never discover, and to this day they have the impression very strong in their minds that he was a "fraud from the word go," never saw Massachusetts in his life, and had put up the whole job on an unsuspecting and confiding community. If he had ever visited Hangtown again, the place would have earned an additional claim to its popular designation. But that guilty mule received his reward. On the morning following the return of his affectionate proprietor from the gulch, he was found in his stall with his back broken. It was suggested that he had dislocated his vertebrae in the vain effort to kick a fly off the end of his nose with his hind feet, or in attempting to reach the roof of the stable with his heels, there being nothing else in reach for him to exercise his strength upon in a playful manner; but his heart-broken owner knew better, and wisely kept his own counsel. As an expert and a life-long advocate of the decencies and amenities of life, I give my unqualified professional opinion that it was done with a club—and served him right. A few such examples as that unworthy mule afforded would utterly dissipate and destroy all one's confidence and trust in human nature.
Rough practical jokers though these old miners and frontiersmen always are, they are proverbially sensitive to newspaper criticism, and ready at all times to resent any liberty taken with their names or reputations. In an earlier chapter I have related how the man who fell from the roof of a three-story building on the corner of Montgomery and California streets,in San Francisco, compelled me to retract the asser-
