Omaha daily bee., 1910-03-20

! work enough OF them would go TO nv
their lodgings, change to street y
clothes and then promptly seek a
gaming table, and thus keep busy at
all times.
On the other hand. Virginia City
had set Of men and women whose
social activities were Of as polite and
refined a nature as one would find in
a New England town Of the same
population. There were the educated
men concerned with the mines, that
Is, the mining engineers superinten-
dents, assayers and their wives, the =
lawyers, ministers, brokers and mer-
! chants and their wives who had
their dances and teas and cotillons
fairs and bazars, their callngs, rid
ing and driving parties, rather more
extensively than one would find in a
village Of that size in New England
| And il was curious to note that on
that desolate sagebrush mountain
side these people OF education and
refinement almost invariably found
something at first attractive, then
thoroughly charming, in the natural
surroundings. The view from any street
corner led away through the steep sides Of
Seven-Mie canyon out across miles of flat
sage brush, then the sandy expanse Of the
! sink OF the Carson river-where the river
mysteriously disappeared into the earth
and far beyond to the snow capped noun
tains of the mighty Humboldt range.
| But to see the beauty in that sort of
| scene was an acquired taste. Strangers
refused to recognize It, Charles Goodwin,
n gentleman and scholar, was the editor
of a daily morning paper rhe Virginia
City Enterprise. He frequently entertained
strangers visiting there and they sorely
tried his good nature and hospitable In
stincts by their failure at once to rejoice
! in the grandeur Of the view. classmate
Of Goodwin's went up to Virginia City to
visit him and took lunch with the editor.
In departing he tarrled on the veranda
Of the editors home and looked off toward
the distant Humboldt range and turned
pityingly and said Good Lord, Charley,
1 should think the dreariness and desola-
tion Of this outlook would drive you mad"
Charley GOOdwin's Answer.
Goodwin had been tried Just once too
often With big sweep of his arm, COM
pretending all that lay below in the
canyon, the desert, the sink and farther
on to the purple mountains, tipped with
white, he replied:
Sir the good Lord has made it pos
sible for man blind to all the beauties
| Of this earth to dig his way through a
college. You, sir, standing there. are an
evidence OF what 1 have said. You are
within sight Of yet you are blind to, the
grandest, the most ennobling panorama Of
nature God has ever spread upon His be-
loved footstool.
| There nature In her most glorious mood
has painted a canvas for the eyes of the
/ hui dan ia
see anything pretty outside Of Central
park! tell you, sir, that you are incapable
OF distinguishing between somberness and
sublimity in nature; tell you, sir. that
a man whose soul is refined above a long
ing for the frou-frou of silks on Fifth ave-
nue. cannot without a trembling at his
| own littleness and lnsignificance view so
mighty, so glorious-Must you go, Jack?"
Jack was sprinting It for the train and
Goodwin put his views, for which Jack
would not wait to listen, into an editorial
that was a prose poem.
| One of Charles Goodwin's reporters was
a clever cub named Sam Clemens, who was
already beginning TO sign his special articles
Mark Twain" Another one was a man
named Wright, known only to the inhabl-
tants Of sagebrush land by his beloved
pen name OF Dan de guile" and a third
was a rollicking young Irishman, Dennis
Mccarthy, who later on his own evening
newspaper, the Virginia City Chronicle,
trained many newspaper men now writ
ing in shops far removed from the Com
stock.
Happy Day for Reporters.
These four chums on Sundays took long
rambIes over the hills and down through
the canons OF the sagebrush. Down in
Seven Mile canon a German had started
little brewery, An aFtesian well supplied
his brewery with water and gave him an
excess, which he used to demonstrate that
land, once cleared Of it's sagebrush
and irrigated, would grow almost any veg
etable OF the temperate zone.
Wherever they walked on Sundays the
four newspaper chums would bring up at
this brewery, hot dusty, tired thirsty and
hungry. Mark Twain would jolly the brew
cry man into drawing from his best keg
foaming wooden beakers Of lager Goodwin
would jolly the brewers wife into getting
fresh onions from that garden surrounded
by sagebrush, while Dan de Quiue and
Dennis Mccarthy would construct sand
wiches OF rye bread and sausages.
And then" as Mark Twain has often
told since, I'VE would go uptown and call
on our fashionable friends with breaths
smelling like buazaTds. but oh, so happy"