sack in Carson city and several California towns; also
in San Francisco. Then he took it east and sold it in one or two
Atlantic cities, I think. I am not sure of that, but I know that he
finally carried it to St. Louis, where a monster Sanitary Fair was being
held, and after selling it there for a large sum and helping on the
enthusiasm by displaying the portly silver bricks which Nevada's donation
had produced, he had the flour baked up into small cakes and retailed
them at high prices.

It was estimated that when the flour sack's mission was ended it had been
sold for a grand total of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in
greenbacks! This is probably the only instance on record where common
family flour brought three thousand dollars a pound in the public market.

It is due to Mr. Gridley's memory to mention that the expenses of his
sanitary flour sack expedition of fifteen thousand miles, going and
returning, were paid in large part if not entirely, out of his own
pocket. The time he gave to it was not less than three months.
Mr. Gridley was a soldier in the Mexican war and a pioneer Californian.
He died at Stockton, California, in December, 1870, greatly regretted.

CHAPTER XLVI.

There were nabobs in those days--in the "flush times," I mean. Every
rich strike in the mines created one or two. I call to mind several of
these. They were careless, easy-going fellows, as a general thing, and
the community at large was as much benefited by their riches as they were
themselves--possibly more, in some cases.

Two cousins, teamsters, did some hauling for a man and had to take a
small segregated portion of a silver mine in lieu of $300 cash. They
gave an outsider a third to open the mine, and they went on teaming. But
not long. Ten months afterward the mine was out of debt and paying each
owner $8,000 to $10,000 a month--say $100,000 a year.

One of the earliest nabobs that Nevada was delivered of wore $6,000 worth
of diamonds in his bosom, and swore he was unhappy because he could not
spend his money as fast as he made it.

Another Nevada nabob boasted an income that often reached $16,000 a
month; and he used to love to tell how he had worked in the very mine
that yielded it, for five dollars a day, when he first came to the
country.

The silver and sage-brush State has knowledge of another of these pets of
fortune--lifted from actual poverty to affluence almost in a single
night--who was able to