nd close personal
association with his able and friendly professors, and, finally, with
the knowledge that he had already found exactly the right girl for him,
Herbert Hoover went out from Stanford, in 1895, with his Pioneer Class,
ready to open his oyster. But he had only himself to rely on in doing
it.

CHAPTER IV

THE YOUNG MINING ENGINEER

Herbert Hoover began his mining career very simply and practically by
taking his place as a real workman in a real mine, with no favors shown,
following in this the emphatic advice given by Dr. Branner to every
student graduating from his department. He went up into the mining
region near Grass Valley in the Sierras where he had already studied
with Waldemar Lindgren, and became a regular miner, a boy-man with pick
and shovel working long hours underground or sometimes on the surface
about the plant. But always he had his eyes wide open and always he was
learning. He preferred the underground work because he wanted first to
know more about the actual occurrence of the ore in the earth than about
the mill processes of extracting the mineral from it.

Here he worked for several months, and gradually rose to the position of
night shift-boss or gang foreman. But he began to realize that he was
exhausting the learning opportunities of this particular place and kind
of work, and so one night deep down in the mine, when for sudden lack of
ore-cars or power or some other essential, work was held up for the last
half hour of his shift, he went off into a warm corner, curled himself
up in a nice clean wheelbarrow and slept away the last half hour of his
pick and shovel experience.

He had decided to get into association, some way, with the best mining
engineer on the Coast. There was no question about who this was at that
time. It was Louis Janin in San Francisco. So he appeared at Mr. Janin's
office as a candidate for a job, any job so that it was a job under
Louis Janin.

But the famous engineer, well disposed as he was toward giving
intelligent, earnest young men who wanted to become mining engineers, a
chance, had to explain that not only was there no vacant place in his
staff but that a long waiting list would have to be gone through before
Hoover's turn could come. He added, as a joke, that he needed an
additional typist in his office, but of course----. The candidate for a
job interrupted. "All right, I'll take it. I can't come for a few days,
but I'll come next Tuesd