intending the manufacture of mud-pies on a very large scale, the manipulation of which was entrusted to the miners. Mud-pies had been a favourite accomplishment of my own, not very many years ago, and occasionally I could not resist the temptation of lending a hand to my shaggy friends, and messing myself from head to foot. The mercury which entered into their composition rendered them a great improvement on the unsophisticated mud-pies of infancy, and the subsequent little chemical tests instituted by the board lent additional interest; besides which, they cost a great deal of money.
My letters to the board contained very scientific reports of our proceedings, and were met by grave answers, accompanied by new suggestions.
Amongst other wonders, a large case was sent down from London, in which was the model of a machine, which, if successful, was to supersede Mr. Perkes’s, as if Mr. Perkes’s were to blame! One of the directors had invented it (he was a retired officer); I will not attempt to describe the marvellous piece of mechanism which had emanated from the depths of that military gentleman’s consciousness; but merely state that it turned out to be a perfect Irish bull of a machine, and that to use it for its intended purpose was about as wise as attempting to go round the world in twenty-four hours, by ascending in a balloon and waiting till the earth had turned itself round, as I believe it usually does in that time. Nevertheless we set it to work, and it behaved splendidly; the nature of its fun was so broad as to tickle even the most uneducated intellects, as my men soon found out to their inexhaustible delight: in fact, it had some of the powerfully comic qualities which distinguish Mr. Robson.
The miners did not believe in the mine, and as they perceived that I did not either, they believed in me to a most flattering extent. Indeed, I soon got very much attached to the fellows, and used to tell them long stories about foreign lands, while they were distilling the pure mercury, or performing other innocent operations suggested by the board, and enlighten them on various subjects on which I felt their ignorance to be equal to, or greater, than my own. They reciprocated my anecdotes with long yarns which were full of interest. My letters home contained descriptions and sketches of them, and my mamma became interested in their spiritual welfare. Even now I entertain feelings of friendship towards two or three of them, who, surrounded by the halo of memory, seem primitive gentlemen worthy of King Arthur’s Round Table; and should they have acquired the accomplishment of reading since we parted, and this happen to meet their eye, I hope they will remember that very jolly month of September and me.
Besides all this excitement, existence was full of charm for me between the hour of my leaving the mine and that of my returning to it next day. I was soon on terms of the most intimate friendship with many of the surrounding farmers and small gentry of the neighbourhood. It was a constant round of festivities either at their houses or my hotel, where I occasionally entertained them with an elegant hospitality which exalted our jovial good fellowship into the most sentimental affection towards the small hours of the night. How I rode, and wrestled, and boxed with them! and fell in love with their sisters, and sketched them, and sang Tyrolese melodies to them, an accomplishment imitated from Herr von Joël, and in which I had completely surpassed my model (if the opinion of these young ladies, who had never heard him, is to be accounted of any value). It was most uproarious fun, and morning, noon, and night I blessed the lucky stroke of Fortune which had made me mining engineer to a gold mine, without any gold, managed by gentlemen who obstinately persisted in ignoring the latter important fact, in spite of my honest endeavours to persuade them of it. I have only to hum a certain “jodel” chorus, and the whole scene returns to me, surrounded by that peculiar fascination which belongs to past pleasures—a phenomenon far more interesting to me than the most marvellous phenomena of science.
Thus the days wore on in golden peace and plenty: when towards the end of September I received a letter from London, announcing that the directors intended to come down to the mine in person, in the course of a few days, to satisfy themselves that I had carefully and conscientiously fulfilled the mission they had entrusted to me, and witness the absence of the gold with their own eyes.
Everything was prepared to receive them, and when the day arrived, there was a certain appearance of festivity about the mine which could not fail to produce a pleasing effect upon the expected visitors. The captain was got up in a surprising suit of clothes, which consisted principally in a yellow waistcoat, and some of the miners had washed their faces!
At about mid-day three open carriages made their appearance, and five gentlemen, whom I had already met in London (two of whom had brought wives, and daughters, and hampers, with them), got out of the vehicles with the air of men who had an important duty to perform.
I received them, I trust, in a manner becoming to the occasion, and we immediately proceeded to business. They inspected everything with the eye of a hawk. They too, since I had left them, had made themselves thoroughly proficient in those technical terms without which no science can ever rest on a solid basis; but occasionally applied them in rather a reckless manner, I must say. They took especial interest in the experiments their combined wisdom had dictated, and criticised them with a gravity which I am sorry to say some of my men thought fit to see from a humorous point of view. The military gentleman insisted upon seeing his machine at work, and asked me if I did not think it “rather a neat thing?” I gave him great satisfaction by telling him that it was very pretty, must have cost a great deal of money, and revolved on itself in a charmingly symmetrical manner.
The ladies of the party asked many questions, and interested themselves in everything with a prettiness, an inconsistency, a sudden running away from one thing to another which is peculiar to the sex, I suppose, on such occasions, and
