But like all men who achieve success, he became an object of envy and suspicion.

The other assayers entered into a conspiracy against him, and let some prominent citizens into the secret in order to show that they meant fairly.

Then they broke a little fragment off a carpenter's grindstone and got a stranger to take it to the popular scientist and get it assayed.

In the course of an hour the result came--whereby it appeared that a ton of that rock would yield $1,184.40 in silver and $366.36 in gold! Due publication of the whole matter was made in the paper, and the popular assayer left town "between two days." I will remark, in passing, that I only remained in the milling business one week.

I told my employer I could not stay longer without an advance in my wages; that I liked quartz milling, indeed was infatuated with it; that I had never before grown so tenderly attached to an occupation in so short a time; that nothing, it seemed to me, gave such scope to intellectual activity as feeding a battery and screening tailings, and nothing so stimulated the moral attributes as retorting bullion and washing blankets--still, I felt constrained to ask an increase of salary.
He said he was paying me ten dollars a week, and thought it a good round sum.