A certain room in El Palacio is devoted to assaying the precious ores. Its blackened, time-stained rafters look as though they might fall any moment; but believers in luck rest in calm assurance that the catastrophe will not occur in their time. Vainly is the tale told how the very day Governor Merriwether took possession of the Palace, to assume the executive duties of the territory, the roof of the room in which he had once been a prisoner fell in. Nobody scares at that old story now. The slanting beam overhead will not drop till we are out of the way; the crumbling adobes will hold together awhile yet. No use running till you are hurt. There is too much actual danger about us to allow the sensationalist a chance to waken fears. The mud walls of the room I speak of were once papered; but the hanging has flaked off, revealing the brown ground, making splotches here and there, like a disease. Cobwebs of pre-historic antiquity hang in lines, like ropes of dirty rags. The one north window is obscured by dust and fly-specks, the dull panes and deep walls letting in a dim and not religious light. It was formerly a bedroom, I believe. Of the living things which still may burrow in the walls, as the French women say, I beseech you to suppose them. The bare floor is dusty and gritty with sand. In one corner is a barrel of charcoal; beside it pine kindling and old newspapers. A long pine table holds the assayer’s tools--the many contrivances necessary to his vocation. Scales that weigh with the delicate nicety of Portia’s, blow-pipes, bottles of acids, mortar and pestles, little hammers, and sieves, beside waiting specimens, done up in muslin, carefully separated and labeled. Such stones come in every mail, every train, every ambulance, every pocket. “Blossom rocks” adorn window-sill and mantelpiece, street-corners and counters, serve as paper-weights and door-props, and are a stumbling-block and rock of offense along the sidewalks. I am not here to talk of chlorides, pyrites, sulphurets, silica, and manganese; but only to remark, _en passant_, that free gold and ruby silver are pretty terms--very pretty, indeed--and easily understood by any lady in the land. At this table presides the refiner and purifier of silver--the Man of Destiny. It may be a Freiburg professor, with flowing beard and a name in harsh discord with the mellifluous Spanish titles, or a graduate of a New York school of mines. No matter. He understands his business and on his fiat hang hopes high as the sky, for to him are submitted samples of raw ores believed valuable, and now comes the question: Is the deposit represented rich enough to justify deep digging--in other words, to make a mine of? The honest miner’s flush of hope and sinking of fear are comparable only to the tremor of the quivering aspirant for literary fame, who, with darling MS. in hand, respectfully addresses the torturer, and withdraws to await his doom.