The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1903-08-08
MAGNATE A GOLD BOOM MADE.
Some Queer Folk Who "Struck it
Rich" in the Old DAVIS in Colorado
ONeW York Sun

III
! In the flush times in Colorado cr,oar
! characters became rich in q dav. One of
me most picturesque of them was pa+
EGasey OF Black Hawk. Pat was day
r1o9i CT Without education. He could not
I E or write. and could hardly count,
! Hut when he was working on q LITTLE
! prospect hole one fine morning q sineis
n f.,m5 disclosed great vein of wonder
once MI Casey"
His mine was one of the show places
which tourists visited. and he himself
WIS me greatest curiosity around the
inine' lie was much ashamed of his il
| iteracy, and one of his foihles was to
keen pile of pencils on his table in
! me Office of the mine. Whenever he saw
strangers coming he began sharpenine a
pencil, and never failed to inform his is
au1nlrlng visitors, in a brogue that was
AL WOOL and a yard wide that Il use
t%iiVe I'D plnclls day in me business -
mine was a colonel. When Casey heard
that he had all his men called out of the
nine and made speech to them from
the dump pile.
uherteet here. yeZ will be sure to call
me Kunnel Casey. And when they bese
gone yez will all take a drink
lie had big lot of men in his employ
tor he was a warm-hearted Irishman,
and never turned away any man who
wanted a job, the result being that the
miners were so thick in his shafts that
IieY CouIu Ha4uiy move ABOUT. Once
when he was feeling happy he called
down to some men in little PROJECTING
shaft:
III, How many of yez are down there?"
The answer came, Five Colonel Ca
sey. and then said the genial Pat:
Aez will come up, half of yez at a
time, and take a drink with the colonel"
He heard that there was such thing
as diamond drill user in mining, but
mad not the remotest idea what it was,
but he was with difficulty dissuaded
from buying one, having got it into his
head that it was used to discover dia-
monds in gold mines.
There was an industrious couple named
Flanagan in Black Hawk, who had been
working away in proverty for years, the
husband prospecting without finding
anything and the wife supporting the
family by taking in washing. One day
her customers found themselves without
clean linen and one of them went out to
her cabin up on the mountain side, TO
found her arrayed in all kinds of finery
sitting on a wooden stool on the dirt
floor of the log cabin. She received him
with great cordially, and produced
champagne and cigars.
MY old man has struck it rich, so l
have retired from business" said She.
There were in Leadville. three broth
ers, prospectors, Gallagher by name, who
had discovered a mine called the Pine,
or something like that, which suddenly
turned out rich. They sold it, realizing
about 100000 each. They had always
been day laborers had never had any
and did not know the difference
between 100000 and $1,0000O0. One of
them, Pat went down to Denver and put
up at the Grand Central hotel, kept by
Uncle Dave Gage, ex-city treasurer of
Chicago Pats principal ambition had
always been to own gold watch. so the
first thing he did was to go to the Den
ver's Tiffany's and buy six of the largest
possible size, with a chain weighing about
a pound.
Leaving five of the watches in the
hotel safe he sailed out to promote the
of currency, good fellowships
and wet goods. When he came back the
hotel clerk pointed out to him that his
watch chain was hanging down and his
watch was missing. He asked for an
other watch and it was given to him. But
in trying to fasten it on the chain II
slipped through his fingers and fell on
the marble floor with bang. Pat made
several fruitless efforts to pick it up
Then he steadied himself against the
counter and said:
Never mind. Gimme 'nuther watch.
Few of these men kept their money
and in most cases less than six months !
found them once more taking up, not the
shovel and the hoe" but the shovel and
the pick-ax and returning to the night |
shift for their daily wage