A City of a Day [pp. 430-438]

4A CITY OF A DA Y.
until it had heaped up a depth of twentyfive feet on a level, burying the unsightly and abortionate works of man out of
view.
Of late, a considerable portion of the
city has been burned down, but when I
was there in the summer of I872 it was
comparatively perfect- not as a ruin,
but as a deserted city, a standing monument of human folly; and I prefer to
speak of it as it was then. In the summer of I873, for a time there were ten
inhabitants, but the only population that
can be counted upon as permanent is
Henry Hartley, the eccentric and adventurous Englishman who brought the place
first before the public eye. In the season succeeding my visit, a resident of
Grass Valley had the curiosity to visit
the place in the dead of winter, a feat
which he could accomplish only with
snow-shoes. On these great runners,
twelve or fifteen feet long, he scaled the
savage summits of the Sierra, descended into the valley where lies Meadow
Lake, glided through its empty streets
on a level with the second-story windows,
and hove-to before one of the commodious hotels. Peering through the chamber windows, he beheld sleeping apartments comfortably furnished: chairs,
wash-stands, mirrors, and beds smoothed down with clean linen and heavy
comforters, pillows nicely tucked and
puffed by the chambermaid's hands for
the guests that never came-all inviting
to luxurious repose. He was tempted
to go in and take a cozy sleep after his
hard climb over the mountains, but the
sepulchral solitude chilled his heart and
blood. It was like the things beheld by
divers who go down into the waters of
the sea, and look through port-holes of
sunken argosies into luxuriously upholstered rooms, where the green waters
flow undisturbed, and the sea-weed
creeps through the eyeless sockets of
the skeletons. Not a living soul did he
behold.
Here, just across the street from the
room of the stock board above mentioned, is the handsomely furnished office
of a stock-broker. If his vaults were
plethoric with coin-and it is extremely
doubtful if they ever were-they could
scarcely be safer in the whole world,
for old Boreas locks them fast and sure
with snow. No burglars need be dreaded here. How strange and sad it seems,
as we walk along these silent streets,
to see the signs swing and hear them
mournfully creak in the breeze. But all
the trades-people are gone; all the busy,
hurrying customers are gone; all, all,
gone. And here is the office of the
Meadow Lake Sun book and job printing establishment. On the bulletin-board
facing the street we read, in display-type,
"Briefs and transcripts executed neatly,
promptly, and handsomely, in accordance with the new rules of the Supreme
Court, at the most reasonable rates.
Stock - books furnished to order." A
melancholy sarcasm in that last sentence-melancholy because the writers
of it were in first-rate earnest, whatever
others may have been. The Meadow
Lake SUn shines no more; doubtless it
would shine, but there are none to illuminate. And here, on C Street, was the
residence of G. A. Brier, reporter of the
Sin, a building with the dilapidated and
seedy appearance traditional to Bohemians. Here was the wholesale liquorstore of M. Flood & Co., on B Street
between First and Second.
A great many of the flimsy roofs of
great superficies are utterly broken down
to the ground by the enormous masses
of snow, which falls in this region to the
aggregate depth of thirty or forty feet a
year. In the town of Truckee, the roofs
are sloped up sharp, like that ancient
gothic of nature, the yellow pine; but
here that precaution appears to have
been neglected. Notwithstanding that,
and notwithstanding their frailness, many
have stood stoutly up through all the
I874.]
437