e legitimate Rocky Mountain drama.
"Nick of the Woods" has frequently been produced with great applause,
though the illusion is somewhat marred by the audible creaking of the
wheels of the boat in which the Jibbenainosay sails triumphantly over
the cataract.

Sunday is distinguished from other days in being the great day of
business. The mines are not worked and it is the miners' holiday. All is
bustle and confusion. A dozen rival auctioneers vend their wares, and
gallop fast horses up and down the street. The drinking and gambling
saloons and dance-houses are in full blast, all with bands of music to
allure the passing miner, who comes into town on Sunday to spend his
earnings. The discoverer of Virginia is the miner _par excellence_,--a
good-natured Hercules clad in buckskin, or a lion in repose. All the
week he toils hard in some hole in the earth for this Sunday folly. The
programme for the day is prepared on a scale of grandeur in direct ratio
to the length of his purse. The necessity of spending the entire week's
earnings is obvious, and to assist him in doing so seems to be the only
visible means of support of half the people of the town. The dance-house
and the gambling-saloon, flaunting their gaudy attractions, own him for
the hour their king. His Midas touch is all-powerful. I must confess,
with all my admiration for his character, that his tastes are low. I
know that the civilization of the East would bore him immeasurably, and
that he considers Colt, with his revolvers, a broader philanthropist
than Raikes with his Sunday schools. But he is frank and open, generous
and confiding, honorable and honest, scorning anything mean and
cowardly. Mention to him, in his prodigal waste of money, that a poor
woman or child is in want of the necessaries of life, and the
purse-strings open with a tear. Tell him that corruption and wrong have
worked an injury to a comrade or a stranger, and his pistol flashes only
too quickly, to right it. Circumstances have made him coarse and brutal,
but below all this surface beats a heart full of true instincts and
honest impulses. I am certain the recording angel will blot out many of
his sins, as he did those of Uncle Toby. His means exhausted, he
abdicates his ephemeral kingdom, and, uncomplaining, takes his pick and
shovel, his frying-pan, bacon, and flour, and starts over the mountains
for new diggings. Yet he gains no wisdom by experience. The same
bacchanalian orgies follow the