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I paid assessments on "Hale and Norcross" until they sold me out, and
I had to take in washing for a living--and the next month that infamous
stock went up to $7,000 a foot.
I own millions and millions of feet of affluent silver leads in
Nevada--in fact the entire undercrust of that country nearly, and if
Congress would move that State off my property so that I could get at
it, I would be wealthy yet. But no, there she squats--and here am I.
Failing health persuades me to sell. If you know of any one desiring
a permanent investment, I can furnish one that will have the virtue of
being eternal.
I have been through the California mill, with all its "dips, spurs and
angles, variations and sinuosities." I have worked there at all the
different trades and professions known to the catalogues. I have
been everything, from a newspaper editor down to a cow-catcher on a
locomotive, and I am encouraged to believe that if there had been a few
more occupations to experiment on, I might have made a dazzling success
at last, and found out what mysterious designs Providence had in
creating me.
But you perceive that although I am not a Pioneer, I have had a
sufficiently variegated time of it to enable me to talk Pioneer like a
native, and feel like a Forty-Niner. Therefore, I cordially welcome you
to your old-remembered homes and your long deserted firesides, and close
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