Part 2 — EDITOR’S TABLE.

“GRAHAM” TO “JEREMY SHORT.”

My Dear Jeremy,—In my last I promised you a reminding hint, a sketch reflective and suggestive of mining operations, as an offset to the brilliant visions of “Gold Placers,” which haunt the mind, sleeping and waking, of Uncle Sam’s children. While multitudes are making haste to grow rich, by going around the Horn, and at the terminus of their long voyage will find themselves coming out of the little end of it, you and I may amuse ourselves over a subject somewhat kindred—a retrospective folly—feeling the while a good deal like the boy on getting rid of the jumping tooth-ache—“a heap better” are we, “now it is over.”

Copper! You have heard of it before, I believe? and may have about you a memorandum of a few thousands, entered on the credit side, not available now at your bankers. It was a very happy delusion, was it not? I’ll warrant me that you had already planned your cottage orné and had the walks laid out, and the shrubbery planted quite tastefully and imaginatively picturesque. Several castles, with steeples rather airy, of my own, were toppled down, and elegantly bronzed as they were, are quite useless now for purposes of reproduction, so that we may say, that we have had some of the advantages of wealth without a present care in disposing of it. The servant girl who wished for riches “that she might ride in her carriage and feel like missus,” had the delights of anticipation only, poor soul! while ours are embodied in the delicious reflection of having passed that “missus” on the road, with a pair of fast trotters—taking the air with quite an air, at the rate of “two forty.”

“Come easy, go fast,” was the remark of an old German Uncle, who, having made a fortune by hard knocks at the anvil, looked with a quiet smile at these thousands in perspective. In regard to the horses, the old gentleman was right—but as the money never came, I think his premises were altogether wrong. One thing is certain, real estate rose very rapidly in our vicinity at that time, and as several lots went off at spanking prices, to be kept out of our clutches, we may be said to have been benefactors to the sellers and conveyancers. So that copper—the vilest of metal—may, in some crucibles, be transformed into gold. But not to anticipate.

Grubemout had been upon the mountain-side, which overlooks the delightful village of Fleeceington, for a month or more, making careful chiselings from rocks, and excavations at their sides. Uptosnuff carried his pick-axe and his basket. The “collection” gradually swelled upon their hands, until it became quite formidable; and the “choice specimens,” were without number, rich, and without reason, rare. Drawitwell, the host of “The Hawk and Buzzard,” had his eye upon their movements, and always made it a point to take a peep at their basket when they descended in the evening. He was an open-eyed sort of an old lark, who had had his own way in the village at election times and at trainings, by virtue of a colonelcy and aidship to the governor—a cheap sort of payment for service rendered—and he felt as if nothing of importance ought to transpire in the place, unless he had a hand in it. Drawitwell did not like the air of mystery with which his lodgers slipped the covered basket up stairs, after they had performed their ablutions; nor the roaring noise made overhead, as the “specimens” were poured into the two great chests, previously prepared; and he was just the man to get at the bottom of a mare’s nest. So, by virtue of appliances best known to himself, he contrived to get a look at the collected specimens, and made up his mind at once that the thing was too slily managed by half, and that if there was wealth in the rocks he would have a finger in the transaction. “He would at any rate.”

Crispin, the village cobbler, had thrown his eyes from his lapstone, across the creek, and up the hill-side, to take note of the motions of “the wandering stone-crackers,” as he called them, and his brain was in a pother.

The blacksmith had sharpened their pick more than once, which had put on edge his curiosity, and had “contrived to pick their brains, while they pecked the rocks,” as he jocosely remarked, and he had smelt metal in their movements.

Over their evening ale, at the tavern, the probabilities and possibilities of gold or silver being found in the mountain, were discussed with various degrees of profundity, and the certainty that something of the kind was there, was most sagely resolved on. Time, in whose crucible all doubts are solved, soon confirmed their sagacity by a “copper button” presented to the landlord with the compliments of Uptosnuff, with hints, but not positive injunctions as to secrecy. He knew his man.

