My pen rebels against the necessity which spurs it to so swift a pace over details where it longs to linger. For those were hard but glorious days on the mountain; there were always new and strange men to be known among the crews, men whose emancipation from conventionality was complete, and whose personalities possessed a marvellous richness. The railway and statutory laws and honest women and the ten commandments were there, so that the camp “enjoyed the blessings of civilization,” and was widely different from the camps of earlier days--much to the regret of the older men who knew the earlier days and many of the younger ones who would have liked to know them. Already there were apparent the phases of human nature which seem by a curious contradiction to reveal themselves under the very protection of the vast improvement wrought by the reign of “law and order.” But the freer, braver elements of human nature were present, too, and were not always beneath the surface of convention. How it stirred one’s better blood to see those free, strong, natural men face one another in the common intercourse of life and meet the exigencies of their work! And under what spells have I sat looking in the eye some tawny-bearded giant of a prospector as he told of thirty years or more among the mountains and in the mining camps, of hardships endured and difficulties overcome and death and danger faced, and of the rare times when he “struck it rich,” and then the lordly, vicious days when he “blew it in!” How much may have been concocted for the ready ear of a tenderfoot I did not know; I only knew that it reeked with the red, raw blood of life, and whether true or false it thrust roots deep into grim and stanch realities. Hamilton will answer as the name of the engineer. It was in his office that the little coterie which I have mentioned would gather in the evenings. There were rough chairs of most comfortable shape, and there was always a roaring fire in the stove, for the nights were bitter cold, and a number of Hamilton’s drawings in crayons and blue prints were tacked upon the walls, for besides being a skilful engineer he was a splendid draughtsman. His surveying instruments stood together in a corner, and the ample tables were covered with unfinished drawings and with the tools of his art. Never was more diverting talk than that which ranged around the room where we sat in easy attitudes, with feet cocked up and chairs tilted, in the soft light of Hamilton’s well-shaded lamps and in a deepening density of tobacco-smoke. And the talk was catholic in its range, for the editor was an authority on local and state and national politics, and, as a recent convert to “free silver,” he could argue its cause with all the fervor of a novice. The barrister was a man of liberal education who had taught the classics and loved them, and who could, with real enthusiasm, lead the talk back from all things modern to “--those old days which poets say were golden.”