The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, part 4 | Page 9

the new sensational town as ducks take to that element which is so useful for making cocktails and bathing one's feet; and these people make the new town rather warm for a while. But by and by the earnest and honest citizens get tired of this ungodly nonsense and organize a Vigilance Committee, which hangs the more vicious of the pestiferous crowd to a sour-apple tree; and then come good municipal laws, ministers, meeting-houses, and a tolerably sober police in blue coats with brass buttons. About five thousand able-bodied men are in the mines underground, here; some as far down as five hundred feet. The Gould and Curry Mine employs nine hundred men, and annually turns out about twenty million dollars' worth of "demnition gold and silver," as Mr. Mantalini might express it, though silver chiefly.
There are many other mines here and at Gold Hill (another startling silver city, a mile from here), all of which do nearly as well. The silver is melted down into bricks of the size of common house bricks; then it is loaded into huge wagons, each drawn by eight and twelve mules, and sent off to San Francisco. To a young person fresh from the land of greenbacks this careless manner of carting off solid silver is rather a startler. It is related that a young man who came Overland from New Hampshire a few months before my arrival became so excited about it that he fell in a fit, with the name of his Uncle Amos on his lips! The hardy miners supposed he wanted his uncle there to see the great sight, and faint with him. But this was pure conjecture, after all.
. . . .
I visit several of the adjacent mining towns, but I do not go to Aurora. No, I think not. A lecturer on psychology was killed there the other night by the playful discharge of a horse-pistol in the hands of a degenerate and intoxicated Spaniard. This circumstance, and a rumor that the citizens are "agin" literature, induce me to go back to Virginia.
. . . .
I had pointed out to me at a restaurant a man who had killed four men in street broils, and who had that very day cut his own brother's breast open in a dangerous manner with a small supper knife. He was a gentleman, however. I heard him tell some men so. He admitted it himself. And I don't think he would lie about a little thing like that.
The theatre at Virginia will attract the attention of the stranger, because it is an unusually elegant affair of the kind, and would be so regarded anywhere. It was built, of course, by Mr. Thomas Maguire, the Napoleonic manager of the Pacific, and who has built over twenty theatres in his time and will perhaps build as many more, unless somebody stops him--which, by the way, will not be a remarkably easy thing to do.
As soon as a mining camp begins to assume the proportions of a city, at about the time the whiskey-vender draws his cork or the gambler spreads his green cloth, Maguire opens a theatre, and with a hastily-organized "Vigilance Committee" of actors, commences to execute Shakespeare.
4.6. MR. PEPPER.
My arrival at Virginia City was signalized by the following incident:
I had no sooner achieved my room in the garret of the International Hotel than I was called upon by an intoxicated man who said he was an Editor. Knowing how rare it was for an Editor to be under the blighting influence of either spiritous or malt liquors, I received this statement doubtfully. But I said:
"What name?"
"Wait!" he said, and went out.
I heard him pacing unsteadily up and down the hall outside. In ten minutes he returned, and said:
"Pepper!"
Pepper was indeed his name. He had been out to see if he could remember it; and he was so flushed with his success that he repeated it joyously several times, and then, with a short laugh he went away.
I had often heard of a man being "so drunk that he didn't know what town he lived in," but here was a man so hideously inebriated that he didn't know what his name was.
I saw him no more, but I heard from him. For he published a notice of my lecture, in which he said I had A DISSIPATED AIR!
4.7. HORACE GREELEY'S RIDE TO PLACERVILLE.
When Mr. Greeley was in California ovations awaited him at every town. He had written powerful leaders in the "Tribune" in favor of the Pacific railroad, which had greatly endeared him to the citizens of the Golden State. And therefore they made much of him when he went to see them.
At one town the enthusiastic populace tore his celebrated white coat to pieces, and carried the pieces home to remember