Page:The Overland Monthly, volume 1, issue 1.djvu/44



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