CONTENTS.
[CHAPTER I. The Old Flush Days]
[CHAPTER II. The Club]
[CHAPTER III. Mirages]
[CHAPTER IV. The Argonauts]
[CHAPTER V. The Call of the Birds]
[CHAPTER VI. The Perfume and the Light]
[CHAPTER VII. Man As a Worker]
[CHAPTER VIII. Rough Royalty]
[CHAPTER IX. More Royalty]
[CHAPTER X. Specimen Liars]
[CHAPTER XI. The Club Grows Poetical]
[CHAPTER XII. An Unbiased Judge]
[CHAPTER XIII. Sister Celeste]
[CHAPTER XIV. Trouble with the Expense Account ]
[CHAPTER XV. Humor of the West]
[CHAPTER XVI. Trouble in the Club]
[CHAPTER XVII. Up in the Sheaves]
[CHAPTER XVIII. The Terrible Depths]
[CHAPTER XIX. The Dawn of Elysium]
[CHAPTER XX. Three Postscripts]
THE COMSTOCK CLUB.
CHAPTER I.
"The pioneer! Who shall fitly tell the story of his life and work?
"The soldier leads an assault; it lasts but a few minutes; he knows that whether he lives or dies, immortality will be his reward. What wonder that there are brave soldiers!
"But when this soldier of peace assaults the wilderness, no bugles sound the charge; the forest, the desert, the wild beast, the savage, the malaria, the fatigue, are the foes that lurk to ambush him, and if, against the unequal odds, he falls, no volleys are fired above him; the pitiless world merely sponges his name from its slate.