et long by six hundred wide,
with all the earth's precious bowels, had passed from Ronalds to Hanson,
and, in the passage, changed its name from the "Mammoth" to the
"Calistoga." I had tried to get Rufe to call it after his wife, after
himself, and after Garfield, the Republican Presidential candidate of
the hour--since then elected, and, alas! dead--but all was in vain. The
claim had once been called the Calistoga before, and he seemed to feel
safety in returning to that.

And so the history of that mine became once more plunged in darkness,
lit only by some monster pyrotechnical displays of gossip. And perhaps
the most curious feature of the whole matter is this: that we should
have dwelt in this quiet corner of the mountains, with not a dozen
neighbours, and yet struggled all the while, like desperate swimmers, in
this sea of falsities and contradictions. Wherever a man is, there will
be a lie.

TOILS AND PLEASURES

I must try to convey some notion of our life, of how the days passed and
what pleasure we took in them, of what there was to do and how we set
about doing it, in our mountain hermitage. The house, after we had
repaired the worst of the damages, and filled in some of the doors and
windows with white cotton cloth, became a healthy and a pleasant
dwelling-place, always airy and dry, and haunted by the outdoor perfumes
of the glen. Within, it had the look of habitation, the human look. You
had only to go into the third room, which we did not use, and see its
stones, its shifting earth, its tumbled litter; and then return to our
lodging, with the beds made, the plates on the rack, the pail of bright
water behind the door, the stove crackling in a corner, and perhaps the
table roughly laid against a meal,--and man's order, the little clean
spots that he creates to dwell in, were at once contrasted with the rich
passivity of nature. And yet our house was everywhere so wrecked and
shattered, the air came and went so freely, the sun found so many
portholes, the golden outdoor glow shone in so many open chinks, that we
enjoyed, at the same time, some of the comforts of a roof and much of
the gaiety and brightness of _al fresco_ life. A single shower of rain,
to be sure, and we should have been drowned out like mice. But ours was
a Californian summer, and an earthquake was a far likelier accident than
a shower of rain.

Trustful in this fine weather, we kept the house for kitche