The Golden Butterfly

The Golden Butterfly, which gives a name to this novel, was seen by an English traveller, two years ago, preserved as a curiosity in a mining city near Sacramento, where it probably still remains. This curious freak of Nature is not therefore an invention of our own. To the same traveller—Mr. Edgar Besant—we are indebted for the description on which is based our account of Empire City.

The striking of oil in Canada in the manner described by Gilead P. Beck was accomplished—with the waste of millions of gallons of the oil, for want of casks and buckets to receive it, and with the result of a promise of almost boundless wealth—by a man named Shaw, some ten years ago. Shaw speculated, we believe; lost his money, and died in poverty.

Names of great living poets and writers have been used in this book in connection with a supposed literary banquet. A critic has expressed surprise that we have allowed Gilead Beck's failure to appreciate Browning to stand as if it were our own. Is a writer of fiction to stop the action of his story in order to explain that it is his character's opinion and not his own, that he states? And it surely is not asking too much to demand of a critic that he should consider first of all the consistency of a character's actions or speeches. Gilead Beck, a man of no education and little reading, but of considerable shrewdness, finds Browning unintelligible and harsh. What other verdict could be expected if the whole of Empire City in its palmiest days had been canvassed?

Moreover, we have never, even from that great writer's most ardent admirers, heard an opinion that he is either easy to read, or musical. The compliments which Mr. Beck paid to the guests who honoured his banquet are of course worded just as he delivered them.

Gilead Beck's experiences as an editor are taken—with a little dressing—from the actual experiences of a living Canadian journalist.

From their Virginian home Jack Dunquerque and Phillis his wife send greetings to those who have already followed their fortunes. She only wishes us to add that Mr. Abraham Dyson was right, and that the Coping Stone of every woman's education is Love. Most people know this, she says, from reading: but she never did read; and the real happiness is to find it out for yourself.

W. B. J. R.

March, 1877.

"What do you think, chief?"

The speaker, who was leading by a half a length, turned in his saddle and looked at his companion.

"Push on," growled the chief, who was a man of few words.

"If you were not so intolerably conceited about the value of your words—hang it, man, you are not the Poet Laureate!—you might give your reasons why we should not camp where we are. The sun will be down in two hours; the way is long, the wind is cold, or will be soon. This pilgrim has tightened his belt to stave off the gnawing at his stomach; here is running water, here is wood, here is everything calculated to charm the poetic mind even of Captain Ladds——"

"Road!" interrupted his fellow-traveller, pointing along the track marked more by deep old wheel-ruts, grown over with grass, than by any evidences of engineering skill. "Roads lead to places; places have beds; beds are warmer than grass—no rattlesnakes in beds; miners in hotels—amusing fellows, miners."

"If ever I go out again after buffaloes, or bear, or mountain-deer, or any other game whatever which this great continent offers, with a monosyllabic man, may I be condemned to another two months of buffalo steak without Worcester sauce, such as I have had already; may I be poisoned with bad Bourbon whisky; may I never again see the sweet shady side of Pall Mall; may I——"

Here he stopped suddenly, for want of imagination to complete the curse.

The first speaker was a young man of four and twenty—the age which is to my sex what eighteen is to the other, because at four and twenty youth and manhood meet. He of four and twenty is yet a youth, inasmuch as women are still angels; every dinner is a feast, every man of higher rank is a demigod, and every book is true. He is a man, inasmuch as he has the firm step of manhood, he has passed through his calf-love, he knows what claret means, and his heart is set upon the things for which boys care nothing. He is a youth, because he can still play a game of football and rejoice amazingly in a boat-race; he is a man, because he knows that these things belong to the past, and that to concern one's self seriously with athletics, when you can no longer be an athlete in the games, is to put yourself on the level of a rowing coach or the athletic critic of a sporting paper.

Being only four and twenty, the speaker was in high spirits. He was also hungry. He was always both. What has life better to offer than a continual flow of animal spirits and a perpetual appetite? He was a tall, slight, and perhaps rather a weedy youth, a little too long of leg, a little too narrow in the beam, a little spare about the shoulders; but a youth of a ruddy and a cheerful countenance. To say that the lines of his face were never set to gravity would be too much, because I defy any man to laugh when he is sleeping, eating, or drinking. At all other times this young man was ready to laugh without stopping. Not a foolish cackle of idiotic vacuity such as may be heard in Earlswood asylum or at a tea-party to meet the curate, but a cheerful bubble of mirth and good-humour, proof that the spirit within took everything joyously, seeing in every misadventure its humorous side, and in every privation its absurdity.

