The walk across Carson Valley through the heavy sand had exhausted what little of my strength remained, and I was about to give up the ghost for the third time, when a wagoner from Salt Lake gave me a lift on his wagon and enabled me to reach the town. Here my excellent friend Van Winkle gave me another chance in his bunk, and in the course of a few days I was quite recruited.
CHAPTER VII.
MY WASHOE AGENCY.
The courteous reader who has followed me so far will doubtless be disappointed that I have given so little practical information about the mines. Touching that I can only say, as Macaulay said of Sir Horace Walpole, the constitution of my mind is such that whatever is great appears to me little, and whatever is little seems great. The serious pursuits of life I regard as a monstrous absurdity on the part of mankind, especially rooting in the ground for money. The Washoe mines are nothing more than squirrel-holes on a large scale, the difference being that squirrels burrow in the ground because they live there, and men because they want to live somewhere else. I deny and repudiate the idea that any man really has any necessity for money. He only thinks he does—which is a most unaccountable error.
But then you may have some notion of going to Washoe yourself, just to try your luck. Good friend, let me advise you—don't go. Stay where you are. Devote the remainder of your life to your legitimate business, your wife, and your baby. Don't go to Washoe. If you have no money, or but little, you had better go to—any other place. It is no retreat for a poor man. The working of silver mines requires capital. A poor man can not make wages in Washoe. If you are rich and wish to speculate—a word in your ear.
HOLDING ON TO IT.
"The undersigned is prepared to sell at reasonable prices" [this I quote from one of my advertisements] "valuable claims in the following companies: