HARRY MIGHELS.

 

            A SMALL man physically was Harry Mighels, but the concentration of genius, audacity and pluck. In young manhood he was associate editor with Crossett on a newspaper in Oroville, California. They made it the most sprightly and interesting newspaper in northern California. At that time, Oroville was but a mining camp, the depot and supply station of extensive placer mining, where, from the ordinary simple washing of gold from the sands, there was the damming of the rivers in the autumn, and the washing of their beds down to bed rock.

            The rivers were dammed, the waters turned aside in flumes and ditches, and then the rush to mine out the section thus exposed before the heavy rains of the autumn came, and the rivers, crushing everything before them, returned to their channels. If the dry season was long continued, little fortunes were made ; if the rains came early, fortunes were lost. It was entirely legitimate work, but it was, nevertheless, absolute gambling. A man or company in effect wagered, say $20,000 on the weather. The bet was that it would not rain before a certain time. If it did not, then the man or company won from $50,000 to $200,000 through washing the gravel above bedrock. A great many men won fortunes that way, and were at once rated as shrewd, sagacious miners. If the rains came unexpectedly early and the investment was lost, there were plenty to aver that any fool could have told them that it was impossible to turn the stream in time to wash the river bed.

            But there was a great deal of this work done, and that was an exceedingly rich gold region is still in full evidence, for the steam dredge has laid waste all the region around there to filch from it its gold, even to the extent of tearing up the orange orchards on the river's banks.

            It was there that Mighels reveled in the excitement of mingling with the hundreds and thousands of the old-day

246 AS I REMEMBER THEM.

miners. He wrote extravagant stories, the more extravagant the better they suited ; he said through the type audacious things about miners real and fictitious, and the miners laughed over them ; he was little more than a boy and small in stature, and the miners said : 'Is he not a game and saucy little cuss?' He was a devoted lifelong friend of George C. Gorham ; and was to Oroville what Gorham was to Marysville.

            On one occasion it was determined to give a grand ball in Oroville. In anticipation of it, Mighels drank too much California wine. It was a new beverage then and cheap, and it is true that while French grapes carry but a little more than three per cent of alcohol those of California carry from thirteen to sixteen per cent.

            The result was that when it was time for the dancing to begin, Harry was not in a condition for dancing, except that when he attempted to walk his motion took on some of the conditions of a two-step; but it was not keeping step with any music. His sublime confidence never deserted him. He approached Mrs. Crossett, as the skilful captain does the enemy's earthworks by zig-zags, and besought the honor of a dance. Mrs. Crossett, with a laugh, said : "Not, now, Harry ; there is not room on the floor for all your steps," and taking the arm of another gentleman, proceeded to the ball room, leaving Harry in the most indignant and unforgivable mood in the world. A short hall connected the reception and ball rooms. Mighels worked his way to this hall, and when the dance was over and the dancers came out, as Mrs. Crossett approached, Harry, with a lofty air, said : "Mrs. Crossett, I wish to speak to you." "What is it, Harry?" was the lady's reply. He straightened up and extending his right arm, said: "I wish to inform you, madam, that in my opinion you are no gentleman."

            The truth of the remark could not be questioned, and it added to the hilarity of the occasion.

            When the great Civil war came on, Harry did not hesitate for a moment. He took the first steamer for the East, enlisted and was given a place on General Joe Hooker's staff.

            At Antietam he was desperately wounded. When stretched upon the operating table, the surgeons examined the wound,

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and their faces became grave. Harry was watching them, and in a feeble voice said to the chief surgeon : 'What are my chances, doctor?' With a compassionate voice, the surgeon replied : 'I am sorry to say you have not more than one chance in ten to live." "One in ten," replied Mighels cheerily. "I will take that chance. I tell you there was never a rebel bullet cast that could kill me." He finally pulled through, but was long recovering and never again could join the army. After the war, he returned to California and soon drifted to Nevada. There some old and new friends endorsed for him and he established the Carson Appeal. He ran it with all the old-time vigor.

