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 the beaten gold that overlaid the temple of Israel’s greatest king, it would, to-day, represent the labor of one of those miners that toiled in Ophir and fell back to dust thirty generations before the Christ was born.

“Moreover, it is and has been from the first one of the measures of the civilization of nations.  Where gold and silver are in general circulation among the people they are always prosperous, their children are always educated, and the advance is so marked that it can be measured by decades of years.  A nation’s decay or enlightenment can be traced by the decreasing or increasing volume of gold and silver in circulation.

“Miners thus engrossed, producing such a substance, and carrying such hopes and aspirations in their souls, as a rule, grow stronger, more manly and more true.

“I do not say that there are not many rough characters among them.  I do not say that when the influence of true women is in great part withdrawn from any class of men, they do not more and more gravitate toward savagery, for they but follow a natural law; but the tenderest, truest, bravest, best, most generous and most just men I have ever known have been miners in the far West of the United States.”

While talking, Sedgwick had seemed to forget where he was, but as he ceased he glanced across the table and noticed a look of full appreciation on Rose’s face, and smiling, he added:  “I was talking for Jack’s sake, Miss Rose.”

It was a pleasant dinner, and a pleasant evening followed.  There was a running fire of conversation, broken only when the young ladies sang or played.  When Sedgwick first heard Grace sing, he sat, as he said afterward, “in mortal terror lest wings should spread out from her white shoulders and she should disappear through the ceiling.”

In point of fact, she sang well, but she was not nearly ethereal enough to want to give up the substantial earth to take to the ether.