If any friend of yours is solicitous to enrich a patch of soil, two feet by six, I think I can recommend an Undertaker who will arrange the thing nicely for him here; it is not worth while for him to go to California with his benevolence. For you, he would be reasonable, as you are Short.
But, my dear Jeremy, I had no intention of wandering from my purpose, of giving you a reminding hint of “Copper Mining.” as a sort of sedative to the gold “placers.” Some of Jonathan’s younger sons were then severely bitten, and were so thoroughly inoculated with the virus, as to have rather a sharpened recollection of metals. The most of them, I should think, would be safe from this later disease, even in its most violent and contagious forms. Yet there is something very attractive, and most dangerously seductive, in delving for minerals, counting each shovelfull as so many guineas coined, and already in your pocket. There is no enthusiast more dangerous than your professional miner. The gentle madness is so infectious that his example may turn the heads of a whole district. Yet his bite is not half so venomous as that of another species—a kind of ground-shark—who affects the same sort of insanity, and while digging below ground, puts his “placer” on the “Stock List.”
It is astonishing, too, that we will be caught once in a while in this way, while there are people all around us, anxious friends, who exclaim, “I knew it!” but who never hinted a word about the matter. Did it ever strike you that we live in a very sagacious and knowing world—the mind of each man being simply the reflection of that of another? Our brightest fancies are but the suggestions of other people’s brains—our good fortune in life is always known beforehand—our reverses have always been most indubitably predicted by parties, who confirm their sagacity with a consolatory—“I told you so.” We are, after all, then, but the mere creatures of the impulses of other people—our destiny it is to work out their predictions. The iron energy, the indomitable perseverance, sleepless vigilance, untiring industry—have all been weighed beforehand—duly appreciated and predicted. There is no such thing as surprising any body. It is all perfectly understood.
W—, by a keen sagacity in detecting, and ready tact in managing a new business, has struck the tide that bears to fortune. But he has made no discovery. Forty other men, with scarcely brains to comprehend, much less originate an idea, knew all about it. They told you so! W— goes on, originates new combinations of trade, enlarges business ideas, and still succeeds. But Toldyeso knew it, and was indifferent.
Sharp has his eye upon W—. “Ah!” says he “there is a man who has a soul above buttons—a genius for business. Every thing he touches turns to gold.”
But W—, with his multitude of irons in the fire, incautiously takes hold of the hot end of one of them, and is maimed. “Bah!” says Sharp, “I knew how it would be! He was always rushing business up against the stream. Bound to fail—I told you so!” And yet nobody ever knew Sharp to originate, or succeed in, any thing—but he knows—and that must be some consolation to a ninny.
But, Jeremy, not to imitate the folly of this world in regard to the past, nor to affect the wisdom of the next, to tell of the future, I have a story about mining to give you in my next, in which you will find both Sharps and Flats, which I think will induce you to believe with me—that people who have cultivated a dangerous intimacy with Copper-Heads ought to be cautious, and particularly shy how they now run after Gold-Bugs with a hum.
C. has been in town, and I passed an evening with him since last I wrote you. He has still the same joyous laugh, that used to set the table in a roar, and it is quite as contagious. At every jest he would burst out with a sort of a shout in his hearty guffaw, which, if practiced at home, must wake the echoes of his native mountain. I was thoughtful over the past, and became partially a convert to your theory, in regard to the chilling effects of extra city refinement; and your beautiful picture of country life, with its honest, hearty friendships, came to my mind forcibly. It must be true, for I confess I felt that I had grown older, and colder, too. Can you, Jeremy, laugh as of yore—as loud and as long?—with the same hearty good will and utter abandon. Or is your mirth choked and clogged with bitter remembrances, which will steal upon the heart even in its gayest moments? Thought! is it a companion with which you can entertain hilarity? Or is your joy overshadowed with the darkness of evil that has been, or that you anticipate, you scarce know why? I cannot experience the light-heartedness we had formerly. Perhaps it is that I attempt its cultivation. It must come of natural buoyancy of spirits, I think, to be genuine. It is else but a hot-house plant in a snow-storm—its leaves torn off by the blast or shriveled in a frosty embrace. I doubt much whether our intellectual pleasures, as we proudly call them, are half as exhilarating, and deeply steeped in genuine happiness, as were those more animal sensations which we experienced when boys, as we went hallooing and shouting along in the very exuberance of our spirits, with a gay, glad, spirited defiance of care and all its imps. This was the riches of the heart and not of the pocket. Was it not? We had no gold in those days, so it could not have been that!
G. R. G.