All the traditions of the mining country confirm him in his point of view: Listen to what Experience says, and then do just the opposite. It is the unexpected that happens. The richest diggings bear the most lugubrious names. The Montanian delights to tell of the riches taken out of Last Chance Gulch. The Arizonian for years boasted of the gayety of Tombstone and the amazing prosperity of the Total Wreck Mine.
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Certain physiologists are now telling us that the poetic praise of wine is based upon a mistake. Alcohol, they say, is not a stimulant, but a depressant. It does not stimulate the imagination so much as it depresses the critical faculty so that dullness may easily pass for wit. An idea will occur to a sober man as being rather bright, but before he has time to express it he sees that it is not so. Under the inhibition of good sense he holds his tongue and saves his reputation. But in a convivial company the inhibition is removed. Everybody says whatever is uppermost in his mind. The mice play, not because they are more lively than before, but only because the cat is away.
On first hearing this theory, it seemed to me that it was the most powerful temperance argument which could be formulated. But I am not sure but that it leaves the matter very much where it found it. After all, the man who is oppressed by the dullness of his ordinary condition would enjoy feeling brilliant, even if he were not really so.
In trying to recall any specific instances of wit and humor in my Nevada town, I am compelled to fall back on the theory of the removal of inhibition. Life was not more amusing there than elsewhere,—it only seemed so. There were no “best people” whose critical judgments inhibited the self-expression of less favored classes. Every one feeling at liberty to be himself and to express his own opinion, unfailing variety was assured. Society, being composed of all sorts and conditions of men, was in a state of perpetual effervescence. A very ordinary man, who elsewhere might have passed unnoticed in a life of drudgery, became a notable character.
There, for example, was Old Multitude, so called from the many oxen attached to the huge wagons he convoyed to the distant mines. He was a bull-whacker of the old school. His surname had long been lost in the abyss of time. Old Multitude was not looked upon as a mere individual. The public had adopted him, and he had become an institution.
When he was about to depart, a crowd would gather on the main street, as the inhabitants of a little seaport town gather to watch the departure of a ship. Old Multitude bore his honors meekly, but he was conscious that he was the chief actor in an important social function. There was nothing ill-advised in his actions, and his words were fitly chosen as he walked down the line, addressing to each beast of his multitudinous team the appropriate malediction. His wide vocabulary on such occasions contrasted strangely with his usual taciturnity. The words taken by themselves were blood-curdling enough, but as they rose and fell in mighty undulations it seemed as if he were intoning a liturgy.
And there was Old Tansy, a bit of wreckage from the times of ’49. There was a tradition that Tansy had seen better days; at least, it was hard to imagine how he could have seen worse. He lived without visible means of support, and yet he was not submerged. It pleased the community to accept Tansy as a character worth knowing in spite of his fallen fortunes. His obvious failings were always clothed in soft euphemisms. No one could say that he had ever seen him drunk, and on the other hand no one would be so rash as to assert that he had ever seen him sober. In the border land between moderate drinking and inebriety, Tansy dwelt in peace.
What most endeared Tansy to his fellows was his mild religiosity, which manifested itself in persistent church-going. He was no fair-weather Christian. There was no occasion when he would not desert his favorite saloon to take his accustomed place in the back pew of the Presbyterian church. Only once did Tansy express an opinion in regard to the services which he so assiduously attended. A minister passing through the town preached a lurid sermon on the future punishment of the wicked. He spared no materialistic imagery to make his remarks effective. At the close of the service Tansy, instead of going out, as was his custom, went forward and, grasping the minister’s hands, said in a tone of quiet satisfaction, “Parson, it done me good.”
Just what the nature of the good was he did not indicate. I suppose that there was something in the unction of the preacher that recalled memories of the past.