Memoirs of an editor : fifty years of American journalism / Edward P. Mitchell.

398

MEMOIRS OF AN EDITOR

of the tariff on which depended the prosperity of the
county's educational system:
For a general license, every month......... $40
For each roulette-table, per month........150
For each stud-poker table, per month.....100
For each faro-table, per month........... 25
The Chinese game of tan, per month........ 20
Houses of ill fame, where beer is sold, per quarter. 5
The county of Silver Bar was out of debt. Butte had
just built and paid for a $30,000 schoolhouse, besides
others less expensive. It was about to build a $150,000
court-house. Money was plenty in the county treasury.
The Territorial tax was only one-tenth of one per cent.
The Territory owed not a dollar.
The totem-poles of the extreme northwestern corner
were reached and rounded after a surfeit of both instructive and festive experiences. The gastronomic summit was
attained at a wonderful banquet given by the Chinese
merchants of Portland, Oregon, on their own account
when they had been excluded, because of race, from the
general scheme of municipal entertainment. I learned
from these gentlemen with pigtails how chopsticks are
handled, what snow fungus soup tastes like, how good
shark's fins are with port wine; and, what was more important, how delightful and truly refined is the educated
Chinaman's practice of the arts of courteous hospitality.
But perhaps the most lasting impression of Portland was
that produced by the leonine personality of Harvey W.
Scott of the Oregonian.
A wise person in New York had whispered, "Put a

hundred dollars or so in your pocket and when you get to
Seattle buy a good corner lot on Commercial Street. The
town is bound to grow and real-estate values will go up
immensely." My advance idea of this field for modest
investment vaguely pictured a principal thoroughfare