The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1903-09-07
CHAPTER III.
HOW THE FIRST GENERATION ONCE
RIGHTED ITSELF.

HOW THE FIRST GENERATION ONCE
RIGHTED ITSELF.
BY some philosophers unhappiness is be-
l~ieved-rather than coming from depriva-
ton or infiction-to result from the indi-
vidual's failure TO select from a number of
possible occupations one that would afford
him entire satisfaction with life and him.
self. To this perverse blindness they at
tribute the dissatisfaction with great wealth
traditional Of men who have it. The fault.
they contend. Is not with wealth inherently.
The most they will admit against money is
that the possession Of much Of IL tends to
destroy that judicial calm necessary to a
wise choice Of recreations; TO incline the
possessor. perhaps. toward those that are
unsalutary.
Concerning the old man that Billy Brue
now sought with his news of death, a phil
osopher Of this school would unhesitatingly
declare that he had sounded the last note
of human wisdom. Far up in some mountain
solitude old Peter Bines. multimillionaire,
with a lone pack-mule to bear his meagre
outfit, picked up fioatrock, tapped and
scanned lodges, and Clipped at powders
with the same ardor that had fired him in
his penniless youth.
Back in 1850. a young man of twenty-four,
he had joined the rush to California, work.
ing his passage as deckhand on a vessel
that doubled the Horn. Landing without
capital at San Francisco. the little seaport
settlement among the shifting yellow sand
dunes, he had worked six weeks along the
docks as roustabout for money to take him
hack infO fho hills urbanna ov,o xha hiv
fortunes and the bigger tales of fortunes.
For six years he worked over the gravelly
benches Of the California creeks for vagrant
particles Of gold Then, in the late hfties, he
joined a mad stampede to the Frazer river
gold fields in British Columbia Thence, in
the sixties. the mining world being still
wild over Its first knowledge of silver sui
phurets, he was drawn back by the wonder
tales of the Comstock lode.
Joining the bedraggled caravan over the
Carson trail. he continued his course of bit
ter hardship in the Washoe valley. From a
patch Of barren sun-baked rock and earth,
three miles long and a third of a mile wide,
mig up on the eastern slope of Mount Da-
wilson, he beheld more millions taken out
than the widest enthusiast had ever be-
fore ventured to dream of. But Peter Bines
was a luckless unit of the majority that
had. perforce. to live on the hope produced
by others findings. The time for his strike
had not come.
For ten years more, half clad in flannel
shirt and o~veralls. he lived in fimsy tents,
tattered canvas houses, and sometimes holes
in the ground. One abode of luxury. long
cherished in memory, was a ten-by-twelve
redwood shanty on Feather river. 1t not
only boosted a window, but there was a
round hole In the shake roof fastidiously
cut to fit a stovepipe. That he never pos
sessed a stovepipe had made this feature Of
the architecture not less sumptuous and en-
gaging. He lived chiefly on salt pork and
beans. cooked over smoky campfres.
Through 1T all he was the determined,
eager, confident prospector. never for an in
slant prey to even the suggestion of a doubt
that he would not shortly be rich. Whether
he washed the golden specks from the sand
or a sagebrush plain, or sought the mother
dug with his pick TO follow a promising
surface lead, he knew it to be only the mat
ter of time when his day should dawn. He
hope as its birthright.
Some day the inexhaustible placer would
De Iound; or, on a mountainside where the
porpnyry was stained, he would carelessly
the sun, and behold it rich in ruby silver;
or, some cay, the vein instead of pinching
out would widen; there would be pay ore
almost from the grass-rootS-rich, yellow,
free-mflling gold, so that he could put up a
little ~arastra, beat out enough In a week to
buy a small stampmill. and then. in six
months
Ten years more of this ~fruitless but nour-
fshing certainty were his-ten years of the
awful solitudes, shared sometimes by his
hardy and equally confident wife. and, at
the last. by his boy. who had become old
enough to endure with his father the snow
and ice Of the mountain tops and the with
ering heat of the alkali wastes.
Footsore, hungry most of the time, alter
nately burned and frozen, he lived the life
cheerfully and tirelessly, with an enthusi.
asm that never faltered.
When his day came il brought no surprise,
so freshly certain had he kept of its com
ing through the twenty years of search.
At his feet, one July morning in 1870, he
noticed a piece of dark-stained rock in a
mass of driftstones. So small was it that to
have gone a few feet to either side would
have been to miss il. He picked il up and
examined 1t leisurely. 1t was rich In silver.
Somewhere. then. between him and the
mountain top was the parent stock from
which this precious fragment had beer
had on other days through all the hare
years when certainty, after all, was nothing
more than a temperamental faith. All DAY
he climbed and searched methodically, stop.
ping at noon TO eat with an appetite unaf'
fected by his prospect.
At sunset he would have stopped for the
day, camping on the spot. He looked abov,
to estimate the ground he could cover on tn,
morrow.
Almost in front Of him, a few yards VI
the mountainside, he looked squarely at tn,
mother of this float; a huge bowlde OF pro
jecting silicate- 1t was there.
During the following week he ascertaineC
the dimensions of his vein Of silver ore, anC
located two claims. He named them "Th'
Stars and Stripes" and THE American
Boy" paying thereby what he considered
tributes, equally deserved, to his nativ'
land and to his only son, Daniel. In whom
were centered his fondest hopes.
A year OF European travel had followed
for the family, a year of spending the new
money lavishly for strange, long-dreamed
of luxuries-a year in which the money wa
joyously proved TO be real. Then came
year of tentative residence In the East
That year was less satisfactory. The nov
city of being sufficiently fed. clad and shell
tered was losing its fine edge.
Penniless and constrained to a life Of pri
walton. Peter Bines had been strangely hap
py. Rich and OF consequence In a com
munity where the ways were all OF pleas
antness and peace, Peter Bines became rest
less, DISCONTINUED, and, at last, unmistak
ably miserable.
1T can't be because I'm rich," he argued
its a sure thing my money can't keep M
from doin' jest what l want to do"
Then a suspicion pricked him: for he had
in his years OF solitude. formed the habit o
considering, in a leiSurely and hospitabl
manner, even the reverse sides of PROPOSE
tons that are mmon accepted by me-
without question.
THE money can't prevent me from doir
what L jest want to-certafn-but, maybe
don't 1t? If / didn't have it I'd fur sure b
back in the hills and happy and so woul
Evalina, that amt had hardly what yo
could call a good day since we made tn