To the Editors of the New York Evening Post
14 September 1880 • Elmira, N.Y.
(New York Evening Post, 16 September 1880,
unknown page, UCCL 01833)

To the Editors of the Evening Post:

I have just seen your despatch from San Francisco, in Saturday’s Evening Post, about “Gold in Solution” in the Calistoga Springs, [&] about the proprietor’s having “extracted $1,060 in gold of the utmost fineness from ten barrels of the water” during the past fortnight, by a process known only to himself. This will surprise many of your readers, but it does not surprise me, for I once owned those springs myself. What does surprise me, however, is the falling off in the richness of the water. In my time the yield was a dollar a dipperful. I am not saying this to injure the property, in case a sale is contemplated; I am only saying it in the interest of history. It may be that this hotel proprietor’s process is an inferior one—yes, that may be the fault. Mine was to take my uncle—I had an extra uncle at that time, on account of his parents dying [&] leaving him on my hands—[&] fill him up, [&] let him stand fifteen minutes to give the water a chance to settle well, then insert him in an exhausted receiver, which had the effect of sucking the gold out through his pores. I have taken more than eleven thousand dollars out of that old man in a day [&] a half. I should have held on to those springs but for the badness of the roads [&] the difficulty of getting the gold to market.

I consider that gold-yielding water in many respects remarkable; [&] yet not more remarkable than the gold bearing air of Catgut Cañon, up there toward the head of the auriferous range. This air—or the wind—for it is a kind of a trade wind which blows steadily down through six hundred miles of rich quartz croppings during an hour [&] a quarter every day except Sundays, is heavily charged with exquisitely fine [&] impalpable gold. Nothing precipitates [&] solidifies this gold so readily as contact with human flesh heated by passion. The time that William Abrahams was disappointed in love, he used to step out doors when that wind was blowing, [&] come in again [&] begin to sigh, [&] his brother Andover J. would extract over a dollar [&] a half out of every sigh he sighed, right along. And the time that John Harbison [&] Aleck Norton quarrelled about Harbison’s dog, they stood there swearing at each other all they knew how—[&] what they didn’t know about swearing they couldn’t learn from you [&] me, not by a good deal—[&] at the end of every three or four minutes they had to stop [&] make a dividend—if they didn’t their jaws would clog up so that they couldn’t get the big nine syllabled ones out at all—[&] when the wind was done blowing they cleaned up just a little over sixteen hundred dollars apiece. I know these facts to be absolutely true, because I got them from a man whose mother I knew personally. I do not suppose a person could buy a water privilege at Calistoga now at any price; but several good locations along the course of the Catgut Cañon Gold-Bearing Trade-Wind are for sale. They are going to be stocked for the New York market. They will sell, too; the people will swarm for them as thick as Hancock veterans—in the South.

[Mark Twain].

Hartford, Conn., September 14, 1880.

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Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

“Millions in It,” New York Evening Post, 16 September 1880, unknown page.

Previous publication: Wimberly, 119.

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Mark Twain • Mark Twain