WILLIAM LENT.

 

            BY William Lent, I mean the man that every old miner in Nevada knew as "Uncle Billie Lent.'' He was an argonaut and soon after reaching San Francisco became a wholesale merchant on Front street in that city. He was a shrewd merchant and made money. But in those days he could not tie himself down to the daily round of a merchant's life. When a ship sailed from New York, or Boston, or Philadelphia, or any other Atlantic or Gulf coast, for San Francisco a copy of her manifest was mailed to San Francisco. These were published in San Francisco and also the houses to which they were consigned.

            Then the merchants and brokers would buy or sell these cargoes to arrive ; would buy or sell long or short according to the stock on hand of the same articles in San Francisco, and according to the respective ships on which the cargoes were coming, for they knew the reputation of the different ships, as fast or slow sailors, and when a new ship sailed, from the descriptions given of them by the eastern papers, they would make wagers on the time of its arrival.

            In those days for a long time a new clipper came every month or two, and each was a greater marvel than its predecessor. There was great excitement when the Sovereign of the Seas came in, for there had never been quite so grand a ship as she ever built before. She made the voyage from New York in ninety-seven days, and the freight paid on her first cargo returned to her owners the full cost of the ship.

            The Flying Cloud was another wonder. She made her first voyage in eighty-nine days. But she was favored. When reaching Cape Horn, instead of meeting the fierce western winds that held many a ship off the Horn for six weeks, she caught a gale from the east and her daring commander crowded on all sail and made 374 miles in twenty-four hours.

            Mrs. Cressy, the commander's wife, was on board and told a friend on reaching San Francisco that on that day the

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cabin was dark half the time because of the seas pouring over the ship, and at times was dark so long that she thought it would never be light any more for those on the ship.

            The Trade Wind was another of those wonderful ships. She struck something after rounding the Horn that stopped the ship dead still for a moment. A moment later a whale, cut half in two, appeared for a moment on the surface of the sea and reddened all the water around with blood.

            When the ship was docked in San Francisco bay it was found that all the copper from bow to keel had been torn off.

            The most beautiful of all those clippers, and one of the fleetest, was the Flying Fish. But there were scores of them. It requires a good many ships to carry all the supplies needed by 300,000 people, when the voyages are 13,000 miles long.

            Those were the days when our merchant marine was the pride of the seas : when our ships were the fairest and fleetest that had ever been seen, and when their tonnage exceeded that of any other nation, not excepting Great Britain.

            When the Crimean war came, Great Britain chartered one of those clippers -- the Great Republic -- to carry men, horses and war munitions to Constantinople. Loaded at Plymouth with a regiment of men, five hundred horses, and a thousand tons of freight, the ship started from Plymouth, England, with a steam cruiser to convoy her. When outside the harbor she put on sail. The cruiser had to signal her to slow down ; it could not take her pace.

            Uncle Billie Lent found plenty of excitement, in keeping tabs on the stocks of goods on hand, on the average monthly sales, and on the cargoes to arrive, and he turned many a penny to his own advantage by being shrewder or more lucky than his neighbors.

            There were plenty of others doing the same. Ordinary California houses in those days, instead of being plastered, were lined with canvas, which was held in place by tacks. One genius saw by looking at the manifests of ships to arrive that there would be no more tacks reach San Francisco for five or six months. He bought all there were on hand and made a little fortune. That he was being anathematized all over California

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wherever a cloth ceiling or partition was being tacked up did not disturb his rest at all.

            When the Comstock was discovered and shares appeared on sale. Uncle Billie Lent was ready to take on some new degrees.

            He was a soft-voiced, kindly man, made friends every- where and, moreover, in business was dead honest, and his word was everywhere accepted as a certified check.

            He had a thousand generous ways. If he rode on the stage from Placerville or Dutch Flat to Virginia City, on getting down from the stage he would by stealth pass up a twenty- dollar piece to the driver.

            He would touch a friend on the shoulder and say : "Ophir is looking pretty well: I put aside fifty shares at thirty dollars for you this morning. When it touches forty I believe you had better sell."

