December 3, 2007

Nevada's Online State News Journal

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[From The Complete Works of Artemus Ward]

Nevada Literature:

    CALIFORNIA and WASHOE

CALIFORNIA.

            We reach San Francisco one Sunday afternoon.  I am driven to the Occidental Hotel by a kind-hearted hackman, who states that inasmuch as I have come out there to amuse people, he will only charge me five dollars.  I pay it in gold, of course, because greenbacks are not current on the Pacific coast.

            Many of the citizens of San Francisco remember the Sabbath day to keep it jolly; and the theatres, the circus, the minstrels, and the music halls are all in full blast to-night.

            I "compromise," and go to the Chinese theatre, thinking perhaps there can be no great harm in listening to worldly sentiments when expressed in a language I don't understand.

            The Chinaman at the door takes my ticket with the remark, "Ki hi-hi ki!  Shoolah!"

            And I tell him that on the whole I think he is right.

            The Chinese play is "continued," like a Ledger story, from night to night. It commences with the birth of the hero or heroine, which interesting event occurs publicly on the stage; and then follows him or her down to the grave, where it cheerfully ends.

            Sometimes a Chinese play lasts six months.  The play I am speaking of had been going on for about two months.  The heroine had grown up into womanhood, and was on the point, as I inferred, of being married to a young Chinaman in spangled pantaloons and a long black tail.  The bride's father comes in with his arms full of tea-chests, and bestows them, with his blessing, upon the happy couple.  As this play is to run four months longer, however, and as my time is limited, I go away at the close of the second act, while the orchestra is performing an overture on gongs and one-stringed fiddles.

            The door-keeper again says, "Ki hi-hi ki!  Shoolah!" adding, this time however, "Chow-wow."  I agree with him in regard to the ki hi and hi ki, but tell him I don't feel altogether certain about the chow-wow.

            To Stockton from San Francisco.

            Stockton is a beautiful town, that has ceased to think of becoming a very large place, and has quietly settled down into a state of serene prosperity.  I have my boots repaired here by an artist who informs me that he studied in the penitentiary; and I visit the lunatic asylum, where I encounter a vivacious maniac who invites me to ride in a chariot drawn by eight lions and a rhinoceros.

            John Phoenix was once stationed at Stockton, and put his mother aboard the San Francisco boat one morning with the sparkling remark, "Dear mother, be virtuous and you will be happy!"

* * * * *

            Forward to Sacramento--which is the capital of the State, and a very nice old town.

            They had a flood here some years ago, during which several blocks of buildings sailed out of town and had never been heard from since.  A Chinaman concluded to leave in a wash tub, and actually set sail in one of those fragile barks.  A drowning man hailed him piteously, thus:  "Throw me a rope, oh throw me a rope!"  To which the Chinaman excitedly cried, "No have got--how can do?" and went on, on with the howling current.  He was never seen more; but a few weeks after his tail was found by some Sabbath-school children in the north part of the State.

* * * * *

            I go to the mountain towns.  The sensational mining days are over, but I find the people jolly and hospitable nevertheless.

            At Nevada I am called upon, shortly after my arrival, by an athletic scarlet-faced man, who politely says his name is Blaze.

            "I have a little bill against you, sir," he observes.

            "A bill--what for?"

            "For drinks."

            "Drinks?"

            "Yes, sir--at my bar, I keep the well known and highly respected coffee-house down the street."

            "But, my dear sir, there is a mistake--I never drank at your bar in my life."

            "I know it, sir.  That isn't the point.  The point is this:  I pay out money for good liquors, and it is people's own fault if they don't drink them.  There are the liquors--do as you please about drinking them, BUT YOU MUST PAY FOR THEM!  Isn't that fair?"

            His enormous body (which Puck wouldn't put a girdle around for forty dollars) shook gleefully while I read this eminently original bill.

            Years ago Mr. Blaze was an agent of the California Stage Company. There was a formidable and well-organized opposition to the California Stage Company at that time, and Mr. Blaze rendered them such signal service in his capacity of agent that they were very sorry when he tendered his resignation.

            "You are some sixteen hundred dollars behind in your accounts, Mr. Blaze," said the President, "but in view of your faithful and efficient services we shall throw off eight hundred dollars off that amount."

            Mr. Blaze seemed touched by this generosity.  A tear stood in his eye and his bosom throbbed audibly.

            "You WILL throw off eight hundred dollars--you WILL?" he at last cried, seizing the President's hand and pressing it passionately to his lips.

            "I will," returned the President.

            "Well, sir," said Mr. Blaze, "I'm a gentleman, I AM, you bet!  And I won't allow no Stage Company to surpass me in politeness.  I'LL THROW OFF THE OTHER EIGHT HUNDRED, AND WE'LL CALL IT SQUARE!  No gratitude, sir--no thanks; it is my duty."

* * * * *

            I get back to San Francisco in a few weeks, and am to start home Overland from here.

            The distance from Sacramento to Atchison, Kansas, by the Overland stage route, is 2200 miles, but you can happily accomplish a part of the journey by railroad.  The Pacific Railroad is completed twelve miles to Folsom, leaving only 2188 miles to go by stage. This breaks the monotony; but as it is midwinter and as there are well substantiated reports of the Piute savages being in one of their sprightly moods when they scalp people, I do not I may say that I do not leave the Capital of California in a light-hearted and joyous manner.  But "leaves have their time to fall," and I have my time to leave, which is now.

            We ride all day and all night, and ascend and descend some of the most frightful hills I ever saw.  We make Johnson's Pass, which is 6752 feet high, about two o'clock in the morning, and go down the great Kingsbury grade with locked wheels.  The driver, with whom I sit outside, informs me, as we slowly roll down this fearful mountain road, which looks down on either side into an appalling ravine, that he has met accidents in his time, and cost the California Stage Company a great deal of money; "because," he says, "juries is agin us on principle, and every man who sues us is sure to recover.  But it will never be so agin, not with ME, you bet."

