They were dreadful little story-tellers, I am very much afraid; and the long faces pulled, as soon as I came out, in contrast with all the recent glee and frolic, suggested to even the youngest charity suspicions of some inconsistency.
However, they were so ingenious and clever that they worked my pockets like the pump itself, only with this unhappy difference, that the former had no inexhaustible spring of silver, or even of copper.
And thus, by a reason (as cogent as any of more exalted nature), was I driven back to my head-quarters, there to abide till a fresh supply should come.

For Uncle Sam, generous and noble as he was, did not mean to let me melt all away at once my share of the great Blue River nugget, any more than to make ducks and drakes of his own.

Indeed, that rock of gold was still untouched, and healthily reposing in a banker's cellar in the good town of Sacramento.

People were allowed to go in and see it upon payment of a dollar, and they came out so thirsty from feasting upon it that a bar was set up, and a pile of money made--all the gentlemen, and ladies even worse than they, taking a reckless turn about small money after seeing that.

But dear Uncle Sam refused every cent of the profit of all this excitable work.