I have a claim further on in the North Park of Colorado. I have always felt a little delicate about working it, because heretofore several gentlemen from the Ute reservation on White River have claimed it. They are the same parties who got into a little difficulty with Agent Meeker and killed him. Of course these parties are not bona fide citizens of the United States, and therefore cannot hold my claim under the mining law; but I have not as yet raised the point with them. Whenever they would go over into the park for rest and recreation, I would respect their feelings and withdraw. I didn't know but they might have some private business which they did not wish me to overhear, so I came away.
Once I came away in the night. It is cooler travelling in the night, and does not attract so much attention. Last summer Antelope and his band came over into the park and told the miners that he would give them "one sleep" to get out of there. I told him that I didn't care much for sleep anyhow, and I would struggle along somehow till I got home. I told him that my constitution would stand it first-rate without rest, and I felt as though my business in town might be suffering in my absence. So I went home. The mine is there yet, but I would sell it very reasonably – very reasonably indeed. I do not apprehend any trouble from the Indians, but I have lost my interest in mines to some extent, The Indians are not all treacherous and bloodthirsty as some would suppose. Only the live ones are that way. Wooden Indians are also to be relied upon.
In digging an irrigating ditch on the Laramie Plains, last summer, the skeleton of an Indian chief was plowed up. I went to look at him. He had, no doubt, been dead many years; but in the dry alkaline divide, at an elevation of nearly 8,000 feet above sea level, his skull had been preserved pretty well. I took it in my hand and looked it over and shook the sand out of it, and convinced myself that life was extinct. An Indian is not always dead when he has that appearance. I always feel a little timid till I see his scapula, and ribs, and shin bones mixed up so that Gabriel would rather arrange a 15 puzzle than to fix up an Indian out of the wreck. Then I have the most child-like faith and confidence in him. When some avenging fate overtakes a Ute and knocks him into pi, and thus makes a Piute out of him, and flattens him out like a postage stamp, and pulverizes him, and runs him over the amalgator, and assays him so that he lies in the retort like a seidlitz powder, then I feel that I can trust him. I do not care then how much the cold world may scoff at him. Prior to that I am very reserved and very reticent.
That is why I presented my mine to the Ute nation as a slight token of my respect and esteem. Then I went away. I did not hurry much, but I had every inducement and encouragement to reach home at the earliest possible moment, and the result was very gratifying. Very much so, indeed. I left my gun and ammunition, but it did not matter. It wasn't a very good gun anyhow. I do not need it. Any one going into the park this summer can have it. It is standing behind the door of the cabin between the piano and the whatnot.
TWO GREAT MEN
Mr. Thompson, Secretary of the Navy, passed through here on his way to San Francisco on Wednesday evening, with his party.
In company with Delegate Downey, Judge Blair and United States Marshal Schnitger, I went into the Secretary's special car and talked with him while the train stopped here.
The other members of the party did most of the talking and I eloquently sat on the back of a chair and whistled a few bars from a little operatta that I am having cast at the rolling-mill. I am not very hilarious in the presence of great at men. I am not so much at home in their society as I am in my own quiet little boudoir, with one leg over the piano, and the other tangled up among the $2,500 lace curtains and Majolica dogs.
Bye and bye I thought that I had better show the Secretary that I knew more than the casual observer would suppose, and I said, "Mr. Thompson, how's your navy looking this summer? Have you sheared your iron-clad rams yet, and if so, what will the clip average do you think?" He laughed a merry, rippling laugh, and said if he were at home he would swear that he was in the presence of the mental giant, William G. Le Duc.
I was very much pleased with the Secretary. This will insure the brilliant success of his Western trip.
He paid the Laramie plains a high compliment; said they were greener, and the grass was far superior to that of any part of the country through which he had passed. He said he was as positive of Garfield's election as he was of reaching San Francisco, and chatted pleasantly upon the general topics of the day.
I could see that he was accustomed to the very best society, for he stood there in the blinding glare of my dazzling beauty, as self-possessed and cool as though he were at home talking with Ben Butler and Conkling and Carpenter and other rising young men.
There is a striking resemblance between the Secretary and myself. We are both tall and slender, with roguish eyes and white hair. His, however, is white from age, and is a kind of bluish white. Mine is white because it never had moral courage or strength of character enough to be any other color. It also has more of a lemon-colored tinge to it than the Secretary's has.
We resemble each other in several more respects. One is that we are both United States officials. He is a member of the Cabinet, and I am a United States Commissioner. We are both great men, but I have succeeded better in keeping it a profound secret than he has.
DIRTY MURPHY
On Thursday a man known by the Castillian nom de plume of Dirty Murphy, was engaged in digging out a frozen water-pipe in front of the New York House, when the glowing inspiration came upon him that the frozen earth could be blasted much easier than it could be dug, so he drilled a hole down to the pipe and put in a shot preparatory to lifting a large portion of the universe out by the roots and laying bare the foundations of the earth.
John Humpfner, the ram-rod of the New York House, feared that the explosion might break the large French plate glass windows of his palatial hotel, and so put a wash tub over the blast. What the exact notion of Mr. Humpfner was relative to the result in this case, I am unable to say, but when the roar of the universal convulsion had died away, and the result was examined by Mr. Humpfner and the Count de Dirty Murphy, they looked surprised.
Instead of blowing out a large tract of land and laying bare the entire water and gas system of the city, the blast blew out like a sick fire-cracker with a loose fuse, and, taking the washtub with it, sailed away into the realms of space. It crashed through the milky way and passed on in its mad flight into the boundless stretch of the unknown. Those who saw the affair and had no interest in the wash-tub, enjoyed it very much, but to the incorporators and bondholders who held the controlling interest in the tub, the whole thing seemed a hollow mockery and a desolate, dreary waste. Don Miguel de Dirty Murphy swooned on the spot. The hose has been playing on him ever since, but he has not returned to consciousness. The later geological formations have been washed away, and it is thought that by working a night shift, prehistoric and volcanic encrustations will be removed so that the pores may be opened and life and animation return, but it is a long, tedious job, and the superintending geologist is beginning to despair.
A ROCKY MOUNTAIN SUNSET
Speaking of the hours of closing day reminds me that we have recently witnessed some of the most brilliant and beautiful sunsets here that I have ever seen. In justice to Wyoming, I will say that she certainly deserves a word for the gorgeous splendor of her summer sunset skies.
The air is perfectly pure, and at that hour the sighing zephyr seems to have sighed about all it wants to and dies away to rest. The pulse of tired Nature is almost still, and the luxurious sense of rest is upon the face of the silent world. The god of day drops slowly down the crimson west, as though he reluctantly bade adieu to the grassy plains and rugged hills. Anon the golden bars of resplendent light are shot across the deep blue of heaven, the fleecy clouds are tipped and bordered with pale gold, while the heavy