The Comstock Club

by C. C. Goodwin

"How peaceful is his sleep. The mystery of the unseen brings no look of surprise to his face. Around him is the calm of the dreamless bivouac: the brooding wings of eternal rest have spread their hush above him. To-morrow the merciful earth will open her robes of serge to receive him; in her ample bosom will fold his weary limbs, and while he sleeps will shade his eyes from the light. In a brief time, save to the few of us who love him, he will be forgotten among men. Days will dawn and set; the seasons will advance and recede; the years will ebb and flow; the tempest and the sunshine will alternately beat upon his lonely couch, until ere long it will be leveled with the surrounding earth; his body will dissolve into its original elements and it will be as though he had never lived. The great ocean of life will heave and swell, and there will be no one to remember this drop that fell upon the earth in spray and was lost.

"This is as it seems to us, straining our dull eyes out upon the profound beyond our petty horizon. But who knows? We can trace the thread of this life as it was until it passed beyond the range of our visions, but who of us knows whether it was all unwound or whether in the 'beyond' it became a golden chain so strong that even Death can not break it, and thrilled with harmonies which could never vibrate on this frail thread that broke to-day?"

Then the Colonel sat down and the Professor stood up, and with his left hand resting on the casket, said:

"Three days ago this piece of crumbling dust was a brave soldier of peace. I mean the words in their fullest sense. Just now our brothers in the East are fearful lest so much silver will be produced that it will become, because of its plentifulness, unfit to be a measure of values. They do not realize what it costs or they would change their minds. They do not know how the gnomes guard their treasures, or what defense Nature uprears around her jewels. They revile the stamp which the Government has placed upon the white dollar. Could they see deeper they would perceive other stamps still. There would be blood blotches and seams made by the trickling of the tears of widows and orphans, for before the dollar issues bright from the mint, it has to be sought for through perils which make unconscious heroes of those who prosecute the search. For nearly twenty years now, on this lode, tragedies like this have been going on. We hear it said: 'A man was killed to-day in the Ophir,' or 'a man was dashed to pieces last night in the Justice,' and we listen to it as merely the rehearsal of not unexpected news. Could a list of the men who have been killed in this lode be published, it would be an appalling showing. It would outnumber the slain of some great battle.

"Besides the deaths by violence, hundreds more, worn out by the heat and by the sudden changes of temperature between the deep mines and the outer air, have drooped and died.

"The effect is apparent upon our miners. Their bearing perplexes strangers who come here. They do not know that in the conquests of labor there are fields to be fought over which turn volunteers into veteran soldiers quite as rapidly as real battle fields. They know nothing about storming the depths; of breaking down the defences of the deep hills. They can not comprehend that the quiet men whom they meet here on the streets are in the habit of shaking hands with Death daily until they have learned to follow without emotion the path of duty, let it lead where it may, and to accept whatever may come as a matter of course.

"Such an one was this our friend, who fell at his post; fell in the strength of his manhood, and when his great heart was throbbing only in kindness to all the world.

"One moment he exulted in his splendid life, the next he was mangled and crushed beyond recovery.

"Still there was no repining, no spoken regrets. For years the possibility of such a fate as this had been before his eyes steadily; it brought much anguish to him, but no surprise.

"He had lived a blameless life. As it drew near its close the vision of his mother was mercifully sent to him, and so in his second birth the same arms received him that cradled him when before he was as helpless as he is now.