The Comstock Club

The Club had now been running a month. It had been most enjoyable. When Yap Sing had been installed as cook and housekeeper he was given a memorandum book, on the first page of...

"The soldier leads an assault; it lasts but a few minutes; he knows that whether he lives or dies, immortality will be his reward. What wonder that there are brave soldiers!

MY DEAR SISTER:--I wrote you briefly of the dispatch announcing the death of my brother James, in a Nevada mine, and that his embalmed body was being brought home by two miners....

The next evening when supper was prepared, Harding was not present. He had bruised one hand so badly in the mine the previous day, that he was forced to have it bound up and tre...

About this time Virginia City was visited one day by a heavy rain storm accompanied with thunder. But as the sun was disappearing behind Mount Davidson, the clouds broke and rol...

Just after the lamps were lighted the next evening the door opened and the Professor, Colonel Savage and Alex Strong came in. The greetings were warm all around, and at once con...

At length the first sorrow fell upon the Club. The mail brought to Corrigan one day the news of the death of his mother in New York. It was a terrible blow to him. It had been h...

Pay day was on the fifth of the month. On the night of the thirteenth, when the Club met at the usual hour for supper, Miller was not present. He was never as regular as the oth...

One morning about the twenty-fifth of the month the five miners who were left went away to their work as usual, but all were unusually depressed, as though a sense of sorrow or...

When the Club reassembled Carlin, addressing the Colonel, said: "You told us of a royal old bummer last night, and Miller told us of an angel in miner's garb. Your stories remin...

"All your royal people so far, though not perfect men, have had redeeming traits. I once knew one who had not a single characteristic, except, perhaps, some pluck. My man was si...

An early breakfast was prepared by the whole Club, as the supper of the previous evening had been. The miners had to be at the mines, where they worked, promptly at 7 o'clock, t...

"It was shabby of us not to give more heed to your story last night, but the truth with me was, I was very tired. We were cutting out a station on the 2,300 level of the mine, y...

As he spoke the bending rays of the rising sun swept along the sterile earth, and a shimmer in the air close to the ground revealed how swiftly the heat waves were advancing.

At length there came a day when there was real trouble in the Club. The foreman of the mine in which Wright was at work ordered Wright and a fellow miner to go to the surface to...

With the lighting of the pipes one evening, the conversation of the Club turned upon what constituted courage and a high sense of honor; whether they were native or acquired gif...

"Carlin was right last night," began Miller, "when he said that all men were naturally lazy. Laziness is a fixed principle in this world. I can prove it by my friend Wand down a...

"You took too gloomy a view of things last night. What you said, or rather something in your tone, has haunted me ever since. But you were wrong. The Argonauts will not be forgo...

About four o'clock in the afternoon of the day appointed for commencing housekeeping, our miners gathered at this new home. The provisions, bedding and chairs had been sent in a...

"Not a bit of it," answered Corrigan sharply. "It hurt for awhile, I confess it, but a year and a half after Maggie was married, I passed her house one avenin' in the gloaming,...