little fortune for some one he loves; this one has a home in his mind's
eye which he means to purchase; this one has relatives whom he dreams of
making happy, while others have visions of honors and fame, so soon as
something which is in their thoughts shall materialize.

"Then the occupation itself and the results have a tendency, I think, to
exalt men. To begin with, the work is a steady struggle against nature's
tremendous forces. The rock has to be blasted, the waters controlled, the
consuming heat tempered, the swelling clay confined, and to do this men
have to employ great agents. A silver mine generally has Desolation
placed as a watch above it. To work it everything has to be carried to
it. The forest away off on some mountain side has to be felled and hauled
to the spot. For many months the great Bonanza has received within it
monthly 3,000,000 feet of timbers, machinery equal to that in the holds
of mighty steamships has to be set in place and motion; drills are kept
at work 2,000 feet underground, from power supplied on the surface;
hundreds of men have to be daily hoisted from and lowered into the
depths; there has to be a precision and continuity that never fail, and
the men who plan and carry on that work emerge from it after a few years
stronger, brighter, clearer-brained and braver men than they ever would
have been except for that discipline.

"Then what they produce is something which makes the labor of every
other man more profitable, for it is something which is the measure of
values, something which all races of men recognize at once, something
indestructible and peculiarly precious, which can be drawn into a
thread-like silk, or hammered into a leaf so thin that a breath will
carry it away; it is the very spirit of the rock, the part that is
imperishable. Moreover, it is labor made immortal, for, tried by fire, it
grows bright and loses no grain of its weight. Could we find a piece of