Dr. Horton at the time of his death owned the American Hotel; that the woman, though not his wife, was so called, and conducted herself with propriety as such. The hotel and fixtures had been attached by San Francisco creditors, and closed by the sheriff; but Horton, seeing the prospect of a rich harvest that day, when many more miners than usual would be in town, announced that the American would give a grand dinner. The sheriff, however, summoned a posse to prevent the threatened re-occupation of the property, and in the mêlée that followed, Horton was shot by the sheriff, and the woman by one of the posse. Years after I saw the same boards and paling in the new location, but now time has leveled the wood work and obliterated the inscription, so that the location of Horton's grave can only be guessed at.

Numerous as the graves appear to be, the one-half of them are not now marked; the dust has returned to its native dust until not even the semblance of a mound is shown; the lettering of the old headboards has been washed away by the storms of three decades of years; and if "Old Mortality" has ever taken his rounds through the kirk yards of the Golden State, he has passed ours by.

The dead of the first years of mining countries were generally men who were without near kindred, their most intimate companions being either the partners of their mining operations, or at best the friends that might be in the vicinity who were friends in the old home beyond the Rockies a tie . much stronger than now, when it has been supplanted by the closer ties of marriage, the immigration hither of their own kindred, or the kind of partnership relations, extending over periods of many years, which have taken the place of the here-to-day, there-to-morrow partnerships of the earlier day, in which men came together for a few days or weeks as the case might be, perhaps worked out the little.

claim allowed them by the mining law of the district, and separated never to see each other again, and often without knowing even the name of their quondam associates, except as they were called Tom, Dick, Doc, Cap, Major, or some other of the countless appellations by which men were distinguished from their fellows at the time. No costly casket inclosed the lifeless clay that was reverently lowered to its narrow bed, but oftentimes the boards of the sluice box, by the side of which he had worked in his life time; and often the highest ground of the bar or flat where his lot had been cast became the narrow house and last home of the pioneer miner. The case became different when wagon roads began to take the place of the rude mountain trails that perforce sufficed at first; for then the rude home-made coffin was prepared, and the body was conveyed to some part of the "God's Acre "at the nearest town. Yet even then, no shaft of enduring granite or polished marble was reared to mark the resting place; for such, except of the lightest kind, could not be brought in. In their place, a pine slab or board with the name, age, and birth place of the dead was erected; and of these, few are left that now give any clue to the identity of those whose sleep they were designed to hallow. The elements have for thirty years waged a pitiless war against these memorial tablets, and man has done little or nothing to arrest the progress of decay.

It has been my purpose in the preceding pages to record to some extent the incidents, selected at random, of the times and thǝ men of the times-the memories of which are fading away as one by one the actors therein depart of a locality which from its isolation retained for many years longer than its sister counties the more distinctive features of the early days of mining life. Volumes might be written, but the above will suffice to portray the oddities and peculiarities, the ups and the downs, the rude early

JONAS LEE was a man whose life was marked out, so you could see just how it would run, to the time when the churchbell would toll the knell of his death, and the honest villagers shake their heads, and sigh to think that "old Jonas Lee" was gone. Not that he was much beloved by the people, for he mingled but little with them, and held rather aloof from all friendship, even with his neighbors. But he was a landmark of a former age, and as such was praised by the old, and respected, with an awed and reverential respect, by the young.

His life was a remnant; an odd piece of a life. In his youth he had loved the village belle. Himself of humbler birth, he was considered lucky to win her attention; and on her jilting him, as all believed she had done, the villagers shook their heads, and called her hard names, and unhesitatingly gave Jonas their sympathy. In truth, she was not to blame. The old story— misunderstanding, the fault of neither party, coldness, grief; the course of true love, for true love it was, never did run smooth, and the course of their love came to a sudden a sudden end in that pleasant autumn of their first year's courtship; and Jonas believed he had been jilted, and Mary thought she had been neglected, and so they covered their sorrow in a quiet and unostentatious way, and all was at an end between them. Not long after Mary was married. It was her parents' doing, and she acquiesced, though her love could never be given to her husband. was a well-to-do Quaker, an honest man enough, but one who thought more of his business and his religion than of his wife. Jonas accused himself bitterly for his folly in believing that that heartless creature,

VOL. IX.-3.

He

Mary, ever loved him; and soon after he left the country.

For years he was never heard of in his native village. At last he came back. But few were left who knew him. They were men of middle-age, or even graybeards, but had known him last in early manhood. It occasioned a great stir in the quiet and uneventful course of things in the village, and many wild rumors respecting Jonas's adventures and fortunes were circulated. It was confidently reported he had sailed. round the world six times during his absence, and was now the richest man in the country. With this in view, sundry widows and elderly spinsters were observed to set their caps for him.

But Jonas was proof against their blandishments, and was soon seen to be a differ. ent person from the pleasant, gay young fellow he had once been. To say truth, he had never ceased to long for Mary, and think of her, with the true pertinacity of an unsuccessful lover. He made inquiries about her, but she had left the town long since, and none knew whether she were living or dead. So Jonas resigned himself to fate, and set up his household goods in the little stone cottage he had been born in, so many years before. His sole household was an old servant, who attended to his needs and kept his tiny house in order, and his dog, now old and travel-worn like his master.

As to Jonas's true financial position, he had gathered together a modest sum; enough to keep his old age from want. For this he was looking about for an investment.

One day there came to the village an insurance agent. Life insurance was a novelty then, and the staid village folk slow to put their trust in the glib-spoken agent.

