Under the auspices of Jem Fair (Slippery Jem, as he was called; why, I know not, for he was as straight and upright as the Nelson Column, but in the old mining days every man had a nickname, whether it fitted or not), we were shown much that the ordinary, haphazard traveller has no opportunity of seeing. He took us down the famous Consolidated Virginia Mine, where, far down in the bowels of the earth, we saw men stripped to the waist, working for dear life, hacking out wealth from the solid rock, like the Nibelungen of the Rhine Legends. Curly Bill had given the heat no more than its due. The half naked miners were streaming with perspiration, and we were glad when the lift swung us up again out of the rich gloom of Tartarus into the bright air of Heaven. The machinery of the mine was stupendous. Fair told me that much of it was imported from England. He said that it was only in England that they could rely upon the truthfulness of the make. Things have changed in the last forty years! Now we hear of steel rails being bought for England in America; then it was only the British manufacturer who could be trusted to produce the most important articles needed by the miners, such as steel belts, for instance. Jem Fair’s talk, like that of all men who have done something in the world, was worth listening to, and he had a way of expressing the shrewd commonsense of his opinions in short, compact sentences that were almost epigrams. I recollect an answer of his which was very much to the point. Someone asked him what were the prospects of a certain mine which had just been started; he replied: “Well, sir, a miner can see no further than the end of his pick.” It was a golden rule with him that a man should not invest money in a concern too remote for him to have any voice in its management. He made his millions in the mines which he controlled; he invested them in real estate in San Francisco. To a young Englishman who wished to follow his lead he said: “No, sir, you’re too far off.” “But,” said the Englishman, “see how you’ve succeeded.” “Yes, sir, but I’m here.” There was all the wisdom of a financial Solomon in that little word “here,” and the look which accompanied it. I saw Jem Fair again in the autumn, when he urged me to go and see him before returning home. I wonder why it is that one seems to know a man better if one sees him twice with an interval than if one were to spend the same length of days or hours with him at one spell? Anyhow, I grew very fond of Fair, and heard from him fitfully till his death. He became Senator for Nevada, but never took kindly to politics, and I think the happiest days of his life were those of the old mining outfit before he had become a great money potentate, after which wealth and sorrow and many cares weighed upon him heavily.