There was one person whom I always recall with peculiar pleasure. To see him coming over the divide in a cloud of dust was to see one of the typical forms of creation. He was known, on account of the huge pair of goggles which he wore, as “Four-Eyed Nick.” He dwelt in a cabin in the most desolate part of the mountain, and he fitted his environment perfectly. He seemed as natural a product of the soil as the sage brush, for like it he had learned to exist where there was very little water.
Great was the joy in the community when one day Four-Eyed Nick announced that he had struck pay ore and that he was about to celebrate his good fortune by getting married. Every one was intensely interested. The newspapers made an especial feature of the approaching marriage in high life. Nick was dazed by the sudden glare of publicity. Who should be invited? His generous heart rebelled against any discrimination, and he solved his problem by saying, “Come one! Come all!” He engaged every vehicle in the town to be at the disposal of such of his fellow citizens as would honor him with their presence at his nuptials.
It would have delighted the heart of Chaucer to have seen the procession of wedding guests wending their way over the ten miles of abominable mountain road to Nick’s cabin. Not on the road to Canterbury was there more variety or more hearty good fellowship. Nick had invited the town, and the town was bent on showing its appreciation of the compliment. The mayor and members of the city council, the lawyers, editors, doctors, clergymen, gamblers, mining experts, saloon-keepers, and honest miners all joined heartily in doing honor to one whom they, for the moment, agreed to consider their most distinguished fellow citizen.
No one could remain long in assured obscurity. It pleased the community to turn its search-light now upon one member and now upon another, and give him a brief experience of living in the public eye. Greatness of one sort or another was sure to be thrust upon one in the course of the year. The choicest spirits of the town were always collaborating in some work of high-grade fiction, and were on the lookout for interesting material. It would have been churlish for any one when his turn came to have refused to be a notability.
An English writer laments the fact that the schools send out thousands of persons whose imaginations have been stifled by the too prosaic discipline which they have undergone. “Why,” he says, “is it that ninety-nine persons out of a hundred lose this faculty in the earliest period of their childhood? It is simply because their bringing up has consisted in the persistent inoculation with the material facts of life, and the correspondingly persistent elimination of all imaginative ideas.”
He blames parents who give their children mechanical toys, especially if they are well made. Even a doll should not have too much verisimilitude. “It would be better to place a bundle of rags in the arms of a little girl, and tell her to imagine it to be a baby. She would, if left to herself with no other resource than her own fancy learn to exercise all her dormant powers of imagination and originality.”
That kind of education the Honest Miner has carried into mature life. He is full of imaginative ideas. The barest shanty is glorified in his eyes if it bears the sign “Palace Hotel” or “Delmonico’s.” If he cannot have the thing, he takes satisfaction in the name. Above all else, he craves variety.
The inhabitants of Gold Hill used to relate with pleasure the exploits of Sandy Bowers. When he struck an incredibly rich pocket in the mountain, Sandy built for himself a huge and expensive mansion in Washoe Valley. He imported all kinds of trees from foreign lands, none of which would grow. He filled his house with pianos, and when some one suggested sheet music he telegraphed to New York: “Send me some sheet music, one of every kind.”
It was the desire for one of every kind which induced our community, when it put off the habits of a “camp” and became a “city,” to lift into temporary prominence an elderly farmer from Pennsylvania who had drifted into Nevada without changing any of his ways. He came from York County, where he would have gone on his way unnoticed, for there were so many like him. But in the silver country he was different from the common run of fortune-seekers, therefore he was made much of. Some local Diogenes turned his lantern upon him and discovered that he was an honest man, honest in a plodding, Pennsylvania Dutch fashion. “Honest John” became a man of note. Then some one suggested that we had “in our midst a grand old man.” That was enough to make the political fortune of the honest man. He was elected to a position of power in the new city government, for every one was anxious to see what our “grand old man” would do.
He proved a thorn in the flesh of the politicians. He introduced a reign of rigid economy which made the local statesmen despair of the Republic. It was decided that the city had had too much of a good thing. The Grand Old Man should be deposed,—he should not be mayor, nor member of the council, nor any such thing.