Part 30 (1/2)

'Goodbye.' 'Good bye.'

”In the evening the same call is made; the same answer; and then from the still convent on noiseless pinions these words go out through the night, and pulsate on the father's ear: 'Good night, papa! Good night, mamma! a kiss for each of you!' and then the weird instrument materializes two kisses for the father's ear.

”He is a rough fellow, but he declares that since he commenced to receive those kisses, he knows that an answer to prayer is not impossible; that if that child's voice can come to him, stealing past the night patrol unheard, stealing in clear and distinct and like a benediction, while the winds and the city are roaring outside, there is nothing wonderful in believing that on the invisible wire of faith the same voice could send its music to the furthest star, and that the Great Father would bend His ear to listen.”

”It is a pretty story,” said Brewster. ”The telephone is the most poetical of inventions. There is a metallic sound to the click of the telegraph, as though its chief use was to further the work and the worry of mankind. There is something like a sob to the perfecting press, as though saddened by the very thought of the abuses it must reform. There is a something about a steam engine which reminds one of the heavy respirations of the slave, toiling on his chain, but the telephone has a voice for but one ear at a time, and when it is a voice that we love its messages come like caresses.

”Not the least of its triumphs is that it has broken the silence of the convent.

”At last voices from the outer world thrill through the thick walls, and the patient women who are immured there hear the good nights and the kisses which by loving lips are sent away to loving homes. How their starved hearts must be thrilled by those messages! Sometimes, too, they must realize that the course of Nature cannot be changed; that the beginning of heaven is in the love which canopies true homes on earth.

But with that thought there comes another, that from the Infinite, to palace, convent and humble homes alike, celestial wires, too fine for mortal eyes to discern, stretch down, and all alike are held in one sheltering hand. Sometime all these wires will work in accord, and the good-nights and the kisses in the souls of men will materialize into harmony and fill the world with music.”

”That is, Brewster,” said Corrigan, ”supposin' the wires do not get crossed and the girls do not kiss the wrong papas.”

”Suppose, Brewster,” said the Colonel, ”that at the final concert it shall be discovered that certain gentlemen have not settled their monthly rents for a long time, and their connection has been cut off?”

”There is no music where there are no ears to hear,” said Wright. ”What if some souls are born deaf and dumb?”

”Suppose,” said the Professor, ”that there are souls which have no ear for music?”

”I do not know,” said Brewster, ”but I fancy that the fairest final prizes may not be to the best musicians, but to those who made the sorest sacrifices in order to get a ticket to the concert.”

With this the good nights were repeated.

CHAPTER XVII.

At length there came a day when there was real trouble in the Club. The foreman of the mine in which Wright was at work ordered Wright and a fellow miner to go to the surface to a.s.sist in handling some machinery which was to be sent down into the mine.

The two men stepped upon the cage and three bells were sounded--the signal to the engineer at the surface that men were to be hoisted and all care used.

The cage started from the 2,400-foot level. Nothing unusual happened until, as they neared the surface, Wright said to his comrade: ”By the way we are pa.s.sing the levels, it seems to me they must be in a hurry on top.”

The other miner answered: ”I guess it is all right;” but hardly were the words spoken, when they shot up into the light; in an instant the cage went cras.h.i.+ng into the sheaves and was crushed, the men being thrown violently out.

Wright's companion, as he fell, struck partly on the curbing of the shaft, rolled in and was of course dashed to pieces.

Wright was thrown outside the shaft, and though not killed outright, two or three ribs were broken, one lung was badly injured, besides he was otherwise terribly bruised.

People unfamiliar with mining may not understand the above. On the Comstock the hoisting engines are set from forty to eighty feet from the mouths of the shafts. Directly over the shafts are frames from thirty to fifty feet in height, on which pulleys (rimmed iron wheels) are fastened. The cages are lowered and raised by flat, plaited, steel wire cables, which are generally four or five inches wide and about three-eighths of an inch in thickness.

This cable is first coiled on the reel of the engine, then the loose end is drawn over the pulley, then down to the cage, to which it is made fast. The wheel of a pulley is called a sheave, and by habit it has grown to be a common expression to call the block and wheel in hoisting works ”the sheaves.” At intervals of one or two hundred feet on the cables they are wound with white cloth, as a guide to the engineer, as the cable is uncoiled in lowering or coiled in hoisting. Also, on the outer rim of the reel, is a dial with figures or marks at regular intervals, and a hand (like the hand of a clock) which perpetually indicates to the engineer about where the cage is in all stages of lowering or hoisting.

These engineers work eight hour s.h.i.+fts, and sometimes twelve. Of the nature of their work an idea can be formed by the statement that during the two or three years when the great Bonanza in the California and Con. Virginia mines was giving up its treasure, through two double-compartment shafts, all the work of those two mines was carried on. The main ore body was between the 1,300-foot and 1,700-foot levels.

Every day from six hundred to eight hundred men were lowered into and hoisted out of the mine. One hundred thousand feet (square measure) of timbers were lowered daily (three million feet per month); nearly or quite one thousand tons of ore was hoisted daily; the picks, drills and gads were sent up to be sharpened and returned; the powder used and five tons of ice daily were lowered, and besides this work, there was machinery to lower and hoist; the waste rock to be handled and visitors and officers of the mine to be lowered and hoisted. The cages are about four feet six inches in length and three feet in width, and are simply iron frames with a wooden floor and iron bonnet over the top and made to exactly fit the size of the shaft. Three of these compartments had double cages--one above the other, and one had three cages. A three-decker carries three tons of ore or twenty-seven men at a time.

Of course when such work is being driven, the eyes of an engineer have to be every moment on their work. Men follow the occupation for months and years without an accident or mistake, but now and then, through the ceaseless strain, their nerves break down; something like an aberration of the mind comes over them and they watch, dazed like sleep-walkers, as the cage shoots out of the shaft and mounts up into the sheaves and cannot command themselves enough to move the lever of the engine which is in their hand.

Such an accident as this overtook Wright and his companion. Poor Wright was carried home by brother miners. The accident happened only about an hour before the time for changing s.h.i.+fts and hardly was Wright laid in his bed before the other members of the Club met at their home.