"Oh, no, Carlin," said Strong. "You have picked up the idea that is popular, but there is nothing to it. I am not referring to mining on paper, that mining which is done on Pine and California streets. That is not only gambling, but it is, nine times out of ten, pure stealing. But what I mean is where a man, or a few men, from the unsightly rock, by honest labor, wrest something, which all men, barbarous and civilized alike, hold as precious; something which was not before, but which when found, the whole world accepts as a measure of values, and the production of which makes an addition to the world's accumulated wealth, and not only injures none, but quickens the arteries of trade everywhere; that is not gambling. Of course there are mistakes, of course worlds of unnecessary work have been performed, of course hopes have been blasted and hearts broken through the business, but in this world men have to pay for their educations. Twenty years ago there was not a man in America who could work Comstock ores up to seventy-five per cent. of their money value; only a scholarly few knew anything about the formations in which ore veins are liable to be found; processes to work ores and economical methods to open and work mines had to be invented; so far as the West was concerned the business of mining and reducing ores had to be created. The results do not justify any man in calling mining a lottery. In my judgment, it is the most legitimate business in the world; the only one in which there can be no overproduction, and the one which, above all others, advances every other industry of the country.
"When the steam engine was first invented steam boilers blew up every day. This was no argument against the engine, but was a notice to men to build better boilers. For the same reason the sixty-pound steel rail has been substituted for the old wooden rail with an iron strap on top on railways, and the sixteen ton Pullman car for the old rattle trap that the slightest collision would smash. The Westinghouse air brake and the Miller platform are part of the same education.
"By and by men will learn to know the rocks, and when their marks and signs are reduced to a perfect alphabet the crude work of mining as carried on now will take on the dignity of a science, and mining will become what it deserves to be, the most honored of industries."
CHAPTER XIII.
At length the first sorrow fell upon the Club. The mail brought to Corrigan one day the news of the death of his mother in New York. It was a terrible blow to him. It had been his dream all through the years that he had been absent from his home that some time he would accumulate money enough to provide her with a home, where around her life every comfort would be drawn, and from her life every heart-breaking care would be driven away. But time would not wait for him, and the letter, which only in gentle words told him of his mother's death, kindled in his heart such bitter self-reproaches that for awhile the warm-hearted man's grief was inconsolable.
The Club heartily sympathized with him, but there was little said. The men who face death daily in a deep mine either come to think, after awhile, that this life hangs on too tender a thread to be grieved over so very much when that thread is broken, or, because of the nature of their occupation, which is necessarily carried on mostly in silence, they lose the faculty to say the words which in society circles are intruded upon people who are in deep sorrow.
On this evening the supper was eaten in silence, Corrigan hardly tasting anything.
As the Club took their seats Ashley found opportunity to covertly whisper to Yap Sing that Corrigan had received bad news and he must prepare something especially tempting for him to eat. When the meal was nearly finished Yap Sing brought a mammoth dish of strawberries, a bowl of sugar and pitcher of cream, and after the noiseless manner of his race, set them in front of Corrigan's plate. No one else at the table seemed to notice the act of the Chinaman. Corrigan gave a quick glance around the table and when he saw that no one else was to be served with the berries—that it was meant as a special act of sympathy for him—his eyes filled with tears and he hastily withdrew from the room.
At his leisure during the evening Yap Sing ate the berries and the cream, remarking to himself as he did so: