The Overland Monthly/Volume 1/The Diamond Maker of Sacramento
THE DIAMOND MAKER OF SACRAMENTO.
IF in the following story, practical men should be disappointed at finding a vague hinting at a scientific process and only an imperfect sketch of a scientific experiment, I have no explanation or apology to offer. The story is told for the purpose of interesting the reader in the career of a man who was never well understood, and not to illustrate any principle of science. I have a very dim idea of the value of the experiments in chemistry in which the interest of my little sketch chiefly centres, and must disclaim in advance all attempt to give the reader any scientific information whatever.
With the earlier rush of emigration to the State of California, there arrived at Sacramento, then a straggling town of huts and tents, John Barnard, a young physician, full of enthusiasm and hungry for excitement. The young man with his wife, who had but just left her father's home for her husband's, had sailed for California, satisfied that if his excellent qualifications as a medical man brought him no employment, he could turn his ready hand to any of the various callings which the unsettled condition of things in the new El Dorado would be sure to develop and require.
Barnard was a frank, genial young fellow, and I very well remember our first meeting, at which he directly impressed me with his peculiarly winning and attractive manner. He was compactly built, with a broad, roomy forehead, clear-cut but rounded features, a pleasant, mobile mouth, and was gifted, withal, with a magnetic manner of address that was generally considered irresistible, even by matter-of-fact people. As the reader may not be able, otherwise, to understand some things which I want to tell him about my friend Barnard, I desire to give a tolerably minute description of the young physician, whose career afterwards attracted much attention in the State.
I have said that he was frank and direct in his manner, and so he was; yet there was with all his frankness an undefined and dreamy abstraction at times that seemed very much like the air of a mystic. You felt that there was a vein of the supernatural running through all his beliefs. And while no man could be more healthy and vigorous in his mental and moral organization, there was a certain flavor of mystery pervading all his warm and _ hearty nature that perplexed and bothered those who knew him. The man was a study, and those who still recollect his sunny, hopeful face, his pleasant voice and the sincere grasp of his strong hand, will always remember that they never felt that they quite understood why it was that the hearty and genial doctor appeared as though there was at least one chamber in his soul over which, even to his own self-consciousness, there was hung the warning, "No Admittance."
In addition to his studies in medicine, Barnard had early made extensive excursions into the tempting fields of chemistry. He was never weary of experimenting and collating; his fertile genius constantly discovered new combinations and effects from the elements that Nature furnished him, and some of his inventions and intentions were brilliant, if not useful. He laughingly said that his necessities alone prevented him from being an alchemist. If he had not been obliged to provide for his daily bread, he would have spent his life in ransacking Nature's laboratory and laying bare her ancient secrets. Nothing seemed to give him so much pleasure as to spend hours over his chemical apparatus, pursuing with tireless enthusiasm the delusive phantoms that were continually rising before him. Days and nights were spent in an eager search for some possible result, which though often escaping, and beckoning him on with aggravating coyness, was generally captured at last. Into this fascinating pursuit Barnard entered with all the ardor of his nature, and led by his fervid imagination, though still guided by accurate scientific knowledge, he managed to amass a sum of results which would have given him considerable fame had they been published to the world. But he declared that he was a mere dabbler in science, and would wait until he had accomplished some great thing before he troubled the scientific world with his childish experiments, which were leading to something better.
It must not be supposed, however, that Barnard spent all his time in the more congenial pursuit of chemical science to the neglect of his chosen profession. To this day there are not a few who were then citizens of Sacramento, who will attest to the untiring patience, close attention and skill which characterized Dr. Barnard during those early years of his life in California, when such rare tact and loving warmth as his were sure to bring hope, if not healing, to the sick-beds of those who were so fortunate as to know him. His range of practice grew to be very wide, and from far and near he was called to minister to the sick and suffering. The times were golden, and Barnard made a great deal of money by his ardent devotion to his practice. In a few years, although he was indifferent to wealth and was generous to the needy and suffering poor, he grew rich and prosperous in his fortunes.
I see him now, at this stage of his career—full-figured, rotund yet shapely,
bubbling over with animal spirits, vigor+ ous with health, in high good humor with himself and the world, winning to his side all the genuine men of the time, and drawing after him loving and admiring looks as he walked abroad with his elastic, springy step. Then I remember the dreamy veil that seemed to shut down at times over his clear blue eye, and the queer abstraction that interrupted the ripple of his bright talk, and I ask myself if this was a premonition of his fate, like that vague, far-off look that old philosophers say belongs to those who are destined to die by violence.
Of his wife I have not said much, because there is not much to say about her. She was one of those shadowy persons, hard to understand, with abundant positiveness as to being, but in character altogether negative. She loved her husband well and truly, and considered him the sum of all human wisdom and goodness. Thoroughly practical, she gloried in his pecuniary success, and only seemed to regret that his own skill had secured for them competence and substantial comfort before the dowry which she brought him had been exhausted. She shared in all the enthusiasm with which Barnard pursued his experiments in science, though she honestly declared that she did not understand them any more than she did the Sanscrit.
As his medical practice increased, and calls on his time grew more frequent, Barnard complained good-humoredly that he had too much professional business to allow himself as much leisure for scientific diversion as his craving passion required. His pecuniary circumstances, however, being easy, I think he grew a little careless about his business, and employed a good deal of time with his visionary schemes and mysterious chemical processes. His wife looked on with simple wonder, but asked no questions and made no inju dicious remarks, though she did sometimes open her eyes with wonder when she saw her husband rush out to answer a sudden call, carrying a boiling retort or half-finished experiment in his hand. Believing her husband to be one of the wisest and best of men, she declared that the God of Nature would bring him out of all his maze of conjectures in triumph; but what those conjectures were, and why he should have them, she did not know. I do not believe that she cared to know.
Carbon was always a favorite subject of Dr. Barnard's studies, and he pursued the subtle element through all its tortuous changes and _ multifarious forms. Nobody but a scientific man could understand the variety of his experiments and the wonderful results at which he arrived, in his thirsty chase for all that could be known concerning his favorite subject. "Carbon," he would say, "pervades all nature in one form or another. It gives strength and solidity to the humble plant beneath our feet; it is in the air we breathe and in the food we eat; it gives life and vigor to the blood of man and beast; warms us in the dull coal of the grate, and sparkles in the liquid lustre of the rarest gem in the world." The idea that carbon is capable of being solidified into its purest form, the diamond, was always uppermost in his mind; and pondering on the fact that here was crystalized carbon—only simple carbon in its purest form—he continually asked himself, "Why cannot this familiar element be caught, prisoned, and solidified into the precious gem?" "Nature," he argued, "has but few secrets in her laboratory which are not penetrable to man; her processes are hidden, but may be discovered or imitated; and if we know that Nature makes a diamond by crystalizing carbon, why not follow in her footsteps?" This was easier said than done, but the indefatigable experimenter was on the'keen search for the
hidden secret. Diamonds were not plenty or cheap in those days, and I shudder even now to think of the valuable stones that were bought by Barnard, pulverized, sublimated, triturated and treated to all sorts of tests with acids, fire, and other agencies. Before the long quest was ended, poor Mrs. Barnard's few gems went into the alembic, or melted away, none knew how. Dr. Barnard despised as absurd and chimerical the old notion of the alchemists, that gold could be made by transmutation, and cheerily he laughed at the vain dream that had tempted so many to poverty, desperation, and death. His was not a vulgar and ignorant fancy that gold, a primitive element, could be made by man; but humbly following in Nature's footsteps, he would imitate her own formula, and combine in the flawless gem the simple elements which she had revealed were the constituent parts thereof. This thought having once obtained lodgment in his mind, never left him. He had always known the theory of the chemists in relation to the formation of the diamond, but not until he had been emboldened by brilliant successes in experimental chemistry, did it occur to him that he might possibly accomplish that which had before been only dimly hinted at as a possibility. It had been said that whoever discovered the process of crystalizing carbon would have found the art of making diamonds. This was to be his work, and thenceforward he turned his attention to a pursuit of the phantom with all the ardor of one who is master of the obedient materials at hand. He was familiar enough with the disguises and peculiarities of the element which he pursued to be able to know just where to begin and where to lay his hand upon its secret habitations. His trials and manipulations were, of course, conducted on a small scale, and they were just successful enough to lure him forward to greater ventures and closer ap plication. He was never discouraged, for there was always abundant explanation for his repeated failures. Some element was missing, or some other was in excess; it would be easy to remedy these little defects, and with each trial came new light and knowledge. The goal of his hopes and ambition was not far off; it would be reached shortly; and meantime, his only regret was that he had not now the time to publish the wonderful revelations which his absorbing experiments had given him. He had reached the conclusion that his own results would enable somebody else te make the grand success, diamond making, if ke should die before he achieved it for himself.
Diamond making, we used to say, was Barnard's hobby, and the experiments which he made with his odd-shaped retorts and other implements were amusing to his friends, though we refrained from our good natured jests at his expense when we found him in severe earnest. One day he begged from a neighbor a large bombshell that had never been charged and had been kept as a curious relic of the Spanish occupation of California. This he loaded with some curious compound and fused the ingredients by means of a powerful galvanic battery; the shell, though enclosed in a welded crust of iron, exploded in fragments, broke the windows of his neighbors and brought the doctor into disrepute. He was threatened with an indictment as a nuisance if he contined his "dratted experiments," and for a time the ardent disciple of science lost some of his popularity. The mixture with which he charged his bombsheil, by the way, was known only to himself; in a moment of inspiration he seemed to have conceived the idea that certain materials fused under great pressure would secure the desired result; but what those ingredients were he never told. When questioned as to where he found the formula for their
composition he would evade the matter, but finally admitted that it had been "revealed" to him, though whether the revelation was made by spirits from the unseen world or by his own research, or by Nature herself, in a moment of unusual confidence, he would never say; it was sufficient for us to know that he had the infallible and only reliable recipe for compounding the diamond, or rather, for resolving from carbon its purest form—the diamond.
His chief anxiety now was where to find an implement or machine to hold the explosion while he fired his mixture under pressure. In reply to the suggestion that the same spirits who were kind enough to give him the information which enabled him to mix the ingredients, ought to furnish him with the requisite machinery for a successful test of their value, he only laughed good humoredly and said that man must work out some part of his problem himself. He was sensitive to any jocular remarks about the supernatural agency which was employed in his experiments, and though he began to have some traces of respect for the "spiritual manifestations" which were then beginning to attract attention in the country, he steadily declined to say what his chemical formula was or where he got it, except that "it was revealed." His wife asked no questions, but put her trust implicitly in her husband, as she had always done.
Barnard lost a little of his rotundity, and his features grew a trifle sharper, as he prosecuted his fascinating search for the proper machinery for his great experiment. As years rolled by and his bursted &nvils, broken retorts and shattered cannon-balls only brought fresh disappointments, he grew a shade paler and more anxious, but his fine flow of spirits never forsook him. He had a revelation that he would succeed, and his enthusiasm was still quenchless. He never had any more doubt of his
ultimate success than he had of his own existence. "Ifthe Lord spares my life, and I know He will," the hopeful little doctor would say, "I shall yet show the world that this dream of mine is not altogether a dream. And when I have made diamonds I shall be satisfied, unless," he added, as new possibilities seemed to shine before him, "unless I shall enter through my diamond gates into other mysteries of nature."
His patients complained of neglect and his practice dwindled somewhat; but this never disconcerted him; wealth and fame were just within his grasp, and he would soon be beyond the harassments of his profession. Wealth was not so much an object to him as the fame which he would secure by a scientific success that should electrify the world. He was willing that his friends, who had given him latterly the pecuniary assistance which he needed, should have the larger share of the profits that would arise from the success of his search after the great mystery; nay, more, he would by locking up the secret, when found, prevent the process from being common, or his own work from being so often repeated that the precious gem should be cheapened. The agents of the California Diamond Company should quietly put upon the market, in different quarters of the world, large and flawless stones of rare brilliancy and pure water; but none would know the parentage of these wonderful gems, and only his fame as a scientist should mark his whereabouts or his occupation.
Near Barnard's house was a huge mass of granite which had been left there by a bankrupt stone worker; on this the restless eyes of the experimenter were fixed. He bought it, and after clamping it about with rough masses of wrought iron, drilled a hole into its heart, placed his chemicals in a hollowed chamber in the bottom of the drilled channel, and then, having closed up the opening with some metallic com position, introduced through another minute channel the poles of a large galvanic battery and let on a terrific charge. The mass of stone and iron flew into a thousand fragments, and in the general disturbance which followed, the broadside of a neighboring house was blown in, to the consternation of a large family of Missourians, the paternal protector of whom, not appreciating the labors and necessities of science, had the doctor arrested for a misdemeanor forthwith. The appearance of the philosopher in the Sacramento police court was a signal fora rally of his friends, who had their good-natured laugh at his expense, as he pleaded his case and explained his novel schemes, and yet helped him out of his troubles with genuine Californian generosity. The Missourian was wroth, and swore vengance on the disturber of his peace, and the doctor agreed that he would try no more experiments inside the city limits.
On the restoration of peace, Barnard, who had supposed his experiment was an unquestionable failure, looked curiously at the cavity in the rent granite, now exposed to the light of day, as one looks at the inside of a work which has cost many weary days of labor under difficulty to perfect, when his eye was attracted by a grayish powder in a little scooping fissure; he scraped it up and rubbed it in his palm, and saw, gleaming in the sunlight, a few sparkling grains of diamond dust! there was no mistaking it. His eyes filled with strange moisture, as he thought of the brilliant future before him, now to begin at last; he thought of his beloved wife and friends, of the wealth which should be theirs and the comfort that should now repay their long endured suspense and anxiety. As he stood gazing in his palm, in which lay the precious dust, a great lump swelled in his throat, anda thousand wonderful visions thronged up the long vista which his imagination opened to him.
An hour later his wife found Barnard lying insensible near the shattered fragments of his granite receiver, with his nerveless hands open and empty. The reaction had been too much for his overworked and wearied frame, and he had fainted from excitement. We could not find any traces of the diamond dust in the plebian clay of Sacramento, where it had fallen, and no human eye but Barnard's ever saw it. That was enough, however, and he was from that day strung with a vigor and determination which had never before been his, even when he had been first inspired with the mysterious revelations which had since urged him onward in his search for the diamond. Some of his plain-speaking acquaintances thought that they ought to undeceive him by telling him that what he took to be diamond dust was only pulverized feldspar from the shattered granite. He laughed at the suggestion, and remained fixed in the belief that he had seen and handled minute diamonds which he had made. From that day certain compassionate people shook their heads sadly and said: " Dr. Barnard is as crazy as a loon."
There were others, however, who would not forsake the good doctor, and now that his own and his wife's property had been greatly diminished by his expensive experiments, and his income was far below what it had been, were ready to encourage the hopeful enthusiast in science with substantial aid. He was always particular to insist that all such loans were only temporary, and that the lenders should share in the first benefits of his grand success. So, with their own subscriptions his friends eked out Barnard's dwindling funds, and he went on with preparations for a trial on a larger scale than any heretofore attempted, in which he was confident of success. It is not worth while to go into details, but enough to say that a considerable sum was spent in building and equipping a large iron globe which was bored and charged, after the manner of the block
of granite, and a galvanic shock communicated to the contents of the interior from an immense battery which Barnard himself had constructed. The machine was carted off mysteriously one night to a lonely plain several miles from the city, and was fired by the doctor next day. I met him as he alighted from his buggy on his return; he threw his arms around me and trembled as he said, "I have it! I have it!" He showed a rough pebble, about the size of a large pea, brown in its coating, but emitting on one side, where he had rudely chipped off the crust, a duJl, yellow gleam. The diamond, if such it was, 'passed from hand to hand, and set the town by the ears; not a few said that it was a base invention, and others stoutly maintained that Dr. Barnard was too honest to im-. pose upon others, and too deeply versed in science to be imposed upon. The globe had been hopelessly fissured by the shock, and it required the united labors of Barnard and his friends for several hours to clear out the bore of the machine so as to reacl. the crusted stone that slept within. After dividing the town into two distinct factions, the: stone was sent to Antwerp to be cut and tested. Ten months passed away and it came back, a straw-colored diamond, with a whitish flaw in it, dull and smoky enough, but a diamond, nevertheless. There were stories of letters having been written from California to. buy an opinion from the Antwerp lapidary, and some went so far as to say that Barnard had never sent the stone which had been taken from the iron globe, and even that no such stone had ever been found there, but had been: dexterousiy produced at the right moment by Dr. Barnard. So the question remained unsettled, and the story cf the Antwerp Diamond was the subject for a standing joke for many months thereafter.
The events which I have hastily recounted were stretched over eight or
nine years. Notina single year did my old friend give way to the fascination of the diamond dream; not in a few years did his lucrative practice melt away, to be replaced by an eager search for the discovery of a hidden scientific process; not until eight years had passed did he find himself almost a bankrupt in purse, reduced to living in a mean habitation, pinched for the necessaries of life, and kept alive and cheery only by his tireless enthusiasm in his pursuit and by a quenchless belief in his ultimate success. Fortune was still near, and he would soon be so rich that he could bear the little privations of to-day. Itwas something wonderful to see how manfully and philosophically he bore himself under his pecuniary troubles and often disap-pointments. He lived simply and even meanly, but made a pleasantry of his vegetarian fare, and declared that when he came into his fortune he would not be willing to forego the simple luxuries of bread and water for the enervating
and corrupting habits which monied ease would be sure to tempt him with. His wife never repined, but clung to this poorly understood delusion of her husband with as much tenacious confidence
ashe did. If she suspected that all was not well; if her faith in his ultimate success ever wavered, she made no 'sign, but with an almost sullen belief in her husband's scientific infallibility, said simply: "We shall succeed, we shall succeed."
Nor were his friends all gone. Some had left him to struggle on, but many remained to help him with their countenance or with their money. He made new friends, too, with surprising readiness. Of these I shall always remember gratefully a young machinist who had just established himself in Sacramento, and who could not very well afford the sacrifice of time and materials which he made for Barnard. He had no faith whatever in the diamond business, but, as he expressed it, "he could not bear
to see the good doctor wearing himself out and fretting because he had not the means to put his machinery together." There seems to be some subtle charm in the personal influence of dreamy visionaries by which they capture some practical men, and the oddly matched couple—enthusiast and unbeliever—jog on together, bearing and dividing a queer burden. So our young machinist, compassionating Barnard, or half-ashamed of a hidden belief, permitted the unwearied experimenter to use his shop, tools and materials with a liberal hand. The good fellow, half laughing, half crying at the doctor's wild delusion, worked on the new machine whenever he had a moment to spare, and surrendered all his little resources to his call.
Barnard was too proud to be an object of charity, but took freely whatever was offered him, with the unabashed confidence of one whose millions were not yet subject to sight drafts. Finding that ready money must be had to furnish materials and machinery for a great and crucial experiment, he conceived the plan of getting up a joint stock company, and the little knot of faithful friends who stood by him still consented to become stockholders in the California Diamond Crystallization Company. The organization was completed, and the shares were disposed of. The shareholders represented a great variety of opinions and varying shades of faith in the enterprise in which the company was embarked. There were those who did not believe in the scheme but did believe in Barnard; there were others who were willing to take stock "just to help him out;" there were some who had faith in the scheme from the first; most of these were spiritualists; and there were not a few who, with genuine Californian recklessness, invested a few hundred dollars "just for luck," with the proviso that if they ever got anything back it would be an awful disappointment. These all
made up a goodly company, with president, secretary, treasurer and directors, some of whose valuable autographs lie before me now, on a neatly engraved certificate, for five shares in the California Diamond Crystallization Company.
Months were consumed in the laborious manufacture of a solid iron sphere, thirty-eight inches in diameter, a mass of laminated and wrought castiron, so hooped, banded, braced and strengthened in every part as to seem a miracle of strength and solidity. Into this, at great cost and painful labor, a circular channel, three inches in diameter, was bored, reaching to the center, where a circular chamber, six inches in diameter, was hollowed by a peculiar machine, invented by Barnard for the purpose. The materials for the crystallization being introduced, it was intended to close the channel from end to end with a closely-fitting steel screw, adjusted to threads made to fit those of this stopper. Two small openings ran through the center of this screw-stopper, through which were to be passed the poles of a galvanic battery, encased in an insulating substance. The battery used on the occasion was a wonder in its way. It was said to have been the largest ever made in the United States. I do not know enough about such things to be able to take the responsibility of that statement, but it was made of two cups—tubs, rather—each holding ten plates, forty-two inches in diameter. It was said to be of sufficient power to kill a hundred men at one shock. The experiment was never fairly tried.
I have not the heart to describe the repeated failures and reversals, the disappointments and rising and falling hopes with which the work went on during the summer months of 1860. There were numerous disasters of breaking tools, spoiled castings, and unexpected obstacles. The young machinist tore his hair in despair, but picked up his
tools again and worked on with a comical sort of wilfulness. More assessments were levied, and more stock created. Some shareholders fell out by the way, discouraged and dismayed at the "Irish dividends," and one by one withdrew in great disgust. Meantime, tidings of what was going on in the Sacramento machine shop had spread all over the State, and relief came in the shape of new subscriptions from sympathising or sanguine people in the mountains and valleys, and -by the sea side. One man in Shasta county wrote that he had been warned in a dream that he must buy five shares in the Diamond Company if he would be rich. He would be rich, so he enclosed a draft for $625, and bequeathed his five shares of stock to his next of kin five years thereafter.
In September, 1860, the machine which I have described was carried into the heart of an adjoining county, secretly and at night, for fear of such scoffers as might follow it to deride the proceedings or share in the knowledge of the great success. Only a few of the most select of the select, eight in all, were permitted to know the place of rendezvous, and they, to keep all outsiders from the secret, turned teamsters and laborers, and when the machine was fairly prepared for transportation, were the only guard and attendants of its transit to a lonely place, far away from the inspection of any curious eye. A day or two elapsed after the apparatus was taken to the place of experiment, during which Barnard slept on the field, under a slight shed put up for the purpose of sheltering the battery and the materials. His eye shone with a strange light, a bright-red spot appeared on either cheek, and his once elastic step was heavy and trembling with strange eagerness. But his courage was still unshaken, and he spoke calmly and confidently of the Dright certainty before us all. For his™beloved friends
there was wealth, but for him fame, more glorious and coveted than mere money, was within reach.
The eventful day was sunny, calm, and lovely. The iron globe had been charged with the mysterious compound. The battery was ready to be attached by a single turn of a lever to the wires which led out into the level space where the great, rude sphere lay sleeping in the sun, holding in its iron heart its tremendous secret. Without any superflous words or dramatic gestures, such as the occasion might have called forth, Barnard mounted the little shed, through the roof of which appeared the lever that was to direct the enormous power of the battery beneath him, along the quivering wires to the silent monster lying in the dry grass, scarcely two hundred feet away. Ata safer distance from the machine, eight stockholders in the California Diamond Crystallization Company, with various feelings, but with dry jokes still uttered with their bated breath, sat upon a rail fence. The moment was sublime. Phineas Goodson said, "She biles!" Then the lever was turned in the Doctor's hand; there was a fierce rending of the air, as if heaven and earth had come together; the solid earth trembled for miles around; birds fell dead from the astonished sky, with fragments of iron and steel; Dr. Barnard ascended, it is averred, fifty feet perpendicularly in the air; then flying horizontally fifty feet, he alighted on the quaking earth with a broken thigh and sundry contusions. All this the eight stockholders on the rail fence saw before the rush of air swept them off in a heap, as a boy would brush off a row of torpid flies. The experiment was concluded, and when ranchmen came spurring in from the alarmed country roundabout, they found —not a new-born volcano or wandering earthquake, as they had expected, but a broken-limbed, broken-hearted philosopher, a field dotted with minute
fragments of an iron globe, a group of half-stunned stockholders, a torn and rent space of ground, a scattered wreck of a wooden shed and battery—but no diamonds.
I draw a curtain over the closing scenes. Inamoment of time, in a flash of electric light, the hope of a lifetime, the fruits of long and weary years of waiting, passed away as lightly as a bursted bubble. Barnard's resources and all that he could expect from his friends had gone in the general wreck of his hopes. His frame was shattered by his terrible fall; and limp and nerveless from the reaction of his overstrained organization, he relapsed into a state of apathy and stupor; the light of his eye was extinguished; his heart was quite broken. He took to his bed and for days spoke no word to any man. Rallying after a while, he persisted in his belief that he only needed an apparatus strong enough to hold the discharge of his battery, and he could yet make the diamond. It was pitiful to see the eager flush with which he would start up when arguing the certainty of success, hoping that his listeners would encourage him by word or assistance to hope for future ventures. No such word or offer ever came, and he slowly gave way under the crushing load of disappointment that weighed him down. With the rainy season of autumn, gloom shut in around him, and though the old hope flashed up occasionally from the embers of his expiring fires, the ashes slowly covered his heart, and he passed into a condition in which he seemed wavering between life and death. Once ina while of a bright occasional day in winter his shrunken form was seen sunning itself at the doorway of his little house in the ragged outskirts of the city. But consumption, which had long been seated in his system, rapidly brought him down to death. His devoted wife, thinner and paler than of yore, but quiet and gentle, ministered to every want, and bore un complainingly the querulous repinings which now came from the broken-spirited defeated man.
One winter afternoon, as the rain was falling drearily in the cheerless streets of Sacramento, Barnard lay a-dying. He had quite loosed his hold on life and was drifting out into the dim sea beyond. He rallied and returned; fix ing his fading eyes upon his tearful wife, he difficultly said: "They will make diamonds yet; I may come back and tell them how to prepare the materials; but you shall have the secret now. Take of carbonic acid." The jaw fell, and his cherished secret died with the baffled Diamond Maker of Sacramento.