“I wondered why he was watching the workmen, for it is little short of a miracle for a Piute to take any interest whatever in manual labor.  So I spoke to him.  Without paying any attention to me or what I had said, or even seeming to be conscious of my presence, he rose, straightened himself up, threw his head back, and said, as if he were addressing the world in general:  ’White man work, white man eat; Injun no work, Injun eat; white man damn fool.’

“I laughed and said, ’You ’ve struck it, right at the bottom.  Anybody with as much wisdom as that deserves to be supported by the community.  Here ‘s a dollar for you.’

“He took the money as disdainfully as if he had been a prince and I a subject paying back taxes, and without once looking at me stalked off down the street.  An hour afterwards I ran across Johnson, two other bucks, and a squaw, sitting on the ground in the sun behind a barn, playing poker.  Johnson must have raked in everything the whole party had, for that night the rest of them were sober and he was whooping drunk.  In consequence, he got locked up for a while.  The police of Virginia City always paid Johnson the compliment of locking him up when he got drunk, for with whiskey inside of him he was more like a mad devil than anything else.

“After he got out of jail I saw him standing around for several days looking as lordly and unconscious as if he had been worth a million.  But the pangs of hunger must have set his wits to work.  For pretty soon he appeared on the streets with a wrinkled, decrepit, old Piute tied to a string.  He had fastened the string to the old fellow’s arm and he walked behind, holding the other end, but apparently as unconscious of the whole business as if he ’d been the sole inhabitant of Virginia City.  He stalked along with his head in the air, and the old fellow trotted out in front until Johnson yanked the string.  Then they stopped and the old man began to beg money of the passers-by, and Johnson turned his back on his companion and looked off down the street, proudly pretending that they weren’t together.  If any one gave the old man money Johnson took it at once and it disappeared somewhere inside his blanket.  Johnson and his prime minister, we used to call the combination.  But Johnson would n’t beg for himself.  Oh, no!  He was too proud.  It’s a fact, I never knew or heard of Johnson Sides himself asking for money.  But he kept his prime minister trotting around for several weeks, and he never let go the string or let the old fellow keep a two-bit piece.

“But Johnson was reformed at last; and it was the power of the press that did it.  Talk about the press as a moral agent!  Why, bless your soul, when one newspaper can reform a whole Piute Indian and make a man of him—­well, the question’s settled, then and there, and the pulpit and the platform ain’t in it after that.