If ever I own a silver mine, I am going to have it situated at the base of a mountain, and not at the top. I would not care to take that journey we made to the Chance every day. I would rather sit in the office below and read reports. After one gets there, the best has been seen; for the general manager of the Last Chance Mine, to whom I had a letter of introduction, and indeed all the employés, guarded their treasure with the most praiseworthy and faithful vigilance. It was evident that they were quietly determined among themselves to resist any attempt on the part of the Yale man and myself to carry away the shaft with us. We could have done so only over their dead bodies. The general manager confounded me with the editor of the _Saturday Night_, which he said he reads, and which certainly ought to account for several things. I expected to be led into a tunnel, and to be shown delicate veins of white silver running around the sides, which one could cut out with a penknife and make into scarf-pins and watch guards. If not, from whence, then, do the nuggets come that the young and disappointed lover sends as a wedding present to the woman who should have married him, when she marries some other man who has sensibly remained in the East--a present, indeed, which has always struck me as extremely economical, and much cheaper than standing-lamps. But I saw no silver nuggets. One of the workmen showed us a hole in the side of the mountain which he assured us was the Last Chance Mine, and that out of this hole one hundred and eighty thousand dollars came every month. He then handed us a piece of red stone and a piece of black stone, and said that when these two stones were found together silver was not far off. To one thirsting for a sight of the precious metal this was about as satisfying as being told that after the invitations had been sent out and the awning stretched over the sidewalk there was a chance of a dance in the neighborhood. I was also told that the veins lie between walls of porphyry and trachyte, but that there is not a distinctly marked difference, as the walls resemble each other closely. This may or may not be true; it is certainly not interesting, and I regret that I cannot satisfy the mining expert as to the formation of the mine, or tell him whether or not the vein is a heavy galena running so much per cent. of lead, or a dry silicious ore, or whether the ore bodies were north and south, and are or are not true fissures, and at what angle the contact or body veins cut these same fissures. All of this I should have ascertained had the general manager been more genial; but we cannot expect one man to combine the riches of Montezuma and the graces of Chesterfield. One is sure to destroy the other.