Our hero did not despair, and, having no natural inclination for dissipation, did not make his rejection an excuse and an opportunity for self-indulgence. He was of an intense and earnest nature, and he was really in love with the girl who had discarded him, but life was not dead of duty or achievement to him because of her loss, which he looked upon as final, for her newly-acquired position as a wealthy heiress made it impossible to his self-respect to seek a reconciliation. He applied himself with assiduity and industry to his profession, and soon became an exceedingly skillful and reliable mining expert.
Ability to comprehend the story written upon the rocks cannot always be gained by study or experience. At last it is a “faculty,” rather than the result of reading or training. Fire and flood, oxygen and electricity, the tempests of the air and the volcanic throbbings of the earth, have been busy for ages with the quartz lode, and have left their marks upon it. It is possible sometimes to decipher these hieroglyphics so as to answer with a degree of accuracy the ever-recurring question, “Will it pay to work?” Yet such possibility cannot be reduced to a science. Professors of geology and metallurgy are often wrong in their conclusions, and even old prospectors are frequently at fault.
Go across a piece of marsh land on a spring morning accompanied by a bull-dog and a Gordon setter. The former will flush no snipe save those he may fairly run over as he trots along. But the fine nose of the dog with the silky auburn coat will catch the scent of the wary bird, and follow it here and there around tufts of marsh grass and across strips of meadow, until the sagacious canine shall be seen outlined against earth and sky. It is difficult to be certain of anything in this world of human deceptions, but one may be absolutely sure under such circumstances that the dog will not lie, and that he cannot be mistaken. There is a snipe within a few yards of that dog in the direction in which his nose is pointed. If the sportsman fails to secure the bird, the fault will be with his aim or his fowling-piece—the dog has done his part.
Some men—even among experienced miners—have the bull-dog’s obtuseness, and some have an eye for quartz equal to the nose of a pointer for snipe. David Morning was of this latter class, and to the thorough training which he had received during his four years’ studies he speedily added that practical knowledge of the rocks which, guided by natural aptitudes and intuitions, will enable the wooer of the hills to gain their golden favors. His honesty, good judgment, and fidelity caused his services to be eagerly sought by the mining companies, which—after the Leadville discoveries—abounded in Colorado, and at the date at which our narrative opens he had acquired a fortune of about $300,000, which was invested mainly in mortgages upon business property in Denver. But he made no attempt at further attendance on Cupid’s court, and, indeed, gave but little attention to society.
Yet, while the physical Ellen Thornton thus passed out of the young man’s life, there came into his soul instead an ideal, whose influence was ever an inspiration to higher thinking, purer life, gentler judgments, and loftier deeds. Well has the poet said, “’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” No man can be possessed by love for a good woman without being thereby moved upward on all the lines of existence. Damps cannot dim the diamond; its facets and angles of fire will never permit the fog to abide with them. From the hour that his heart is touched with the electric passion, the lover is in harmony with all delights.
The waters tinkle and the lark sings for him with sweeter notes, while the sunlight is more radiant, and the hills are robed with a softer purple. The woman who has evoked the one passion of a man’s life may become as dead to him as the occupant of an Etruscan tomb, but the love itself will abide with him to enrich his life, and journey with him into the other country.
David Morning found in books the most pleasant and absorbing companionship, and those who gained admittance to his library were surprised to learn that there was a dreamy, speculative, poetical side to the busy, practical mining engineer. All the great authors on mental, moral, and political economy were well-thumbed comrades, and the covers of the leading English and German poets and essayists were free from dust. Especially was he a close and interested student of social science, and he had his theories concerning changes of various natures in society and governments which might ameliorate the condition and elevate the lives and purposes of mankind.
In religion Morning was neither an accepter nor an agnostic. His reading taught him that all religions inculcate the righteousness of truth, honesty, and unselfishness, and that any form of faith in the hereafter is better for the world than no faith at all. The Persian who bowed devoutly to the highest material sign of Deity, the sun, was thereby filled with a spirit which made him readier to relieve the misery of his brother. The Egyptian who brought tribute to the priests of Isis and Osiris, was the better for his self-denial. The Greek who believed in Minerva was a closer student. Odin’s followers scorned a lie. Confucius taught love of home and kindred. Mahomet prescribed temperance, and the pure and gentle faith of Buddha in its benefactions to the human race has been exceeded only by the benign power of the religion of Jesus.
Skeptics strengthen their scoffings by recounting the wars and cruelties—in bygone centuries—of zealots insane with fervor. But these are only spots upon the sun. The rusty thumbscrews of the Inquisition, and the ashes of the fires amid which Servetus perished—fires unkindled and dead for three hundred years—may be forgotten when one considers the hospitals, and schools, and houses of shelter which now link their shadows across continents.
A few days before, while attending the locomotive races in Chicago, Morning had met an old mining friend, at whose earnest insistence he had been induced to visit and examine, with a view of purchasing, a large and promising ledge of copper in the Santa Catalina Mountains. It was the pursuit of this purpose that had brought him to Tucson.