It." "Scattered to the ends of the earth, or prematurely aged or decrepit--or shot or stabbed in street affrays--or dead of disappointed hopes and broken hearts--all gone, or nearly all, victims devoted upon the altar of the golden calf." We could not have a more conclusive proof of the total atrophy of human nature this old Nevada life entailed. Innumerable repressions, I say, produced the fierce intensity of that life, which burnt itself out so quickly. We can see this, indeed, in the fact that it was marked by an incessant series of eruptions. The gold-seekers had come of their own volition, they had to maintain an outward equilibrium, they were sworn, as it were, to a conspiracy of masculine silence regarding these repressions, of which, in fact, in the intensity of their mania, they were scarcely aware. Nevertheless, the human organism will not submit to such conditions without registering one protest after another; accordingly, we find that in the mining-camps the practical joke was, as Mr. Paine says, "legal tender," profanity was almost the normal language, and murder was committed at all hours of the day and night. Mark Twain tells how, in Virginia City, murders were so common--that they were scarcely worth more than a line or two in the newspaper, and "almost every man" in the town, according to one of his old friends, "had fought with pistols either impromptu or premeditated duels." We have just noted that for Mark Twain this life was a life of chronic nervous exasperation. Can we not say now that, in a lesser degree, it was a life of chronic nervous exasperation for all the pioneers? But why? What do we mean when we speak of repressions? We mean that individuality, the whole complex of personal desires, tastes and preferences, is inhibited from expressing itself, from registering itself. The situation of the pioneers was an impossible one, but, victims as they were of their own thirst for gold, they could not withdraw from it; and their masculine pride prevented them even from openly complaining or criticising it. In this respect, as I have already pointed out, their position was precisely parallel to that of soldiers in the trenches. And, like the soldiers in the trenches, they were always on the verge of laughter, which philosophers generally agree in calling a relief from restraint.