"DAN DE QUILLE."

 

            HIS real name was William Wright, but his nom de plume grew to so much overshadow it that thousands knew him by no other name. Prior to the war, the Sacramento Union had a correspondent who signed himself "Ching Foo." He was an army officer, but in time of peace wrote to the Union. He was a fine writer; his letters were superbly prepared and called for loving remembrance for years after he ceased to write. In Washoe county, Nev., was a prevaricator whose genius in that line is still recalled with admiration. Long after "Ching Foo" had ceased to write for the Union, reference was made, in a little company, to his old-time wonderful letters. Our imaginative friend at once broke in upon the conversation in this strain : "Ching Foo was the most intelligent Chinaman that I ever saw. He cooked for me three years in Calavaras county, California. I taught him to write English."

            There may be grand liars still who, when occasion requires, may be telling that Dan De Quille was a most intelligent Frenchman, and that it was under their care that he acquired a fair knowledge of English. But Dan was an American through and through. I believe he was Ohio born, but his home had been in Iowa from childhood until he went to Nevada.

            He reached there in the autumn of '59, I believe, and took up his home in a cabin in Silver City. He was following in the wake of the Grosh brothers, who either first found the Comstock, or at least a spur of it, built a rude furnace and smelted the ore and then both died one in trying to cross the Sierras in winter, and the other of sorrow and sickness a little later. Dan was a good deal of a geologist and something- of a mineralogist, and studied the Comstock from the surface to below the 3,000 level. He was always writing dissertations on the lode and its formation, and when Mr. Goodman moved the Enterprise to Virginia City, Dan became a regular con-

214 AS I REMEMBER THEM.

tributor, which culminated in a few months in his becoming one of the staff of the great little paper. Then for more than thirty years he was in full evidence in the columns of that journal. Without him the paper would have been an automobile with a punctured tire.

            He was down in the mine every day at first, and could the files of the Enterprise have been saved, his articles taken out and arranged with the proper dates, would make a complete and fascinating history of the great lode from the first. Moreover, what he wrote, everybody believed implicitly. This or that expert might make a report, and men would say, "He may have been mistaken." This or that owner of heavy shares might express his opinion, and men would say: ''Maybe his interests prejudice him." But everyone believed Dan.

            But his work was not confined to the mines. It covered everything; he was a mining reporter, a local reporter, and when, late at night, his regular work was finished, he would write away until after daylight on some droll story or some scientific theme.

            He had a quaint irony through which he could make fun of his fellow man's idiosyncracies, which everyone would recognize at a glance, but he never offended anyone.

            Daggett, with his intellectual cleaver, would chop a man to pieces. Mark Twain, with his droll humor, would lead his victim up to the shambles he had in waiting for him, and the unconscious creature would never suspect what was going to happen until the ax fell.

            But Dan had a softer way. The intended victim would know all the time after the first ten lines that he was going to be sacrificed, but he was under a spell, enjoyed the process, and laughed after he was downed. Dan was in close rapport with the Indians and Chinese, and they all brought their troubles to him. Yan Sing came to him one clay and said : "Mr. Quille, you sabbie ! Hong Lung he die las week. We fix him up all lite, fine coffin, hire band, plenty music, plenty yellow paper, well we bellie him all lightie, but he come back first nightie, say he no all lite. He came nex night, say he no all lite, he come Slaterday night and say, 'What the h--1! Me no all lite.'

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            'Yesterday we dig him up, open boxie, what you thinkie ? One leg pullie up so (bending his knee). We pushee leggie down, make um straight, nail up box, bellie him again. He no come last nightie."

            Dan was married, and a baby girl was born to him before he left Iowa for the far w est. When old enough this little girl began to write him letters. They were a crown of glory to Dan and the writer of them was Dan's divinity, the one thing that kept his heart warm and filled with a celestial light.

            He was drinking beer with Steve Gillis one night in the Fredericksburg brewery, when he broke out and delivered a eulogy on this little girl back in Iowa. Gillis listened and then said: ; 'Dan, I have been looking for just such a girl as that. Bring her out here and I will marry her."

