AN UNSUCCESSFUL HUNT 



here ever since. Now he was seventy-six years old, 

 well worn out, only waiting for the end. 



" You did n't make your everlasting fortune in 

 the mines ? " I said. 



It sounds like anything but a pretty question, 

 but the tone, I hope, went some way to save it. 



"Well, I made something," he answered. He 

 had considered himself, not rich, perhaps, no, 

 not rich, but " medium " (and he named a mod- 

 est figure), till a few years ago, when everything 

 he had was destroyed by fire. Since then he had 

 lived from hand to mouth. At present he was 

 squatting here on an absentee's ranch, and earn- 

 ing his bread by cutting wood. Oh, no, he had 

 no desire to go back East. His many brothers 

 (he named them over) were every one dead, and 

 a Maine winter, with all that snow and ice, was 

 frightful to think of. 



I left him at his task. Two hours of it, he had 

 told me, were enough to wear him out. His 

 great trouble was catarrh. He was " all eaten up 

 with it." "What, here in California.?" said I. 

 Oh, California was the worst place in the world 

 for catarrh, he declared. It was a very natural 

 disease, he had read, and had increased greatly 

 since the fashion of taking snuff had gone out. 



So, with a pleasing mixture of humanity and 

 ornithology, which really go well together, a 

 119 