            When the Virginia and Truckee Railroad was under construction it was impossible to get competent white laborers except at miner's wages, and the company obtained Chinese graders from the Southern Pacific. They graded the road from Carson up to the Storey county line. (Virginia City is in Storey county.) Then a delegation of the Comstock Miners' union called upon Mr. Yerington, the superintendent of the little road, and told him that if his Chinese graders ever tried to extend the grade over the county line something very serious would certainly happen, and advised him not to try it.

            Mighels, at the time was under many obligations to the owners of the little road, and day after day, through the Appeal, scored the foreign-born miners who would not permit another class of foreigners to earn their bread in a class of work which the miners would not engage in at any price. His anathemas against the foreign-born miners were terrible. All that invective and scorn could invent was poured out through the Appeal morning after morning, and when anything especially savage appeared, Mighels would go to Virginia City that day and walk the streets with the biggest chip on his shoulder that a man of his size ever carried.

            Some years later a political convention nominated him for lieutenant-governor. He stumped the state and the date of his meeting in Virginia City was advertised some days in advance.

248 AS I REMEMBER THEM.

            His opponent went to the library and from the Appeal files copied the most furious of the expressions that he had used in his fight upon the foreign miners ; had them set up and struck off in leaflets which by thousands were scattered over the sidewalks on the afternoon of the clay on which Mighels was advertised to speak.

            That same afternoon, Harry came into the Enterprise editorial rooms and said to me : 'They are going to pack the house on me tonight. Some of them are hot enough to shoot or bring on a riot. What is your idea of the best way to meet those wild devils?' I said, "I don't know, Harry, except in my thought, as lots of them are fighters, they will stand a brave bluff better than an apology."

            The meeting came off as advertised and about midnight Mighels came again to the Enterprise office, and in response to the inquiry of ''What kind of a meeting did you have, Harry?' he said: "The sons of guns, they came there to scoff; they went away to pray."

            One who was at the meeting told me what happened. His words weere about as follows :

            "The gallery was packed to the limit with men who were there for any kind of a row up to riot and murder.

            "Mighels, with no introduction, walked to the front of the stage with a bunch of leaflets that had been scattered on the street, in his right hand. The house was as still as a California morning when an earthquake was scheduled for that day.

            "Holding up the leaflets, Mighels, looking up at the hostile rows of faces in the gallery, said : T suppose the few of you who can read have read these things to the rest of you. Let me tell you something. I wrote them. Every word of them.

            "Why I wrote them you will never know, for the secrets of the sanctum are as sacred as the secrets of the confessional. I am a candidate for lieutenant-governor. I would, inasmuch as I have been nominated, like to get as many votes as possible, but let me inform you that I do not need the office. I have that little printing office down at Carson ; I have enough paper on hand to last me ten or fifteen clays ; I have a wife and

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four children," then, retreating a step, he slowly picked up a glass of water from the table, took a swallow, and slowly set down the glass. Suddenly lifting his fist and bringing it down with a resounding blow on the table, he shouted : "And they are all mine."

            "The audacity of it all, the certain conviction that came to those who had gone there to break up his meeting, that they might do it, that possibly they might kill him but never scare him, came upon them in a flash and they shook the house with their cheers, and cheered every point he made during the meeting, and at its close left the house saying as did the Oroville miner twenty-five years earlier, "Is he not a game and saucy little cuss?'

            But even then an insidious and fatal disease had begun its work upon him. and a few months later he died. His was a distinct individuality wherever he went.

            I heard him once talking to Mr. Sharon. It was when Mr. Sharon was a candidate for United States senator and he wanted Mighels to support or fight some proposition. I do not remember what it was, when Mighels refused.

            Sharon at last told him that he was too poor to be so independent. "Poor," said Mighels. "You ought to see my last babv. Whv, I am richer than you are.' Then Sharon told him not to talk like a d----d fool. "Was I talking like a d----d fool?" asked Mighels. "Of course, you were," was Sharon's reply. Turning to me, Mighels said : "Is it not wonderful how I can adjust my language to the comprehension of some dull men?"

            His death was a great loss. He was a decided genius, and he was growing mentally every day. Had he survived but a few years, the highest places would have been open to him. and he would have filled them, filled any place in the gift of his people, with wonderful ability and perfect integrity, and with a courage that nothing could daunt. Great Harry; poor Harry, may his last, long sleep be sweet.