THE END OF A CAREER.[¹]
(FROM “THE MERRY CHANTER.”)
[¹] The Century Co., New York. Copyright, Frank R. Stockton.
OR two years Doris and I had been engaged to be married. The first of these years appeared to us about as long as any ordinary year, but the second seemed to stretch itself out to the length of fifteen or even eighteen months. There had been many delays and disappointments in that year.
We were both young enough to wait and both old enough to know we ought to wait; and so we waited. But, as we frequently admitted to ourselves, there was nothing particularly jolly in this condition of things. Every young man should have sufficient respect for himself to make him hesitate before entering into a matrimonial alliance in which he would have to be supported by his wife. This would have been the case had [♦]Doris and I married within those two years.
[♦] ‘Dorris’ replaced with ‘Doris’
I am by profession an analyzer of lava. Having been from my boyhood an enthusiastic student of mineralogy and geology, I gradually became convinced that there was no reason why precious metals and precious stones should not be found at spots on the earth where nature herself attended to the working of her own mines. That is to say, that I can see no reason why a volcano should not exist at a spot where there were valuable mineral deposits; and this being the case, there is no reason why those deposits should not be thrown out during eruptions in a melted form, or unmelted and mixed with the ordinary lava.
Hoping to find proof of the correctness of my theory, I have analyzed lava from a great many volcanoes. I have not been able to afford to travel much, but specimens have been sent to me from various parts of the world. My attention was particularly turned to extinct volcanoes; for should I find traces of precious deposits in the lava of one of these, not only could its old lava beds be worked, but by artificial means eruptions of a minor order might be produced, and fresher and possibly richer material might be thrown out.