Meantime, the Territorial secretary had found difficulties in launching the ship of state.  There was no legislative hall in Carson City; and if Abram Curry, one of the original owners of the celebrated Gould and Curry mine—­“Curry—­old Curry—­old Abe Curry,” as he called himself—­had not tendered the use of a hall rent free, the first legislature would have been obliged to “sit in the desert.”  Furthermore, Orion had met with certain acute troubles of his own.  The government at Washington had not appreciated his economies in the matter of cheap office rental, and it had stipulated the price which he was to pay for public printing and various other services-prices fixed according to Eastern standards.  These prices did not obtain in Nevada, and when Orion, confident that because of his other economies the comptroller would stretch a point and allow the increased frontier tariff, he was met with the usual thick-headed official lack of imagination, with the result that the excess paid was deducted from his slender salary.  With a man of less conscience this condition would easily have been offset by another wherein other rates, less arbitrary, would have been adjusted to negotiate the official deficit.  With Orion Clemens such a remedy was not even considered; yielding, unstable, blown by every wind of influence though he was, Orion’s integrity was a rock.

Governor Nye was among those who presently made this discovery.  Old politician that he was—­former police commissioner of New York City—­Nye took care of his own problems in the customary manner.  To him, politics was simply a game—­to be played to win.  He was a popular, jovial man, well liked and thought of, but he did not lie awake, as Orion did, planning economies for the government, or how to make up excess charges out of his salary.  To him Nevada was simply a doorway to the United States Senate, and in the mean time his brigade required official recognition and perquisites.  The governor found Orion Clemens an impediment to this policy.  Orion could not be brought to a proper political understanding of “special bills and accounts,” and relations between the secretary of state and the governor were becoming strained.

It was about this time that the man who had been potentate of the pilot-house of a Mississippi River steamer returned from Humboldt.  He was fond of the governor, but he had still higher regard for the family integrity.  When he had heard Orion’s troubled story, he called on Governor Nye and delivered himself in his own fashion.  In his former employments he had acquired a vocabulary and moral backbone sufficient to his needs.  We may regret that no stenographic report was made of the interview.  It would be priceless now.  But it is lost; we only know that Orion’s rectitude was not again assailed, and that curiously enough Governor Nye apparently conceived a strong admiration and respect for his brother.