The other who rode beside him was some years older at least. A man of thirty-five, or perhaps more; a man with a hatchet-face—nose and forehead in one straight line; long chin and long upper lip in another; face red with health as well as bronzed with the sun—a good honest face, supernaturally grave, grave beyond all understanding; lips that were always tightly closed; eyes which sometimes sparkled in response to some genial thought, or bubbled over at some joke of his companion, but which, as a rule, were like gimlets for sternness, so that strangers, especially stranger servants—the nigger of Jamaica, the guileless Hindoo of his Indian station, and other members of the inferior human brotherhood—trembled exceedingly when they met those eyes. Captain Ladds was accordingly well served, as cold, reserved men generally are. Mankind takes everything unknown pro terribili , for something dreadful, and until we learn to know a man, and think we know him, he is to be treated with the respect due to a possible enemy. Hostis means a stranger, and it is for strangers that we keep our brickbats.

Mr. Gilead P. Beck, partly recovered from the shock caused to his nerves by the revengeful spirit of the bear, and in no way discomfited by any sense of false shame as to his ragged appearance, marched beside the two Englishmen. It was characteristic of his nationality that he regarded the greasers with contempt, and that he joined the two gentlemen as if he belonged to their grade and social rank. An Englishman picked up in such rags and duds would have shrunk abashed to the rear, or he would have apologised for his tattered condition, or he would have begged for some garments—any garments—to replace his own. Mr. Beck had no such feeling. He strode along with a swinging slouch, which covered the ground as rapidly as the step of the horses. The wind blew his rags about his long and lean figure as picturesquely as if he were another Autolycus. He was as full of talk as that worthy, and as lightsome of spirit, despite the solemn gravity of his face. I once saw a poem—I think in the Spectator —on Artemus Ward, in which the bard apostrophised the light-hearted merriment of the Western American; a very fortunate thing to say, because the Western American is externally a most serious person, never merry, never witty, but always humorous. Mr. Beck was quite grave, though at the moment as happy as that other grave and thoughtful person who has made a name in the literature of humour—Panurge—when he escaped half-roasted from the Turk's Serai.

"I ought," he said, "to sit down and cry, like the girl on the prairie."

"Why ought you to cry?"

"I guess I ought to cry because I've lost my rifle and everything except my Luck"—here he pulled at the steel chain—"in that darned long stern chase."

"You can easily get a new rifle," said Jack.

"With dollars," interrupted Mr. Beck. "As for them, there's not a dollar left—nary a red cent; only my Luck."

"And what is your Luck?"

"That," said Mr. Beck, "I will tell you by-and-by. Perhaps it's your Luck, too, young boss," he added, thinking of a shot as fortunate to himself as William Tell's was to his son.

He pulled the box attached to the steel chain round to the front, and looked at it tenderly. It was safe, and he heaved a sigh.

The way wound up a valley—a road marked only, as has been said, by deep ruts along its course. Behind the travellers the evening sun was slowly sinking in the west; before them the peaks of the Sierra lifted their heads, coloured purple in the evening light; and on either hand rose the hill-sides, with their dark foliage in alternate "splashes" of golden light and deepest shade.

It wanted but a quarter of an hour to sunset when Mr. Gilead P. Beck pointed to a township which suddenly appeared, lying at their very feet.

"Empire City, I reckon."

A good-sized town of wooden houses. They were all alike and of the same build as that affected by the architects of doll's houses; that is to say, they were of one story only, had a door in the middle, and a window on either side. They were so small, also, that they looked veritable dolls' houses.

There were one or two among them of more pretentious appearance, and of several stories. These were the hotels, billiard-saloons, bars, and gambling-houses.

"It's a place bound to advance, sir," said Mr. Beck proudly. "Empire City, when I first saw it, which is two years ago, was only two years old. It is only in our country that a great city springs up in a day. Empire City will be the Chicago of the West."

"I see a city," said Captain Ladds; "can't see the people."

It was certainly curious. There was not a soul in the streets; there was no smoke from the chimneys; there was neither carts nor horses; there was not the least sign of occupation.