“What do you think of that?” asked Drawitwell, of his cronies the same evening, with an air of authority, holding up the copper button. “What do you think of that, my lads?”

“Hellow!” exclaimed the bewildered cobbler, “landlord, why—why is that goold?”

“Gold, you fool! No, it’s not gold—but it’s a precious sight more valuable—because there is a great deal more of it used.”

“Why what on earth is it, then?” asked the blacksmith, in amazement.

“It’s Copper! my lads! Copper!!”

“Copper!!”

“Yes, I reckon it is!—and the genuine metal, too! And the mountain is as full of it as an egg is of meat! Only melt down one of the rocks up there, and you’ll see how it will fly out!”

To have stopped the spread of such information as this, would have surpassed the ingenuity of our clerical friend, who was opposed to the Magnetic Telegraph, as “a device of the devil.” There was a California excitement in a village, with California itself in their own mountain. He would have been a lucky traveler, who could have had his horse shod for a guinea, or a bridle-rein mended for double the amount.

“You see, my lads!” says Drawitwell, haranguing the crowd, “they are going to do the fair thing by us, they have bought the land, and are getting their act of incorporation ready, and we are all to have shares in it at a reasonable rate—and I reckon I’ll have a few, or money must be scarce in Fleeceington. There’ll be high times at the “Hawk and Buzzard”, now, I should say, when every man in this prosperous village can be an owner, for a small sum, in one of the richest mines on the face of the earth. You see it’s going to be most unconscionable high, too—it’s now twenty-two cents a pound—for the government is advertising for it in the newspapers—no doubt to make bullets with to match the infernal poisonous Mexicans. Gad, we’ll give the rascals a taste of their own physic, now, I reckon! And then don’t they make water-pipes with it now, and sheetings. And don’t they cover houses with it, and ships; and I guess the time is not far off when government will have her mint on this spot—and what’s to hinder us, then from spending our own coppers, bran new, ha! ha! If any body here has got a farm for sale, I’m his man!”

As for buying farms, the thing was perfectly absurd now, and Drawitwell should have known it; for who could tell that there was not a copper-mine under every one of them. It was not to be supposed either that the good people of Fleeceington could keep the knowledge of such extraordinary wealth all to themselves, and our usually quiet city was all agog, with the wondrous stories of the extent and richness of the mines; and to confirm its truth, Grubemout and Uptosnuff were here with the charter, and the script elegantly engraved, and any number of specimens, and copper-buttons confirmatory.

In a day or two a few shares were in the market at “a slight advance on the original cost.” Capitalists had been up who thought they “knew a thing or two”—and gudgeons began to nibble, the knowing ones among the number. The market advanced. One, two, three, four hundred per cent. was quickly achieved as competitors increased; and considering that the first cost was perhaps a dollar an acre, for an unwooded, untillable, rocky hillside, curved up and set down at a dollar per square foot as “original cost,” the profit was tempting—the market active—ditto the original holders. There was a fierce avidity for a stock which advanced at such rapid strides, and the reckless became crazy, the cautious reckless and visionary. “The Board”—knowing dogs—looked on for a while doubtfully, but in amazement. The “Outsiders” indulged in ecstasies and fanciful millions. Thousands were added up upon stock-books, as if they were “trifles light as air”—and they were. Merchants cut the shop—lawyers the red tape and sheep-skin—editors told the messenger for copy to “go to the devil”—and all became “gentlemen on ’change.” Healths were drunk “to the United Copper-Heads”—and champagne and Havanas “suffered some.” Fun and puns flashed fast and furious—and all this the while the great bubble rose up, expanding and beautifying as it ascended.

It was not to be expected that a single mountain should contain all this good luck exclusively, and in various quarters envious copper-rocks poked their noses out, quite seductively to anxious companies, who formed upon the spot. One gigantic intellect proposed the formation of a company to shovel the sand off of the whole State of New Jersey, so as to get at the substratum, at once and emphatically. Copper became substantially the great business of life—the only business of the board—the board being in fact rather a small affair while copper abounded.

