144 "A MAN FOR BREAKFAST."
suits with steel across a table, or with little bull-dog deringers around a corner. Sometimes they have a six-shooter war dance in the streets, if the misunder standing is one in which many parties are concerned.
As a rule, a funeral in the mines is a mournful thing. It is the saddest and most pitiful spectacle I have ever seen. The contrast of strength and weak ness is brought out here in such a way that you must turn aside or weep when you behold it. To see those strong, rough men, long-haired, bearded and brown, rugged and homely-looking, with some thing of the grizzly in their great, awkward move ments, now take up one of their number, straightened in the rough pine box, in his miner s dress, and carry him up, up on the hill in silence it is sad beyond expression.
He has come a long way, he has journeyed by land or sea for a year, he has toiled and endured, and denied himself all things for some dear object at home, and now after all, he must lie down in the forests of the Sierras, and turn on his side and die. No one to kiss him, no one to bless him, and say u good-bye," only as a woman can, and close the weary eyes, and fold the hands in their final rest : and then at the grave, how awkward how silent ! How they would like to look at each other and say something, yet how they hold down their heads, or look away to the horizon, lest they should meet each other s eyes. Lest some strong man should see the tears that went silently down from
