The copper era. (Clifton, Graham County, Ariz.) 1899-1911, 1907-03-07
The Art of ExaggeratiOn.

nC MI VI LAoSSSi 0IiUus
In these days one hears of 81 900,
900 gold shipments, mountains of
copper ore, veins of gold that rib
creation, and other mining stories
that find ready space in the daily
press. Here is Mark Twain's reply,
written many years ago, to one such
yarn:
81 have just seen your dispatch
from San Francisco in Saturday
Evenings Post" wrote Mark Twain
on the subject of rich gold deposits
at Calistoga springs, and about the
proprietor's having extracted 1000
OF. of gold of the utmost fineness
from two barrels of water during the
past fortnight, by a process known
only to himself.
''This will surprise many of your
readers, but it does not surprise me,
for L once owned these springs my
ever, is the falling off in richness of
the water. In my time the yield
was dollar a dipperful. 1 am not
saying this to injure the property in
case a sale is contemplated. 1 am
not not saying it in the interest of
history. 1t may be that the hotel
proprietor's process is an inferior
one. Yes, that may be the fault.
mi n lie Ia Z
extra one at that time on account of
his parents dying and leaving him on
my hands, and fill him up and let him
stand fifteen minutes, to give the
water chance to settle. Well, then
1 inserted him in an exhaust receiver,
which had the effect of sucking the
gold out through his pores. 1 have
taken more than S11 900 out of that
old man in less than day and half.
I should haYe held on to those
springs, but for the badness of the
roads and ,the difficulty of getting
the gold to market. l consider that
the gold yielding water is in many
respects remarkable, and yet no
more remarkable than the gold-bear-
ing air of Catgut canyon up there to-
ward the head of the auriferous
range. This air, or this wind-for it
is kind of a trade wind which blows
steadily down through 600 miles of
the richest quartz Groupings during
an hour and a quarter every day ex-
cept- Sundays-is heavily charged
with exquisitely fine, impalpable gold.
Nothing precipitates and solidfies
this gold so readily as contact with
human flesh heated by passion. The
time that William Abrahams was
disa appointed in love he used to sit
out doors when the wind was blowing
and come in again and begin to sigh,
and would extract over a dollar and
a half out of every sigh. He sighed
right along, and the time that John
Harbinson and Aleck Norton quar-.
relied about Harbinson's dog, they
stood there swearing at each other:
and they knew how, and what they
didn't know about swearing they
couldn't learn from you and me, not
by a good deal; and at the end OF
every three or four minutes they had
to stop and declare a dividend. If
they didn't their jaws would clog up
so they couldn't get big nine-syllable
ones out at all, and when the WIND
was done blowing they cleared uI
just a little over $1,000 apiece.
know these facts to be absolutely
true, because got them from d mar
whose mother 1 knew personally.
1 do not suppose person could buy
the water privileges at Calistoga nov
at any price, but several good loca
tions along the course of the Catgut
canyon gold-bearing trade winds ar,
for sale. They are going to be stock
ed for the New York market. They
will sell, too, people will swarm fol
them as thick as Hancock veterans
in the south"