San Antonio light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1911-1993, 1925-12-05
LISTEN, WORLD!
When the Vein Faults
BY ELSIE ROBINSON

I went down to say goodbye to Jim
today. Jim's going to the "pen" for
eighteen months. Rum running.
Queer thing about Jim. 1t certainly
looked as if he was one man who was
slated for success. Well born, care
fully raised by wise and loving par-
ents, bright brain, lots Of charm and
shrewdness-what more could a man
need? Yet there he sits today with
the jail-pallor already settling in 4
gray film over his fine face and the
Jail bitterness already poisoning his
spirit.
Strange that men like Jim should
be bitter. You would think that they
would realize that it was all their own
fault, and be too much ashamed to
feel resentment. But they always seem
to feel that the cards were stacked
against them, somehow.
After all, maybe they were. Perhaps
it wasn't "all their fault"
Jever so mining?
If you had, maybe you'd understand
men, like Jim better.
Mining is an enlightening occupa-
ton. Out there alone with the rock
and the sky you come to think lot
about the original plan of things
and you find yourself following the
drift and trend Of the souls of men
as you follow the drift and trend of
the mineral veins through your tut
nels and shafts. Which is some chase
for you never know where you're 60
ing to come out.
Now most folks know that gold
usually comes in "veins" and they
think those veins are as plainly to be
followed as the filling in a layer cake.
But that isn't so. They're all scram-
bled. You see, it was this way
After the original hot pudding be-
gan to settle into a world, the earth
fell into layers. There were layers Of
granite, schist, porphyry, clay, gold
bearing quartz. sandstone. plain mud
and scores Of other earth materials.
Which would have made a most in
teresting layer cake if things had hap
pened in order. But they didn't. What
with earthquakes, floods, fires, freezes
and commissions generally, lively time
was being had by all. And a well
intentioned layer never knew where it
would be by this time next month.
Naturally, the hard layers heaved into
the softer layers and diverted them
from the courses and the softer layers
smushed all over the place and raised
Cain generally.
OF course, the rich, gold-bearing
quartz veins shared in the general up
heaval. They struck distractions that
turned and twisted them, scattered or
thinned them, pinched them off en-
tireliy at times or, again, piled their
wealth into pockets" of treasure.
"Intrusions" the biologists call these
Instructions that divert the rich value
of the rock--and the twisting and the
faltering of the vein they call fault
ing"
That was the way of nature with
the rocks. And I'm thinking that that
is the way Of life with the souls OF
men.
We're built in layers, too-layers of
brute ignorance-layers of cruelty and
fear--then harder. finer layers OF in
telligence and will and pure white
crystals that we call the soul. And
somewhere. scattered through the mess,
the thin, rich, golden vein of character.
And we feel that the layers should all
fall into place, with the brute layers
far beneath, nicely out of the way, and
the gold running clear and straight
throughout the life.
But it seldoms happens that way in
man any more than it does in a
mine.
Something happens somewhere along