CHAPTER LI.
Vice flourished luxuriantly during the hey-day of our "flush times." The saloons were overburdened with custom; so were the police courts, the gambling dens, the brothels and the jails--unfailing signs of high prosperity in a mining region--in any region for that matter.

Is it not so?
A crowded police court docket is the surest of all signs that trade is brisk and money plenty.

Still, there is one other sign; it comes last, but when it does come it establishes beyond cavil that the "flush times" are at the flood.

This is the birth of the "literary" paper.
The Weekly Occidental, "devoted to literature," made its appearance in Virginia.

All the literary people were engaged to write for it.