Sharp occupied his time in buying up superfluous real estate, which seemed to have been infected by copper, and showed a disposition to rise—and he was afraid it might go up and never come down again. The conveyancers assured him that he ought to take it—like a sportsman—on the wing, right and left. He did, and clapped a heavy mortgage on it to keep it steady.

That disturbed the figures on Flat’s memorandum—for he hoped to have bought and paid for it with his expected profit on copper, and to have staggered somebody else’s property with a mortgage from the surplus. It was provoking.

Jones and Wilkins resolved to “take a shy at the copper anyway, while it was going;” but the stock of all the companies seemed shy of them. They “bid ten dollars through a broker”—it was twelve. “Bid twelve”—it was fourteen. Wilkins had had enough of it. He believed it was “only a bubble blown up to catch the eyes of fools. He was done with it.” But Jones was down in the morning, as merry as a lark, and as early. He “knew some of the outsiders, and thought he would catch some of them before the morning was over.” He did—and went home to dinner, having made “a fortunate hit.”

“Five hundred shares,” said he, “at fifteen, and the last sale ‘after board,’ nineteen and a half! Four dollars and fifty cents per share. Five aught is naught; five fives are twenty-five, five fours are twenty, and two are twenty-two. Twenty-two hundred and fifty dollars—that will do for one day, I should say. Wilkins would like me to give him half, as we were to have gone in together yesterday, but I wonder what Wilkins ever did for me, that I should give him eleven hundred and twenty-five dollars! Not quite so green!”

The next morning Grubemout brought down some specimens, which “he thought” would yield forty per cent. if they were assayed, and thought that they ought to make an assessment of a dollar a share, so as to put on more hands and drive out the ore. Jones said that “that was right enough.”

The assessment was called in, at which the stock hesitated for a day or two—made a start and went on—but a second installment being urged, it faltered a little, and then stopped. At the third it “declined a shade,” at which the “bears” gave a shake and a growl.

But Grubemout had—in the nick of time—“just received a letter from the mines of the most important nature, which it would not do to show in ‘the street,’ or the stock would be balooning it—Uptosnuff had just made a cross-cut.”

“The deuce he has!” exclaimed Jones, rather nervously. “What is that?”

“A cross-cut, you see,” says Grubemout, “is nothing more than ‘a shaft’ run at right angles past the old one we have been working. He struck some glorious ‘deposites,’ and—”

“Why I thought you always said there was a vein, Grubemout? These deposites are confoundedly leaky and treacherous affairs.”

“And so there is a vein, my boy, and we are just getting into it; deposites are always the first thing we look for in copper mining. As long as we have them we get on swimmingly; but you are so confoundedly skittish! I was just going to tell you, that in making the ‘cross-cut,’ Uptosnuff has struck ‘the master vein!’ and found an old ‘drift’ in the mountain, which you will see after a while, is important. In it he found old hatchets, and hammers, and images in copper, supposed to have been the rude efforts at mining and smelting by the Indians long ago—say before the Dutch had taken Holland, or achieved the renowned name of Knickerbockers, and had gone home copper-fastened.”

Information so desirable as this would work its way out somehow, and gentlemen would now bet you a trifle—say champagne and cigars—that a dividend of twenty-five per cent. would be declared on the stock the first year; or would give you a hundred dollars for agreeing to pay the annual dividend on a hundred shares.

Jones is “satisfied now,” and forthwith buys five hundred shares more, as do other Joneses, and Browns, and Greens. Outsiders became as plenty as gooseberries, and as verdant; and it would seem, from the number of shares reported at the Board, and “after,” that certificates had quadrupled, and never could multiply fast enough to supply the demand. Indeed, as one old gentleman was heard to end a prolonged whistle, by exclaiming—“Gas!” the market became so inflated that the Joneses, Browns, and Greens, declined the attempt of cornering the stock, in despair.

