ned’s new profession pays admirably—he and tom wax philosophical—“pat” comes for a “landscape” of himself—lynch law and the doctors—ned’s sitters—a yankee swell receives a gentle rebuff.
the ups and downs, and the outs and ins of life are, as every one is aware, exceedingly curious,—sometimes pleasant, often the reverse, and not infrequently abrupt.
on the day of their arrival at the settlement, ned and tom were almost beggars; a dollar or two being all the cash they possessed, besides the gold-dust swallowed by the latter, which being, as tom remarked, sunk money, was not available for present purposes.
one week later, they were, as abel jefferson expressed it, “driving a roaring trade in pictur’s,” and in the receipt of fifty dollars, or 10 pounds a day! goods and provisions of all kinds had been suddenly thrown into the settlement by speculators, so that living became comparatively cheap; several new and profitable diggings had been discovered, in consequence of which gold became plentiful; and the result of all was that edward sinton, esquire, portrait and landscape painter, had more orders than he could accept, at almost any price he chose to name. men who every saturday came into the settlement to throw away their hard-earned gains in the gambling-houses, or to purchase provisions for the campaign of the following week, were delighted to have an opportunity of procuring their portraits, and were willing to pay any sum for them, so that, had our hero been so disposed, he could have fleeced the miners to a considerable extent. but ned was not so disposed, either by nature or necessity. he fixed what he considered fair remunerative prices for his work, according to the tariff of the diggings, and so arranged it that he made as much per day as he would have realised had he been the fortunate possessor of one of the best “claims” in the neighbourhood.
tom collins, meanwhile, went out prospecting, and speedily discovered a spot of ground which, when wrought with the pan, turned him in twenty dollars a day. so that, in the course of a fortnight, our adventurers found themselves comparatively rich men. this was satisfactory, and ned admitted as much one morning to tom, as he sat on a three-legged stool in his studio—i.e. a dilapidated log-hut—preparing for a sitter, while the latter was busily engaged in concluding his morning repast of damper, pork, and beans.
“there’s no doubt about it, tom,” said he, pegging a sheet of drawing-paper to a flat board, “we are rapidly making our fortunes, my boy; but d’you know, i’m determined to postpone that desirable event, and take to rambling again.”
“there you go,” said tom, somewhat testily, as he lit a cigar, and lay down on his bed to enjoy it; “you are never content; i knew it wouldn’t last; you’re a rolling stone, and will end in being a beggar. do you really mean to say that you intend to give up a lucrative profession and become a vagrant?—for such you will be, if you take to wandering about the country without any object in view.”
“indeed, i do,” answered ned. “how often am i to tell you that i don’t and won’t consider the making of money the chief good of this world? doubtless, it is an uncommonly necessary thing, especially to those who have families to support; but i am firmly convinced that this life was meant to be enjoyed, and i mean to enjoy it accordingly.”
“i agree with you, ned, heartily; but if every one enjoyed life as you propose to do, and took to rambling over the face of the earth, there would be no work done, and nothing could be had for love or money—except what grew spontaneously; and that would be a joyful state of things, wouldn’t it?”
tom collins, indulging the belief that he had taken up an unassailable position, propelled from his lips a long thin cloud of smoke, and smiled through it at his friend.
“your style of reasoning is rather wild, to say the least of it,” answered ned, as he rubbed down his colours on the bottom of a broken plate. “in the first place, you assume that i propose to spend all my life in rambling; and, in the second place, you found your argument on the absurd supposition that everybody else must find their sole enjoyment in the same occupation.”
“how i wish,” sighed tom collins, smoking languidly, “that there was no such thing as reasoning. you would be a much more agreeable fellow, ned, if you didn’t argue.”
“it takes two to make an argument,” remarked ned. “well, but couldn’t you converse without arguing?”
“certainly, if you would never contradict what i say, nor make an incorrect statement, nor draw a wrong conclusion, nor object to being contradicted when i think you are in the wrong.”
tom sighed deeply, and drew comfort from his cigar. in a few minutes he resumed,—“well, but what do you mean by enjoying life?”
ned sinton pondered the question a few seconds, and then replied—
“i mean this:— the way to enjoy life is to do all the good you can, by working just enough to support yourself and your family, if you have one; to assist in spreading the gospel, and to enable you to help a friend in need; and to alleviate the condition of the poor, the sick, and the destitute. to work for more than this is to be greedy; to work for less is to be reprehensibly lazy. this amount of work being done, men ought to mingle with their fellow-creatures, and wander abroad as much as may be among the beautiful works of their creator.”
