the Mother of Gold!"

"Child, my old eyes have watched it spread for nearly ninety years - the
power of gold, and of the men who came to seek it, The influence of gold
controlled by the human intellect. I am old and tired and soon I shall
sleep, but the old see clearly, too clearly, that which they are
leaving, and that to which they pass."

"'Thus, facing the stars, we go out amongst them into darkness'," I
quoted, softly.

"Not to darkness, but to eternal light, to rise again from the Mother
Lode to mingle in the busy lives of men."

"'Who maketh His messengers with two, and three, and four pairs of
wings'."

"Exactly. To be born again, and yet again. The real mother-vein of gold
was imbued in the men shaped by the life of the frontier. It was the
cornerstone of great fortunes, of families, of enterprises, of
achievements which are peculiarly California's own.

"It was the clearing house and open sesame of the vast trade of the
Orient which is just coming into being; the foundation for the bridge of
gold which shall reach across the seas; a fit monument to posterity
which shall be erected with all the lightness and grace and stability of
the present cultured generations, born with their feet in the flowers
grown from the mother-gold of decent manhood and glorious womanhood -
the precious metals of the spirit, unalloyed and unafraid.