284 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. 



Artemus gently insisted, and I drank the treasonable mixture under protest, and 

 felt all the time that I was doing a thing I might be sorry for. In a minute or two 

 I began to imagine that my ideas were clouded. I waited in great anxiety for the 

 conversation to open, with a sort of vague hope that my understanding would prove 

 clear, after all, and my misgivings groundless.' 



Artemus dropped an unimportant remark or two, and then assumed a look of 

 superhuman earnestness, and made the following astounding speech. He said: — 



" Now there is one thing I ought to ask you about before I forget it. You have 

 been here in Silverland— here in Nevada — two or three years, and, of course, your 

 position on the daily press has made it necessary for you to go down in the mines 

 and examine them carefully in detail, and therefore you know all about the silver- 

 mining business. Now, what I want to get at is — is, well, the way the deposits of 

 ore are made, you know. For instance. Now, as I understand it, the vein which 

 contains the silver is sandwiched in between casings of granite, and runs along the 

 ground, and sticks up like a curb-stone. Well, take a vein forty feet thick, for 

 example, or eighty, for that matter, or even a hundred — say you go down on it with 

 a shaft, straight down, you know, or with what you call ' incline,' maybe you go 

 down five hundred feet, or maybe you don't go down but two hundred — any way 

 you go down, and all the time this vein grows narrower, when the casings come 

 nearer or approach each other, you may say — that is, when they do approach, which 

 of course they do not always do, particularly in cases where the nature of the 

 formation is such that they stand apart wider than they otherwise would, and which 

 geology has failed to account for, although everything in that science goes to prove 

 that, all things being equal, it would if it did not, or would not certainly if it did, 

 and then of course they are. Do not you think it is.'" 



I said to myself: — 



" Now I just knew how it would be — that whiskey cocktail has done the business 

 for me; I don't understand any more than a clam." 



And then I said aloud — 



" I — I — that is — if you don't mind, would you — would you say that over again.' 

 I ought " 



" Oh, certainly, certainly ! You see I am very unfamiliar with the subject, ar.<i 

 perhaps I don't present my case clearly, but I " 