“The company,” called for an additional installment at once. “Why, what the deuce,” asks Jones, “does the company want with more installments? Haven’t they got copper enough!”

“Copper ore, my dear fellow,” responded Grubemout. “Yes, lots of it. But Uptosnuff wasn’t brought up in a Cornish mine for nothing. The furnaces at Baltimore and Boston want it for half-price, but as they are nearly out, we intend to make them smoke, ha! ha! But we must go to the expense of an “adate” in the meanwhile.”

“Why, what’s the use of that—what good will that do?” asks Jones. “What is an adate, anyway?”

Poor Jones had a good deal yet to learn about copper-mining, and felt naturally alarmed at these ominous terms. The “cross-cut” was the beginning of puzzlers. He had yet to see—I may as well say he ultimately did see, “the drift,” to help along “the pumps,” as well as the adate with installments, and to become familiar with a variety of mining lore, which assists knowledge in its acquisition, by obligingly allowing us to pay for it. But I believe he never did understand “what they wanted with so many work-shops—he thought they were miners!”

“An adate, Jones, is only a drain to relieve the mine when it is overcharged with water.”

“Oh! is that all!”

But this calling in of installments seems to be a sort of patent condenser in the stock market, and shows with how much force a given quantity of air can be squeezed into a given compass.

Grubemout was as active as a bee at sunrise, and offered his advice gratuitously—but “confidentially”—to any number of anxious inquirers—but some of them having a copper-mine of their own, by the attractive and taking name of “Penny-wise Company,” and others having taken a snap with the “Alligator Mountain Company,” and not liking the bite they received, shook their heads at Fleeceington and looked knowing—the “New Jersey” chaps were quite sprightly, for as their title covered the whole State, they had a fair chance of realizing something when the “Mammoth Shoveling Company” got to work, and lifted the crust off.

Grubemout assured them—“on his honor”—that “the Company did not intend to sell an ounce of its ore to the furnaces. They intended to have ‘a crushing machine’ of their own erected at once, and proceed in a style that would soon settle the whole business.”

Jones was “ready for any number of crushers or mashers, grinders or pounders. Head up the creek—dam it! Put up the water-works and the mill-wheel, and give it to the blasted furnaces! Carry the war into Africa!” said he.

The installment to carry on the adate was paid, though it depressed the stock, but Jones could not see how having paid the company five thousand dollars in installments should depress his stock in the market. “Hang it!” said he, “the company is that much richer in property and excavations, and don’t I belong to the company—haven’t I a thousand shares? It’s only paying money out of one pocket, and putting into the other. Wilkins may laugh, but he’s a fool! That’s a capital idea about the furnace. You’re a boy, Uptosnuff—you are?”

The installment for crushing purposes was soon called in also, and paid, though the stock looked sickly, and trembled as if it had the ague, or had passed through a crushing process on its own hook. It was just composing itself when Uptosnuff discovered that it was of the highest importance to the company to have a small engine and an iron pump erected at the mines at once, as the richest ore is always found below water level!

Jones—the active, energetic Jones—“had no doubt of it at all. The Cornish miners assured him, when he was up, that as soon as they got below water level, they would come to something that couldn’t be trifled with. If Wilkins wasn’t a fool he would go in soon, before it gets out.”

Uptosnuff, too, had had a quantity of the late ore assayed, and Professor Stuffemwell, Geologist to Her Majesty, thought it would do bravely. If ore that yielded fifty per cent. would not, he would like to know how her majesty’s subjects got rich, after paying the miners, on mines that yield but fifteen per cent.

Copper buttons now replenished the pockets of dealers, and the stock made several violent gasps and starts for a desirable existence. But it was consumptive—evidently going into a rapid decline. The crushing process and the iron pump having depressed its spirits, and exhausted still further its vital energy.

Grubemout thought that if the buttons were pressed into bars, and shown upon Change it might be encouraging, and mitigate the violence of the disease; but some wag of a broker suggested that it was “a BAR sinister;” which remark sinister ruffled the backs of the bars, caused the bulls to toss their horns unpleasantly, and shook still further the liveliness of the stock, which drooped visibly under the imputation.

