And at the same time these young geologists learned real life; they had come to know intimately real men and women, all fired with the enthusiasm of a new venture, new opportunities, and a high ideal. With all this, Herbert Hoover learned, in particular, one additional very important thing. He learned that a certain unusual girl, beautiful, intelligent, and unspoiled, a lover of outdoors, and, as proof of her unusualness, a "major" student in geology, was the girl for him. Having learned this he decided to marry her. And later, she decided that he had decided right.
And so with all his experience at earning his living by organizing anything needing organizing, and with his stores of geological lore gained from lecture room and textbook and field work and close personal association with his able and friendly professors, and, finally,
with the knowledge that he had already found exactly the right girl for him, Herbert Hoover went out from Stanford, in 1895, with his Pioneer Class, ready to open his oyster. But he had only himself to rely on in doing it.
CHAPTER IV
THE YOUNG MINING ENGINEER
Herbert Hoover began his mining career very simply and practically by taking his place as a real workman in a real mine, with no favors shown, following in this the emphatic advice given by Dr. Branner to every student graduating from his department. He went up into the mining region near Grass Valley in the Sierras where he had already studied with Waldemar Lindgren, and became a regular miner, a boy-man with pick and shovel working long hours underground or sometimes on the surface about the plant. But always he had his eyes wide open and always he was learning. He preferred the underground work because he wanted first to know more about the actual occurrence of the ore in the earth than about the mill processes of extracting the mineral from it.
Here he worked for several months, and gradually rose to the position of night shift-boss or gang foreman. But he began to realize that he was exhausting the learning opportunities of this particular place and kind of work, and so one night deep down in the mine, when for sudden lack of ore-cars or power or some other essential, work was held up for the last half hour of his shift, he went off into a warm corner, curled himself up in a nice clean wheelbarrow and slept away the last half hour of his pick and shovel experience.