Gathers Gold Nuggets in Streets of Town.
Mrs. Guy Talbott, of Grass Valley, Cal., made fifteen dollars in one day following a heavy storm by mining in the streets of Grass Valley. While her husband was working in a quartz mill for two dollars a day, Mrs. Talbot was picking up nuggets in the street in front of her home. Other women, many men, and almost all the children of Grass Valley are now searching the streets for gold.
The streets of Grass Valley were repaired recently, and “tailings” or refuse ore from a quartz mine were used in lieu of cobbles. After an unusually heavy rain, Mrs. Talbott chanced to see a bit of gold lying exposed in the street. She abandoned housework for the day and picked up fifteen dollars’ worth.
Mrs. Talbott tried to keep the secret, but as she could not mine the streets after dark, it was not long until half the town was out looking for gold, and finding some, too.
Grass Valley is not the only city in California paved with gold. From the records of the city of Marysville it is shown that on August 12, 1851, Mayor S.M. Miles issued a proclamation against “the practice of doing mining on the main street of Marysville.”
Harder Than the Diamond.
Although the diamond is generally regarded as the hardest of all substances, tantalum, a rare metal, although not one of the rarest, is harder. A thin sheet of it was once placed under a diamond drill worked day and night for three days. The only effect was a slight indentation in the tantalum and the wearing out of the diamond.
Bread-line “Regular” Never Ate Real Meal.
He has been a “regular” in the bread line at the Immanuel Baptist Church, of Chicago, Ill., all winter; his clothes were tattered and threadbare, and his face showed the pinch of hunger. The big Sunday-school room of this Chicago church was crowded to its limits with others in similar condition awaiting their turn at the tables, where bread, butter, and coffee are served every morning from six to eight-thirty o’clock.
Doctor Johnston Myers, pastor of the church, and under whose direction the “line” gets its daily breakfast, called the man to the front of the room after he had swallowed his half a loaf and his two cups of coffee.