“a very pretty theory, doubtless,” replied tom; “but, pray, in what manner will your proposed ramble advance the interests of religion, or enable you to do the extra ordinary amount of good you speak of?”
“there you go again, tom; you ask me the abstract question, ‘what do you mean by enjoying life?’ and when i reply, you object to the answer as not being applicable to the present case. of course, it is not. i did not intend it to be. the good i mean to do in my present ramble is chiefly, if not solely, to my own body and mind—”
“stop, my dear fellow,” interrupted tom, “don’t become energetic! i accept your answer to the general question; but how many people, think you, can afford to put your theory in practice?”
“very, very few,” replied ned, earnestly; “but that does not affect the truth of my theory. men will toil night and day to accumulate gold, until their bodies and souls are incapable of enjoying the good things which gold can purchase, and they are infatuated enough to plume themselves on this account, as being diligent men of business; while others, alas! are compelled thus to toil in order to procure the bare necessaries of life; but these melancholy facts do not prove the principle of ‘grind-and-toil’ to be a right one; much less do they constitute a reason for my refusing to enjoy life in the right way when i have the power.”
tom made no reply, but the vigorous puffs from his cigar seemed to indicate that he pondered these things deeply. a few minutes afterwards, ned’s expected sitter entered. he was a tall burly irishman, with a red-flannel shirt, open at the neck, a pair of huge long boots, and a wide-awake.
“the top o’ the mornin’ to yees,” said the man, pulling off his hat as he entered.
“good-morning, friend,” said ned, as tom collins rose, shouldered his pick and shovel, and left the hut. “you are punctual, and deserve credit for so good a quality. pray, sit down.”
“faix, then, i don’t know what a ‘quality’ is, but av it’s a good thing i’ve no objection,” replied the man, taking a seat on the edge of the bed which tom had just vacated. “i wos wantin’ to ax ye, sir, av ye could put in me pick and shovel in the lan’scape.”
“in the landscape, pat!” exclaimed ned, addressing his visitor by the generic name of the species; “i thought you wanted a portrait.”
“troth, then, i don’t know which it is ye call it; but i wants a pictur’ o’ meself all over, from the top o’ me hat to the sole o’ me boots. isn’t that a lan’scape?”
“no, it’s a portrait.”
“then it’s a porthraite i wants; an’ if ye’ll put in the pick and shovel, i’ll give ye two dollars a pace for them.”
“i’ll put them in, pat, for nothing,” replied ned, smiling, as he commenced his sketch. “i suppose you intend to send this to some fair one in old ireland?”
pat did not reply at once. “sure,” said he, slowly, “i niver thought of her in that way before, but maybe she was fair wance, though she’s been a’most as black as bog-oak for half-a-cintury. it’s for me grandmother i want it.”
“your grandmother! that’s curious, now; the last man i painted meant to send the likeness to his mother.”
“not so cur’ous neither,” replied the man, with some feeling; “it’s my opinion, the further a man goes from the owld country, and the rougher he becomes wi’ scrapin’ up and down through the world, the more tinder his heart gits when he thinks o’ his mother. me own mother died whin i wos a bit spalpeen, an’ i lived wi’ me grandmother, bliss her heart, ever since,—at laste till i took to wanderin’, which was tin years past.”
“so long! pat, you must have wandered far in that time. have you ever been away far into the interior of this country, among the mountains, in the course of your wanderings!”
“among the mountains, is it? indeed i have, just; an’ a most tree-mendous beautiful sight it is. wos ye goin’ there?”
“i’ve been thinking about it. is the shooting good?”
“shootin’, ah! av ye’d bin wi’ me an’ bill simmons, two summers ago, ye’d have had more nor enough o’ shootin’. the grizzlies are thick as paes, and the buffaloes swarm in the valleys like muskaitoes, not to mintion wolves, and beavers, and badgers, and deer, an’ sich like—forby the red injuns; we shot six o’ them critters about the legs an’ arms in self defence, an’ they shot us too—they put an arrow dane through the pint o’ bill’s nose, an’ wan ripped up me left arm, it did.” (pat bared the brawny limb, and exhibited the wound as he spoke.) “shootin’, is it? faix there’s the hoith o’ shootin’ there, an’ no end o’ sainery.”
the conversation was interrupted at this point by the door being burst violently open, and several men rushing into the hut. they grasped the irishman by the arms, and attempted to drag him out, but pat seized hold of the plank on the edge of which he sat, and refused to move at first.
