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HIS is what happened to me in July, 1873. It chanced in the middle of a prosperous and easy life, in which, as a banker, I had doubled the property left to me, an only child. My days had been free from money cares, and were in all other ways what might be called uneventful and happy.

In looking back over the unlucky incidents I here record I fail to see what better I could have done. One of the three or four people who have read this story of my sudden isolation thinks I might have found sooner some way of relief. I leave the reader to decide.

The West was not the West of to-day. Travel was more difficult, the post slow, the telegraph a new means of communication.

In 1871 I became the unwilling owner of certain mines in Arkansas. They had brought ruin to two owners, and I went to the West to see what I could do with them. I told my people not to write until they heard from me, and that I should be gone three or four weeks.

On July 3, twenty miles from my destination, New Samaria, I left the unfinished railway, and on July 4 took the stage early in the morning. To my disgust, my baggage had been missing at the station. A too sanguine station-master "reckoned it would turn up soon," and I went away annoyed, anticipating the discomfort of being without a change of clothes. My trunk did turn up a month later.

I reached the new town of New Samaria at noon. I had a horrible meal, and, evidently by reason of my being without baggage, was not very cordially received. It did not trouble me. Being rather energetic, I meant to lose no time, and, without stating my errand, asked to be driven out to the mines, some twelve miles distant.