to
send the letter. To her, if somewhat
vague as to his doings, he was always
gay and hopeful. When he went to
work as harvest hand in the summer,
such work as blistered his untried
hands and brought strange aches to
every bone in his body, he only told her
that he had been invited to stay on a
ranch for awhile, and amused her with
his droll accounts of the primitive ways
of living affected by the natives to no
manners born; and never was she al
lowed to know that he left the ranch
like a common tramp at last, having
been cheated out of every dollar OF the
wages due him. He sent her merry
description of strengthening, which he
tried later, as it would seem simply for
the fun of it; while few months after
that, when he had found a job shoveling
coal III one of the Denver smelters, re-
duced to such living as must have
wrung the mothers heart could she
have known, the gentle lady was moved
to innocent remonstrance for the wan
dering life he was leading. She feared
he was having too good a time, she
wrote, gugar~coating the pill of protest
with many tender phrase; she liked
to know that he was enjoying himself,
but, since his future depended SO wholly
upon himself, his life could not we'll be
all holiday. Was it not true, she
gently asked that he should put his
shoulder to the wheel and go towork in
earnest? His shoulder to the wheel!
Well that the good lady could never
know what tears blotted the adn1oni-
tons it had cost her such pains to
pen.
But he wiao labors as did Harvey Neil
at this time, unstint edly giving the best
that is in him to honest effort. though
seemingly but to poor ends, seldom fails
in achieving gain FAR beyond the insig-
nifcant wage that slips through his
purse; and while he, ,vrithing in tho
rude environment, fancied himself
roughening and coarsening day by day.
sinking down to the spiritual level Of
his always physical superior, the igao-
rant emigrant laborer by whose side he
John NJ. Gleason. undertaken and fun
r.