            Dan's face grew savage in a moment. Bringing his first down with a resounding whack upon the table, he exclaimed : "No. sir : no, sir ; no son of a gun that drinks beer can ever look at that girl, much less marry her."

            He wrote up a plausible story, taking as a starter the fact that C street, Virginia City, was exactly the same altitude as the surface of Lake Tahoe, thirty miles away in the Sierras. He explained that the excessive water in the Comstock was probably clue to an underground channel from the lake, coming that long way under the mountains and under Washoe valley, then under Mount Davidson in the range in which the Comstock is located, and filling the Comstock fissure to the surface : and all that kept it from overflowing was that the surface of the lake was at the same altitude as the croppings of the Comstock ; and instead of favoring the Sutro tunnel to drain the lode, he suggested that shafts should be sunk in Washoe valley and drifts run, until the underground channel was found ; then plug that and, of course, when the Comstock was once pumped out there would be no more trouble from water.

            His solar armor story was one of his best ones. It was an invention intended to neutralize the excessive heat of the summer. It was called "a solar armor." It was a suit of India rubber that a man could put on, but within it was a compact air compressor attached to which was a pocket battery to run

216 AS I REMEMBER THEM.

it. When the wearer found it was growing too warm, he had but to touch a button to set the compressor going, and when sufficiently cooled, he could touch another button and shut off the power.

            At last, according to Dan, when the inventor got all ready, he put on the armor and started across Death valley one afternoon when the thermometer marked 117 degrees in the shade, and went out. of sight in the sun. He did not return, and the next morning an exploring party started out to try to find traces of him. Out four or five miles in the desert they found the man's body. He had started the apparatus evidently, but could not stop it, and it had frozen him to death. The machine was still running when the body was found, and an icicle eighteen inches long was pendant from the nose of the dead man.

            About a month after the story was published Dan received a London Times one morning containing a marked article that filled two or three columns of that ponderous publication.

            Some writer had read his article, accepted it as true, endorsed the principle and elaborated upon the advantages which would come of it, could the government see its way clear to supply the British soldiers in India and other hot countries with the armor. Dan read it through, then with a blue pencil drew a line around the article and connected the two ends with a pencil sketch of a hoodlum, looking at some far away object, and the figure had his right thumb to his nose with his fingers wiggling He put the paper in a wrapper and directed it to the Scientific Writer, care of the Times, London, England. But all that day he wore such a look as Dr. Holmes must have worn while writing that poem in which he promised never more to "write as funny as I can."

            His resourcefulness in a newspaper office was wonderful. He could do two or three men's work when necessary; his industry was untiring and his brain exhaustless.

            He took one summer off and wrote his book, ' 'The Great Bonanza," which is a true story of the Comstock up to 1875. He was tall and slim, and as he grew older he seemed to grow more spare and tall, and a feebleness came upon him

"DAN DE QUILLE." 217

which finally left him no strength to work. He went back to his friends in Iowa and as the winter came on the influenza which came that winter across the Atlantic prostrated him. He recovered from the disease, but he had no strength to rally and after a few weeks the wornout machinery ran down and stopped.

            He was the most winsome of men; no man was ever more honest or conscientious; he was gifted in a hundred ways; he was one of the most efficient and valuable men that ever wore out his life in a newspaper office, and no one who knew him well has ever ceased grieving for him.

            He was above both bribes or bluffs ; no man could ever corrupt him; no man could scare him. He made no pretentions, but every day he followed his duty as God gave him to see it, and along its path, though there were sometimes thorns and sharp rocks under his feet, he never stopped unless to here and there plant a flower or a shade tree.

            He did not need any credentials when his soul went above. The pearly gates swung back merely at the mention of his name, and I fancy that the breeze that swept over Summer Land in that hour, caused every harp-string to thrill with soft aeolian notes in welcome to Dan.