"Really," Fred answered, after a moment's thought, "I am too fresh an arrival at the mines to give an opinion as yet, and I think we shall have to wait and see how grievous the tax is."
"Ain't that what I told you?" grunted Ben, appealing to Charley.
"You just wait a while, will ye, old feller," remonstrated Charley. "Things is working. I tell ye."
"We shall be happy to listen to you—go on," was all the response Fred returned.
"I s'pose you have all read 'bout the tea tax, a good many years ago, when our revolushinary daddies pitched the darned stuff overboard in Bosting harbor?"
Fred nodded in token of acquiescence.
"Wall, things here is something like the things in them 'ere times, only a darned sight wus. Now, the miners are taxed a putty considerable sum jist for the chance of digging about on this earth, when by nat'ral rights the fellers hadn't, orter pay a cent.
"Sometimes the miner is lucky, and then agin he isn't; but whether he gets a pile or not, he's got to shell over every month, and if he don't come down he gets no license, and can't arn an honest livin'. Now what do you think of such a state of things, hey?"
"Perhaps that the government don't know that you feel that the tax is a burden," Fred answered, evasively.