            Result : he always had his choice of seats on the stage. When the rush was great and some passengers had to book ahead, Uncle Billie could always get a seat. It would have been a poor agent or driver who would not have made an affidavit, if necessary, that Uncle Billie had engaged the seat for that day a week before. And if any stirring man who kept his finger on the pulse of the market and on the conditions of the lower levels in the mines got what he thought was a pointer, he carried it to Uncle Billie.

            He wrestled with the sharp dealers on the Comstock and in San Francisco and was able to say as the dying Californian did to his wife : "Tell the boys that I think I has bested as many as has bested me;" for despite the soft voice and the genial, generous ways of Uncle Billie, he was as shrewd as the very sharpest of them.

            He and George Hearst were associated for a time, but that was before Hearst made his alliance with Haggin and Tevis and he had not money enough to work in the same team with Uncle Billie.

            Mr. Lent dealt constantly in Comstock stocks for ten years, and as before he wagered on the speed and cargoes of

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clipper ships, so he every day, so to speak, took the sun of the Comstock as the mariner does the noonday sun at sea.

            He knew all the mines and all the managers. When some of the managers made a statement of conditions he wagered that it was true, when a few others made statements of what was and what must be in the immediate future, he unloaded all the stocks he had in the company and sold short as many more.

            When Mineral Hill had been opened a certain depth and halted for want of funds to procure machinery, on the advice of Joe Farren he put his shoulder to the company and helped the owners through, taking his fair commission, of course. Mineral Hill was a porphyry vein in granite, and to those who understood the formation, it was always safe to estimate its value down to the lowest point that the porphyry was explored, the belief being that at any time the underlying rock would mark the depth of the porphyry and the ore body. But the porphyry held good for 1200 feet in depth and yielded several millions of dollars.

            When Buel and Bateman obtained their option on Eureka Con. at Eureka, Farren joined with them, and Uncle Billie backed Buel and Bateman, and the result was a splendid success.

            But Uncle Billie's greatest triumph was at Bodie, south of Carson, but on the east side of the Sierras in California. He opened and equipped a mine there which for three or four years was more like a mint than a mine. No one except Mr. Lent's heirs knows how much money he made there, but it was a vast fortune.

            He must have been close upon eighty years of age at the time, but "age had not withered him nor custom staled" his genial nature, his shrewdness, or his tireless energy.

            Most of the bonanza kings had many enemies. It is a habit of mankind, when they see a fellow man accumulate a great fortune, no matter how fairly, to brood over it, and many grow to believe that if the world's gifts had been fairly divided, no one man could have gathered to himself so much treasure.

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            I never heard of any one who had that feeling toward Mr. Lent. When a man is called Billie Lent in his youth. Uncle Billie Lent in middle age, and old Uncle Billie in his old age, those are all indications that he has the love near him and the admiration and kindly thoughts of thousands who never clasped his hand.

            So while Uncle Billie was as sharp as the sharpest, while in business he never asked any odds of any one ; he managed to hold his own; to line his path with charities, to say generous and hopeful words to those less successful than himself; to draw to him in splendid loyalty such men as he needed to work out his enterprises, and if he had any enemies I never heard of them.

            This was because he was always manly and frank and candid ; he had no false pride ; every man met him on equal terms a pair of overalls was as fine as a dress suit with him if the right man was inside the overalls.

            He died in San Francisco many years ago away past the eighties, but he is still affectionately remembered there.

            My thought is if where he is he is as he was when riding on the coaches here he has the choice of seats, and if he had his pick of places, there is a phantom ocean bearing ghostly ships into their haven, and spectral mountains in the background that contain celestial ores, and that he divides his eternity making wagers of what ghostly ship is nearing the offing, and counting on the news that the next ethereal aero- plane will bring down from the mines.

            In the meanwhile all the neighboring ghosts are wont to gather near to hear his ghost tell of the lively times he had on the Comstock and how, in his old age, he scooped all the young men when he took in the mine at Bodie.