“come along, boy,” cried one, boisterously; “we’re goin’ to lynch a doctor, an’ we want you to swear to him.”
“ay, an’ to swear at him too, if ye like; he’s a rig’lar cheat; bin killin’ us off by the dozen, as cool as ye like, and pretendin’ to be an m.d. all the time.”
“there’s more than wan,” cried another man, seizing pat again by the arm; “won’t ye come, man?”
“och! av coorse i will; av it’s to do any good to the public, i’m yer man. hooray! for the people, an’ down wi’ the aristock-racy.”
this sentiment was received with a shout of delight, and several exclamations of “bah!” as the party hurried in a body from the studio. ned, having thus nothing to do, rose, and followed them towards the centre of the settlement, where a large crowd was collecting to try the unhappy doctors above referred to.
there were six of them, all disreputable-looking rascals, who had set up for doctors, and had carried on a thriving business among the sick miners,—of whom there were many at that time,—until a genuine doctor arrived at the place, and discovered and exposed them. the miners were fortunately not bloodthirsty at this time, so the six self-dubbed m.d.s, instead of being hanged, were banished for ever from the settlement. half-an-hour later the miners were busy in their respective claims, and ned sinton was again seated before his “lan’scape” of the irishman.
just as he was completing the sketch, the door opened slowly, and a very remarkable man swaggered into the room, and spat on the centre of the floor. he was dressed in the extreme of the fashion then prevalent in the eastern states. a superfine black coat, silk vest, superfine black trousers, patent-leather boots, kid gloves, and a black silk hat! a more unnatural apparition at the diggings could not well be imagined. ned sinton could hardly credit his eyes, but no rubbing of them would dispel the vision. there he stood, a regular broadway swell, whose love of change had induced him to seek his fortune in the gold-regions of california, and whose vanity had induced him to retain his drawing-room costume.
this man, besides being possessed of a superabundance of supercilious impudence, also possessed a set of digging tools, the handles of which were made of polished oak and walnut, with bright brass ferrules. with these he proposed to dig his fortune in a leisurely way; meanwhile, finding the weather rather hot, he had made up his mind to have his portrait done.
thrusting his hands into his pockets, this gentleman shut the door with his heel, turned his back to the fire-place—from the mere force of habit, for there was no fire—and again spat upon the floor, after which he said:
“i say, stranger, what’s your charge for a likeness?”
“you will excuse me, sir,” answered ned, “if, before replying to that question, i beg of you not to spit on my floor.”
the yankee uttered an exclamation of surprise, and asked, “why not, stranger?”
“because i don’t like it.”
“you wouldn’t have me spit in my hat, would you?” inquired the dandy.
“certainly not.”
“where then?”
ned pointed to a large wooden box which stood close to the fire-place, and said, “there—i have provided a box for the accommodation of those sitters who indulge in that disagreeable practice. if you can’t avoid spitting, do it there.”
“wall, now, you britishers are strange critters. but you haven’t told me your price for a portrait.”
“i fear that i cannot paint you at any price,” replied ned, without looking up from his paper, while pat listened to the conversation with a comical leer on his broad countenance.
“why not, stranger?” asked the dandy, in surprise.
“because i’m giving up business, and don’t wish to take any more orders.”
“then i’ll set here, i guess, an’ look at ye while ye knock off that one,” said the man, sitting down close to ned’s elbow, and again spitting on the floor. whether he did so intentionally or not we cannot tell, probably not, but the effect upon ned was so strong that he rose deliberately, opened the door, and pointed to the passage thus set free, without uttering a word. his look, however, was quite sufficient. the dandy rose abruptly, and walked out in silence, leaving ned to shut the door quietly behind him and return to his work, while the irishman rolled in convulsions of laughter on tom collins’s bed.
ned’s sitters, as we have hinted, were numerous and extremely various. sometimes he was visited by sentimental and home-sick miners, and occasionally by dandy miners, such as we have described, but his chief customers were the rough, hearty men from “old england,” “owld ireland,” and from the western states; with all of whom he had many a pleasant and profitable hour’s conversation, and from many of whom, especially the latter, he obtained valuable and interesting information in reference to the wild regions of the interior which he longed so much to see.
