telegraph operator who had been discharged by the company for
divulging the secrets of the office, agreed with a moneyed man in San
Francisco to furnish him the result of a great Virginia mining lawsuit
within an hour after its private reception by the parties to it in San
Francisco. For this he was to have a large percentage of the profits on
purchases and sales made on it by his fellow-conspirator. So he went,
disguised as a teamster, to a little wayside telegraph office in the
mountains, got acquainted with the operator, and sat in the office day
after day, smoking his pipe, complaining that his team was fagged out and
unable to travel--and meantime listening to the dispatches as they passed
clicking through the machine from Virginia. Finally the private dispatch
announcing the result of the lawsuit sped over the wires, and as soon as
he heard it he telegraphed his friend in San Francisco:

"Am tired waiting. Shall sell the team and go home."

It was the signal agreed upon. The word "waiting" left out, would have
signified that the suit had gone the other way.

The mock teamster's friend picked up a deal of the mining stock, at low
figures, before the news became public, and a fortune was the result.

For a long time after one of the great Virginia mines had been
incorporated, about fifty feet of the original location were still in the
hands of a man who had never signed the incorporation papers. The stock
became very valuable, and every effort was made to find this man, but he
had disappeared. Once it was heard that he was in New York, and one or
two speculators went east but failed to find him. Once the news came
that he was in the Bermudas, and straightway a speculator or two hurried
east and sailed for Bermuda--but he was not there. Finally he was heard
of in Mexico, and a friend of his, a bar-keeper on a salary, scraped
together a little money and sought him out, bought his "feet" for a
hundred dollars, returned and sold the property for $75,000.

But why go on? The traditions of Silverland are filled with instances
like these, and I would never get through enumerating them were I to
attempt do it. I only desired to give, the reader an idea of a
peculiarity of the "flush times" which I could not present so strikingly
in any other way, and which some mention of was necessary to a realizing
comprehension of the time and the country.

I was personally acquainted with the majority of the nabobs I hav