Even Jones—the ardent, trustful Jones—got earnestly anxious about the state of the patient, and “suggested a consultation.”

Brown was full of good intentions, but “pleaded debility of the pocket, which, under heavy depletion, was rather low.”

Green was a little vivacious, and “suggested a new cross-cut.”

Grubemout was pleased with the idea, and hinted at “a new installment.”

Uptosnuff had “missed the stage, and was unable to get down to the meeting.”

Wilkins, in answer to a pressing invitation to “come in,” was “busy selling goods.”

Sharp would not attend—“he had never had any thing to do with the rascally copper, and found his real estate bad enough just now.”

Flat “had enough of copper stock—it was not very heavy, to be sure, having rather a tendency to dissolve into air, its original element, but he was satisfied.”

The Stock grew feebler after consultation, as patients are apt to, in critical cases, from want of remedy.

The Bulls looked surly, as if they had been disappointed in pasture.

The Bears were as frisky as it is possible to be on a frosty morning, and were so much in their own element, that you looked involuntarily around for floating icebergs—and copper in this temperature of the atmosphere sunk into a torpor.

On Change, in this changing world of ours, copper looked blue.

The Outsiders had rubbed out their pencil-marks on stock memorandums, and dissipating the written evidence of thousands that had vanished into air, they themselves vanished. It was needless to say any thing to them about copper, they “never had any thing to do with it, beyond a hundred shares or so, which they sold out before the bubble looked like bursting.” Stockdom was desolate, save that a few of the bears showed their teeth, and grinned as furiously as if they had just arrived fresh from the Polar regions, and had brought any quantity of wet blankets with them. Yet they looked as if they would rather than not that any dealer in copper should take hold of them. The bulls were more plentiful—looked savage but knowing, but showed no disposition to dash at imaginary enemies in scarlet, having rather a taste left for their friends, the Browns and the Greens, who were urgently entreated to “come in again, and help sustain the market.”

The case was desperate, and desperate remedies were resolved on. It was deemed advisable to “ask the opinion of the directors!”

The directors “have no opinion of the stock! They never had,” of their own. They trusted to Grubemout, to Uptosnuff, to the Cornish miners. Their geological and mineralogical education, had been shockingly neglected in their youth, and they have verified the fact, by having on their hands, a thousand shares apiece at high prices, by having assisted to sustain the market in the various stages of the experiment. But “they would like to know who were the ‘original’ stockholders of the company who did them the honor to elect them.”

Grubemout “thought it of the highest importance that they should know, and as the original book of minutes was up at the mines and as he was going up by the next stage, would write and send them.”

It would be, perhaps, as well to give his letter:

Fleeceington, Dec. 10, 18—.

Gentlemen,—I arrived safely at the mines last evening, after rather a fatiguing journey by stage, and found, to my unspeakable amazement, that Uptosnuff had exhausted the vein, and that as no more deposites are to be found he had thought it advisable to abandon the mine. The tools, viz., four pickaxes, three shovels, and two wheelbarrows—rather dilapidated—the property of the company, I have put under shelter, to preserve them from the weather—subject to your order or disposal. The iron pump I should have removed also, but being rather heavy in the absence of the hands—who have gone back to their farms—I found it impossible to take in. It cannot, however, suffer from rust more than ten per cent., and as the original cost was but seventy dollars, the loss to the company will be inconsiderable. There is a trifle of two hundred dollars due, for boarding the hands, to the host of the “Roaring Lion,” who will forward you his account by this mail. As Uptosnuff and myself have suffered a great deal from anxiety, and exposure in the mines of the company, we deem it proper to seek a more genial clime. Any little complimentary remuneration which you may see proper to bestow on us, you will please enclose to Mr. Drawitwell, of the Hawk and Buzzard, to whom we are indebted for various little civilities, in the shape of breakfast, dinner and supper, for the past six months, and which no doubt the generosity of your complimentary donation will amply cover.