Jonas, however, had a reputation in the village for boundless wealth, and to him the agent came. He spoke his most eloquent praise of the novelty; he set forth in the most glowing terms the advantages accruing from the system; he explained with the most lucid earnestness the details of its working, and showed Jonas a sheet which purported to give the average expectation of life at different ages. Jonas heard

him in silence. At the end he said he'd think about it, and the insurance agent departed with a calm conviction of an early success. He even boasted that he had made a convert of Jonas, and on the strength of the claim made other conquests, which were gratifying, but not permanently beneficial, for they did not happen to bring any money to his purse.

The next day he argued long with Jonas. and repeated his explanations, adducing many enthusiastic testimonials as to the splendid character of the system, the probity of his firm, and the astonishing results of a policy taken in the company. Jonas heard all this, and remained to all outward appearances undecided. But the agent counted But the agent counted himself one victory in that Jonas asked to be allowed to have the paper which set forth the table of average expectation of life. kept it one night, and in that time matured a brilliant scheme of annuity, of homemake, as it were; he determined to so allot his fortune as to last him for the time set down as the probable length of life for a person of his age. Thus resolved, he met the agent next morning with the remark that "He guessed he wouldn't invest."

He

The agent was dumfounded; he had counted on an easy victim, and it was galling to have to give in after his boasts. He hung about the village for some days, continually plying Jonas with new arguments, until his bill at the inn grew so large that he was forced to take his departure, leaving Jonas master of the field,

Not long after this the notary received a

call from Jonas, who wanted an investment. He stipulated for something safe, and mentioned five per cent as his minimum. The notary knew but little of business and had some difficulty in satisfying his new client; but finally all was arranged. Jonas got his investment and his five per cent, and settled down in relief at finding himself so well fixed. He was often seen to study a paper which he carried about with him, and whose purport the gossips of the neighborhood were at much pains to guess. But in vain: Jonas was very reticent on all matters, and on this especially, so the popular curiosity was baffled for years.

The fact is that there was no great mystery about it, for it was but a mathematical calculation upon the basis of Jonas's fortune, and showed what sum per annum would exhaust his means in a stated number of years. There was a small surplus, which was marked: "For funeral expenses." In short, the whole thing was the scheme of an annuity, minus the commission charged by the banking companies, but with one. grave defect; it in nowise provided for at longer term of life than that set down. So there was but a sorry outlook for Jonas should he prove long-lived.

Of this, however, he never thought, and he proceeded to settle himself for a life of quiet ease, regardless of the village and its interests, and gradually building about himself the barrier of a reserve, which came from his sorrow, which was impregnable to all but a few, and which effectually protected his life from all disturbing influences.

For years his trim and stately figure was familiar to the village folk. Attired in buff knee-breeches, with brown stockings, and with great silver buckles on his shoes, his coat of military blue with brass buttons, a bell-crowned white hat surmounting his person, and the whole set off by a gold-headed staff, he was the exponent of fashions long obsolete, and became a more and more eccentric figure as the years rolled on, His

habits were as precise and as punctual as the ticking of his old hall clock. He rose at five and took an early walk, no matter what the weather. At seven he breakfasted, and spent the morning in his house seated by the fireside, or if it were pleasant weather, in his garden, often turning his hand to the care of the old-fashioned flowers which grew so luxuriantly for the old man. In the afternoon he went to the village inn, to read the papers and drink his ale. Here certain old fellows, who were his most intimate companions in youth, were admitted to his conversation and friendship. A rare sight it must have been to see them over their ale, often mellowed by liquor, but restrained by the sobriety of Jonas, who rarely drank deep, and by a certain awe of him, which they shared with the whole village. Jonas used to seek his cottage at dusk, and after tea his time was spent in ruminations by the fire, occasionally varied by the perusal of sundry old volumes, which formed his sole library. At ten precisely he retired, but not until he had brewed and drank a glass of whiskey punch. Of these same punches strange stories were told. The favored few who from time to time, were admitted to participation in them, averred that they transcended all known drinks, and were with such consummate delicacy and skill concocted, as to fill the favored taster with a mellowness superior to the highest gratification over any other drink, and to be rivaled by no other sensation. Indeed, the state in which his guests came home after these convivial bouts was such as to warrant their story; and the extreme eagerness with which they availed themselves of further invitations served to strengthen the belief in Jonas's skill.

Such for many years was Jonas's life. He was a solitary man, and seemed always to be in a serious, though not melancholy, frame of mind. As the expiration of his annuity approached, he evinced a greater energy, as though the prospect of his death, in which

he never ceased to believe, was a pleasure to him. He unobtrusively made many preparations for it. After the events which I am about to chronicle, were past, it was reported that he had purchased a coffin and had selected a site for a grave. Certain it is that he in many ways showed expectation of a change. He arranged for the sale of his cottage, and made presents to his few remaining friends of such articles of property as he could dispense with, without immediate inconvenience. All this time he continued to appear the same robust, vigorous man as before, and nothing beyond the whiteness of his locks denoted the approach of old age.

Finally the end of the year was upon him; his little fortune was all spent, save the portion set apart for funeral expenses, and a small sum which would suffice to discharge his bills for provisions and fuel during the last few months. He was rather surprised to observe no diminution of his physical powers, but even that failed to shake his belief in his approaching death. In his own mind he had settled that the end of the year was to be the end of his life, and he made preparations accordingly. On the last day of the year he solemnly invited two old friends of his to his cottage that evening; they were no whit less eager to come than usual, and eight o'clock saw them all three gathered in Jonas's little best room. His guests were so old as to be almost childish, and their gentle simplicity formed a striking contrast to his sober and thoughtful de