name of his Uncle Amos on his lips! The hardy miners supposed he
wanted his uncle there to see the great sight, and faint with him.
But this was pure conjecture, after all.

. . . .

I visit several of the adjacent mining towns, but I do not go to
Aurora. No, I think not. A lecturer on psychology was killed
there the other night by the playful discharge of a horse-pistol in
the hands of a degenerate and intoxicated Spaniard. This
circumstance, and a rumor that the citizens are "agin" literature,
induce me to go back to Virginia.

. . . .

I had pointed out to me at a restaurant a man who had killed four
men in street broils, and who had that very day cut his own
brother's breast open in a dangerous manner with a small supper
knife. He was a gentleman, however. I heard him tell some men so.
He admitted it himself. And I don't think he would lie about a
little thing like that.

The theatre at Virginia will attract the attention of the stranger,
because it is an unusually elegant affair of the kind, and would be
so regarded anywhere. It was built, of course, by Mr. Thomas
Maguire, the Napoleonic manager of the Pacific, and who has built
over twenty theatres in his time and will perhaps build as many
more, unless somebody stops him--which, by the way, will not be a
remarkably easy thing to do.