Enclosed are “the original minutes.” Uptosnuff wishes to be remembered by you. I join in the same prayer.

Yours, as ever,

Christian Grubemout, Pres’t.

To the Directors, Stockholders, etc.

P. S. Please ask Jones to think of us. Not that it is any of our business, but would like to know whether he ever divided with Wilkins—it would be civil, you know. Regards to the Bulls. Uptosnuff says ditto to the Bears, for there is no knowing when one may want a friend, and civility costs nothing.

C. G.

Minutes, First Meeting.—At a large and enthusiastic meeting of the joyous and delighted inhabitants of the charming and romantic village of Fleeceington, held at “The Hawk and Buzzard Hotel,” to elect officers for the newly discovered, freshly chartered, and highly valuable and productive Copper Mine, just incorporated by an act of the Legislature, under the name, style and title, to wit:

“The Grand Open Sesame and United Catchem Copper Mining, Crushing, Stamping, Pumping and Smelting Company,”

Christian Grubemout, Eliakim Uptosnuff, J. Drawitwell, T. Crispin and John Smith, the original incorporators of the Company, after regaling themselves, proceeded to the election of officers, and knowing that in the goodly city of Philadelphia there were a number of persons by the names of Jones, Brown and Green, and not a few Sharps and Flats, they, in order to avoid giving offence, placed in a hat the whole of the names, as above, found in the Directory, (significant of the office they were to hold,) and drew the following first three names, A. Jones, B. Flat, C. Green, directing them to supply vacancies, and to fill additions to the number of five; adding in the meanwhile the names of the first two corporators, as ex-officio directors, to conduct silently the operations of the mines, and to enlighten the others as to the true plan of working copper-mines profitably and efficiently.

(Signed) C. GRUBEMOUT, Pres’t.

E. Uptosnuff, Sec’ry.

The cleverness and explicitness of the whole transaction showed that it had been done neatly; and the Directors with singular unanimity felt themselves included in the operation.

There can be no doubt that Grubemout and Uptosnuff are among the “placers” in California. The one being undeniably the man who sold the two barrels of brandy, by installments of a thimblefull at a time, for $14,000—the other, with positive certainty, we aver to have been the man who “confidentially” communicated the following item to the newspaper press, and he must have been there to have seen it:

“

The Biggest Lump Yet?—The following is about the latest news from the gold diggins that we have seen recorded in the ‘papers:’ A runaway soldier is said to have discovered a lump or a rock of gold that weighed 889 pounds and 11½ ounces; he was afraid to leave it, and mounted guard upon it, and at the latest dates he had sat there 17 days; had offered $27,000 for a plate of pork and beans, but had been indignantly refused, and laughed at for the niggardliness of his offer, by parties going further on, where this article was said to be more abundant!”

Jones is among the lame ducks, and pretty roughly plucked at that. But he still avers that if the furnaces had only paid a good price for the ore at the outset, or Wilkins had only helped him to sustain the market when he asked him, he should have been the master of a pretty snug little fortune. If he only had it now, he would charter a steamer, and take his own freight and passengers for the gold mines.

The Hawk and Buzzard appears to have been “pidgeoned,” for the last time I passed that way the house was shut up. The business having amused itself by stepping over to the Roaring Lion, while the Hawk and Buzzard had flown to the city, “to watch the market.”

Crispin “would only like to have one of those fellows tied for a while, until he had expressed his opinion on him with a stirrup.”

Smith appears to be solicitous to “make them intimately acquainted with the red-hot end of a poker—he’d smelt ’em, dam ’em, and crush ’em too!”

The “Dam,” the “Drift,” the “Cross-Cut,” the “Iron Pump” and the “Adate,” you can see as you go wood-cock shooting next August—but the “Steam-Engine” and the “Mill-Wheel” never arrived, owing to some informality in the order given to the mechanics.

“The Crusher,” it is supposed, is in California with its friends.

G.R.G.