Читать книгу How They Succeeded: Life Stories of Successful Men Told by Themselves онлайн

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“Scarcely any. I struck right out, though, and found a place where I could dig, and I struck pay dirt in a little time.”

“Did you work entirely alone?”

“No. It was not long before I met Mr. Croarkin at a little mining camp called Virginia. He had the next claim to mine, and we became partners. After a little while, he went away, but came back in a year. We then bought in together. The way we ran things was ‘turn about.’ Croarkin would cook one week, and I the next, and then we would have a clean-up every Sunday morning. We baked our own bread, and kept a few hens, which kept us supplied with eggs. There was a man named Chapin who had a little store in the village, and we would take our gold dust there and trade it for groceries.”

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“Did you discover much gold?” I asked.

“Oh, I worked with pretty good success,—nothing startling. I didn’t waste much, and tried to live carefully. I also studied the business opportunities around, and persuaded some of my friends to join me in buying and developing a ‘ditch,’—a kind of aqueduct, to convey water to diggers and washers. That proved more profitable than digging for gold, and at the end of the year, the others sold out to me, took their earnings and went home. I stayed, and bought up several other water-powers, until, in 1856, I thought I had enough, and so I sold out and came East.”