But not long.

Ten months afterward the mine was out of debt and paying each owner $8,000 to $10,000 a month--say $100,000 a year.
One of the earliest nabobs that Nevada was delivered of wore $6,000 worth of diamonds in his bosom, and swore he was unhappy because he could not spend his money as fast as he made it.
Another Nevada nabob boasted an income that often reached $16,000 a month; and he used to love to tell how he had worked in the very mine that yielded it, for five dollars a day, when he first came to the country.
The silver and sage-brush State has knowledge of another of these pets of fortune--lifted from actual poverty to affluence almost in a single night--who was able to offer $100,000 for a position of high official distinction, shortly afterward, and did offer it--but failed to get it, his politics not being as sound as his bank account.
Then there was John Smith.

He was a good, honest, kind-hearted soul, born and reared in the lower ranks of life, and miraculously ignorant.
He drove a team, and owned a small ranch--a ranch that paid him a comfortable living, for although it yielded but little hay, what little it did yield was worth from $250 to $300 in gold per ton in the market.
Presently Smith traded a few acres of the ranch for a small undeveloped silver mine in Gold Hill.

He opened the mine and built a little unpretending ten-stamp mill.

Eighteen months afterward he retired from the hay business, for his mining income had reached a most comfortable figure.