"
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN.
I.
There was little doubt that the Lone Star claim was "played out." Not
dug out, worked out, washed out, but _played_ out. For two years its
five sanguine proprietors had gone through the various stages of mining
enthusiasm; had prospected and planned, dug and doubted. They had
borrowed money with hearty but unredeeming frankness, established a
credit with unselfish abnegation of all responsibility, and had borne
the disappointment of their creditors with a cheerful resignation which
only the consciousness of some deep Compensating Future could give.
Giving little else, however, a singular dissatisfaction obtained with
the traders, and, being accompanied with a reluctance to make further
advances, at last touched the gentle stoicism of the proprietors
themselves. The youthful enthusiasm which had at first lifted the most
ineffectual trial, the most useless essay, to the plane of actual
achievement, died out, leaving them only the dull, prosaic record of
half-finished ditches, purposeless shafts, untenable pits, abandoned
engines, and meaningless disruptions of the soil upon the Lone Star
claim, and empty flour sacks and pork barrels in the Lone Star cabin.
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