John Brent Book

C O N T E N T S . VI. JAKES HAMBERLA . I N VII. ENTER T , HE BRUTE S . VIII. A MORMOCNA RAVAN . XI. FATHER A ND DAUGHTER . XIV. HUGII CLITIIEROE . XV. A LOVER . XVI. ARMSTRONG . XVII. CAITIFF BAFFLES OGRE . iv CONTENTS. XVIII. A GALLOP O F THREE . . 200 XIX. FASTER . . . . . 207 XX. A HORSE . . . 218 XXI. LUGGERNESLP RINGS . . 225 XXII. CHAMPAGN . E . . 238 XXIII. AN IDYL O F THE ROCKYS . . 247 XXIV. DRAPETO ZAN . I A . . . 254 XXV. NOBLESSEO BLIG . . . . 264 XXVI. HAM . . 274 XXVII. FULANOBLSO OD-STAIN . . 284 XXVIII. SHORTSC UT-OFF . . . 294 XXIX. A LOST TRAIL . . 301 XXX. LONDON . . . 313 XXXI. A DWARF . . . . 321-XXXII. PADIHA ISSH OP . . . 335 XXXIII. CAST T HY BREAD U PON THE WATERS 343 XXXIV. THE LAST OF A LOVE-CHASE . 354 J O H N B R E N T . CHAPTER I. AURI SACRA FAMES. I WRITE in the first person but I sllall not maunder about myself. I am in no sense the hero of this drama. Call me Chorus, if you please, - not Chorus merely observarlt and impassive rather Chorus a sympathizing mollitor and helper. Perhaps I a certain crude momentum to the movement of the play, when finer forces were ready to flag but others bore the keen pangs, others took the great prizes, while I stood by to lift the maimed and clieer the victor. It is a healthy, simple, broad-daylight story. No mystery in it. There is action eno. ugh, primeval action of tlle Homeric kind. Deeds of the lieroic and chivalric times do not utterly disdain our day. Tllere are men as ready to gallop for love and strike for love now, as in the age of Amadis. Roughs and brutes, as well as gentlemen, take their places in this drama. None of the characters have scruples or qualms. They act according to their laws, and are scourged or crowned, as their laws suit Natures or not. To me these adventures were episode to my friend, the hero, the very substance of life. But enough backing and filling. Enter Richard Wade - myself - as Chorus. A few years ago I was working - a gold-quartz mine in California. It was a worthless mine, under the conditions of that time. I had been dragged into it by the shifts and needs of California life. Destiny probably meant to teach . me patience, and self-possession in difficulty. So Destiny thrust me into a bitter bad business of QUARTZ MINING. If I had had countless dollars of capital to work my mine, or quicksilver for amalgamation as near and plenty as the snow on the Sierra Nwada, I might have done well enough. As . it was, I got but certain pennyworths of gold to a most intolerable quantity of quartz. The precious metal was to the brute mineral in the proportion of perhaps a hundred pin-heads to the ton. My partners, down in San Francisco, wrote to me Only find twice as many pinheads, and our fortune is made. So thought those ardent fellows, fancying that gold would go up and labor go down, - that presently I would strike a vein where the mineral mould sllom yellow threads and yellow dots, perhaps even yellow knobs, in the crevices, instead of empty crannies wllicli Nature had prepared for monetary deposits and forgotten to fill. So thought the fellows in San Francisco. They had been speculating in beef, bread-stuffs, city lots, Rincon Point, wharf property, mission lands, Mexican titles, Sacramento boats, politics, Oregon lumber. They had been burnt out, they had been cleaned out, they had been drowned out. They depended upon me and the quartz mine to set them up again. So there was a small, steady stream of money flowing up from Sail Francisco from the depleted coffers of those sanguine partners, flowing into our mine, and sinking there, together with my labor and my life...Read More