            "How is that?" I said.

            It was frightfully dark.  It was snowing withal, and notwithstanding the brakes were kept hard down, the coach slewed wildly, often fairly touching the brink of the black precipice.

            "How is that?" I said.

            "Why, you see," he replied, "that corpses never sue for damages, but maimed people do.  And the next time I have a overturn I shall go round and keerfully examine the passengers.  Them as is dead I shall let alone; but them as is mutilated I shall finish with the king-bolt!  Dead folks don't sue.  They ain't on it."

            Thus with anecdote did this driver cheer me up.

WASHOE.

            We reach Carson City about nine o'clock in the morning.  It is the capital of the silver-producing territory of Nevada.

            They shoot folks here somewhat, and the law is rather partial than otherwise to first-class murderers.

            I visit the territorial Prison, and the Warden points out the prominent convicts to me thus:

            "This man's crime was horse-stealing.  He is here for life."

            "This man is in for murder.  He is here for three years."

            But shooting isn't as popular in Nevada as it once was.  A few years since they used to have a dead man for breakfast every morning.  A reformed desperado told my that he supposed he had killed men enough to stock a graveyard.  "A feeling of remorse," he said, "sometimes comes over me!  But I'm an altered man now. I hain't killed a man for over two weeks!  What'll yer poison yourself with?" he added, dealing a resonant blow on the bar.

            There used to live near Carson City a notorious desperado, who never visited town without killing somebody.  He would call for liquor at some drinking-house, and if anybody declined joining him he would at once commence shooting.  But one day he shot a man too many.  Going into the St. Nicholas drinking-house he asked the company present to join him in a North American drink.  One individual was rash enough to refuse.  With a look of sorrow rather than anger the desperado revealed his revolver, and said, "Good God!  MUST I kill a man every time I come to Carson?" and so saying he fired and killed the individual on the spot.  But this was the last murder the bloodthirsty miscreant ever committed, for the aroused citizens pursued him with rifles and shot him down in his own dooryard.

* * * * *

            I lecture in the theatre at Carson, which opens out of a drinking and gambling house.  On each side of the door where my ticket-taker stands there are monte-boards and sweat-cloths, but they are deserted to-night, the gamblers being evidently of a literary turn of mind.

* * * * *

            Five years ago there was only a pony-path over the precipitous hills on which now stands the marvelous city of Virginia, with its population of twelve thousand persons, and perhaps more.  Virginia, with its stately warehouses and gay shops; its splendid streets, paved with silver ore; its banking houses and faro-banks; its attractive coffee-houses and elegant theatre, its music halls and its three daily newspapers.

            Virginia is very wild, but I believe it is now pretty generally believed that a mining city must go through with a certain amount of unadulterated cussedness before it can settle down and behave itself in a conservative and seemly manner.  Virginia has grown up in the heart of the richest silver regions in the world, the El Dorado of the hour; and of the immense numbers who are swarming thither not more than half carry their mother's Bible or any settled religion with them.  The gambler and the strange woman as naturally seek the new sensational town as ducks take to that element which is so useful for making cocktails and bathing one's feet; and these people make the new town rather warm for a while. But by and by the earnest and honest citizens get tired of this ungodly nonsense and organize a Vigilance Committee, which hangs the more vicious of the pestiferous crowd to a sour-apple tree; and then come good municipal laws, ministers, meeting-houses, and a tolerably sober police in blue coats with brass buttons.  About five thousand able-bodied men are in the mines underground, here; some as far down as five hundred feet.  The Gould and Curry Mine employs nine hundred men, and annually turns out about twenty million dollars' worth of "demnition gold and silver," as Mr. Mantalini might express it, though silver chiefly.

            There are many other mines here and at Gold Hill (another startling silver city, a mile from here), all of which do nearly as well. The silver is melted down into bricks of the size of common house bricks; then it is loaded into huge wagons, each drawn by eight and twelve mules, and sent off to San Francisco.  To a young person fresh from the land of greenbacks this careless manner of carting off solid silver is rather a startler.  It is related that a young man who came Overland from New Hampshire a few months before my arrival became so excited about it that he fell in a fit, with the name of his Uncle Amos on his lips!  The hardy miners supposed he wanted his uncle there to see the great sight, and faint with him. But this was pure conjecture, after all.

* * * * *

            I visit several of the adjacent mining towns, but I do not go to Aurora.  No, I think not.  A lecturer on psychology was killed there the other night by the playful discharge of a horse-pistol in the hands of a degenerate and intoxicated Spaniard.  This circumstance, and a rumor that the citizens are "agin" literature, induce me to go back to Virginia.

* * * * *

            I had pointed out to me at a restaurant a man who had killed four men in street broils, and who had that very day cut his own brother's breast open in a dangerous manner with a small supper knife.  He was a gentleman, however.  I heard him tell some men so. He admitted it himself.  And I don't think he would lie about a little thing like that.

            The theatre at Virginia will attract the attention of the stranger, because it is an unusually elegant affair of the kind, and would be so regarded anywhere.  It was built, of course, by Mr. Thomas Maguire, the Napoleonic manager of the Pacific, and who has built over twenty theatres in his time and will perhaps build as many more, unless somebody stops him--which, by the way, will not be a remarkably easy thing to do.

            As soon as a mining camp begins to assume the proportions of a city, at about the time the whiskey-vender draws his cork or the gambler spreads his green cloth, Maguire opens a theatre, and with a hastily-organized "Vigilance Committee" of actors, commences to execute Shakespeare.