ding in their sallow depths unlovely streams that crept
away to a clandestine union with the great yellow torrent below, and
here and there were the ruins of some cabin with the chimney alone
left intact and the hearthstone open to the skies.

The settlement of Smith's Pocket owed its origin to the finding of a
"pocket" on its site by a veritable Smith. Five thousand dollars were
taken out of it in one half-hour by Smith. Three thousand dollars were
expended by Smith and others in erecting a flume and in tunnelling.
And then Smith's Pocket was found to be only a pocket, and subject,
like other pockets, to depletion. Altho Smith pierced the bowels of
the great red mountain, that five thousand dollars was the first and
last return of his labor. The mountain grew reticent of its golden
secrets, and the flume steadily ebbed away the remainder of Smith's
fortune. Then Smith went into quartz-mining; then into quartz-milling;
then into hydraulics and ditching, and then by easy degrees into
saloon-keeping. Presently it was whispered that Smith was drinking a
great deal; then it was known that Smith was a habitual drunkard, and
then people began to think, as they are apt to, that he had never been
anything else. But the settlement of Smith's Pocket, like that of most
discoveries, was happily not dependent on the fortune of its pioneer,
and other parties projected tunnels and found pockets. So Smith's
pocket became a settlement with its two fancy stores, its two hotels,
its one express office, and its two first families. Occasionally its
one long straggling street was overawed by the assumption of the
latest San Francisco fashions, imported per express, exclusively to
the first families; making outraged Nature, in the ragged outline of
her furrowed surface, look still more homely, and putting personal
insult on that greater portion of the population to whom the Sabbath,
with a change of linen, brought merely the necessity of cleanliness,
without the luxury of adornment. Then there was a Methodist church,
and hard by a Monte bank, and a little beyond, on the mountain-side, a
graveyard; and then a little schoolhouse.

"The Master," as he was known to his little flock, sat alone one night
in the schoolhouse, with some open copy-books before him, carefully
making those bold and full characters which are supposed to combine
the extremes of chirographical and moral excellence, and had got as
far as "Riches are deceitful," and was elab