SKETCHES NEW AND OLD
by Mark Twain
Part 7.
CONTENTS:
[Written about 1870.]
I had never seen him before. He brought letters of introduction frommutual friends in San Francisco, and by invitation I breakfasted withhim. It was almost religion, there in the silver-mines, to precede sucha meal with whisky cocktails. Artemus, with the true cosmopolitaninstinct, always deferred to the customs of the country he was in, and sohe ordered three of those abominations. Hingston was present. I said Iwould rather not drink a whisky cocktail. I said it would go right to myhead, and confuse me so that I would be in a helpless tangle in tenminutes. I did not want to act like a lunatic before strangers. ButArtemus gently insisted, and I drank the treasonable mixture underprotest, and felt all the time that I was doing a thing I might be sorryfor. In a minute or two I began to imagine that my ideas were clouded.I waited in great anxiety for the conversation to open, with a sort ofvague hope that my understanding would prove clear, after all, and mymisgivings groundless.
Artemus dropped an unimportant remark or two, and then assumed a look ofsuperhuman earnestness, and made the following astounding speech. Hesaid:
"Now there is one thing I ought to ask you about before I forget it. Youhave been here in Silver land—here in Nevada—two or three years, and,of course, your position on the daily press has made it necessary for youto go down in the mines and examine them carefully in detail, andtherefore you know all about the silver-mining business. Now what I wantto get at is—is, well, t