Among the various mining operations, there are many in which there are tunnels, and levels, and shafts of a metaphoric as well as of a literal character. This is peculiarly the case in our great cities: copper mines on Lake Superior, gold mines in Colorado and California, silver mines in Nevada and Utah, iron mines in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, have been exploited, in many instances, much more successfully in New York and Boston than at the places where they are located, or supposed to be located. In many instances, the mines which are sold have no existence whatever; millions of dollars have been paid in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and other cities, for mines which had no existence, or next to none. [Illustration: SPECULATORS AT THE MINES. DEMONSTRATING THE VALUE OF A SILVER MINE. MINES AND MINING ON PAPER. FAMILIAR SCENES.] [Sidenote: SELLING A SILVER MINE.] Some years ago, it was my fortune to become infected with the silver mining fever. It was at a time when speculators from the far West and the Pacific coast were abundant, and their operations upon the credulous and unsophisticated natives of Manhattan Island were wonderful to behold, and became disagreeable to remember. What poor innocents we were! I had had some experience with gold mines, and other mines, and I knew, or ought to have known, that honesty did not abound among their manipulators to any alarming extent. Most of those who came to New York with mines for sale were men of pleasing, though rough exterior, and their tongues were as flexible as the hair-spring of a watch. They could talk the ears from a donkey without moving a muscle; and the strangest part of it was, that the donkey would, generally, lose his aural appendages without knowing it: he would listen, and would deliberate, and, like the woman who deliberates, he would be lost. His hand (on the supposition that a donkey possesses hands) would go down to his pockets, and he would place the money—whether honestly or dishonestly acquired nobody knew—into the hands of the beguiling speculator; and the speculator thereupon would retire to the fastnesses of his hotel, and waste the substance of the verdant New Yorker in riotous living. I was introduced to one of these adventurers, who owned a silver mine of wonderful richness. Figures were exhibited, and a plan of the mine was spread before us: it was a gorgeous parchment. The mine, with its dips, and spurs, and angles, was carefully delineated. There was a picture of a crushing mill in full operation, and there was all the machinery portrayed on that parchment for running a first-class mine. A dozen of us were invited to meet the speculator the next day in a cosy little office where we could see specimens from the mines. The speculator was there at the appointed hour. We came, we saw, and _he_ conquered: there was a fortune before us.