Project Gutenberg's Roughing It, Part 7., by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

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Title: Roughing It, Part 7.

Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

Release Date: July 2, 2004 [EBook #8588]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROUGHING IT, PART 7. ***

Produced by David Widger

ROUGHING IT

by Mark Twain

1880

Part 7.

CHAPTER LXI.

One of my comrades there--another of those victims of eighteen years of
unrequited toil and blighted hopes--was one of the gentlest spirits that
ever bore its patient cross in a weary exile: grave and simple Dick
Baker, pocket-miner of Dead-House Gulch.--He was forty-six, gray as a
rat, earnest, thoughtful, slenderly educated, slouchily dressed and
clay-soiled, but his heart was finer metal than any gold his shovel ever
brought to light--than any, indeed, that ever was mined or minted.

Whenever he was out of luck and a little down-hearted, he would fall to
mourning over the loss of a wonderful cat he used to own (for where women
and children are not, men of kindly impulses take up with pets, for they
must love something). And he always spoke of the strange sagacity of
that cat with the air of a man who believed in his secret heart that
there was something human about it--may be even supernatural.

I heard him talking about this animal once. He said:

"Gentlemen, I used to have a cat here, by the name of Tom Quartz, which
you'd a took an interest in I reckon--most any body would. I had him
here eight year--and he was the remarkablest cat I ever see. He was a
large gray one of the Tom specie, an' he had more hard, natchral sense
than any man in this camp--'n' a power of dignity--he wouldn't let the
Gov'ner of Californy be familiar with him. He never ketched a rat in his
life--'peared to be above it. He never cared for nothing but mining.
He knowed more about mining, that cat did, than any man I ever, ever see.
You couldn't tell him noth'n 'bout placer diggin's--'n' as for pocket
mining, why he was just born for it.

"He would dig