"'He's deformed with speed.'
"There is a lawyer down town, you all know him. He has a head as big as the old croppings of the Gould and Curry, but like some other lawyers that practice at the Virginia City bar (here he glanced significantly at the Colonel), he is not an exceedingly bright or profound man. He was passing a downtown office yesterday when a man, who chanced to be standing in the office, said to the bookkeeper of the establishment:
"'Look at Judge ——. His head is bigger than Mount Davidson, but I am told that where his brains ought to be there is a howling wilderness.'
"The bookkeeper stopped his writing, carefully wiped his pen, laid it down, came out from behind his desk, came close up to the man who had spoken to him, and said:
"'Howling wilderness? I tell you, sir, that man's head is an unexplored mental Death Valley.'"
"Yes," said the Colonel, "his is a queer family. He has a brother who is a journalist; he has made a fortune in the business. His great theme is sketching the lives and characters of people."
"But has he made a fortune publishing sketches of that description?" asked Miller.
"Oh, no," replied the Colonel; "he has made his money by refraining from publishing them. People have paid him to suppress them."
"Colonel," asked Strong, "did it never occur to you that other fortunes might be made the same way by people just exactly adapted to that style of writing?"
"If it had," was the reply. "I should have considered that the field here was fully occupied."