Dear reader, shall I give you a few symptoms of the mining epidemic in Mountain towns? All right. I will anyhow!

Symptom 1.—A long-haired man is seen pounding up a piece of quartz about the size of a man's hand.

Symptom 2.—Two men meander up to him and ask him where he got it.

Symptom 3.—The long-haired man looks down into the mortar, and lies gently to the inquiring minds who linger near.

Symptom 4.—More men come around. The long-haired man gets a gold-pan and doubles himself up over the ditch and begins to pan.

Symptom 5.—Two hundred more men come out of saloons and other mercantile establishments and join the throng.

Symptom 6.—The long-haired man gets down to black sand, and shows several colors about the size of a blue-jay's ear.

Symptom 7 times.—Several solitary horsemen start out, with some pack-mules, and blank location notices, and valley tan. The plot deepens. The telegraph gets red-hot. Men who have been impecunious, for lo, these many years, come around to pay some old bills. Poor men buy spotted dogs and gold-headed canes. Stingy men get reckless, and buy the first box of strawberries without asking the price.

I have caught the epidemic myself.

I am getting reckless. Instead of turning my last summer lavender pants hind side before, and removing the ham sandwich lithograph on the front breadths, I have purchased a new pair.

I never experienced such a wild, glad feeling of perfect abandon.

I go to church and chip in for the heathen, perfectly regardless of expense. If Zion languishes, I come forward and throw in the small currency with a lavish hand.

Banks, offices, hotels, saloons and private residences show specimens of quartz carrying free gold and carbonates, hard, soft, and medium soft, with iron protoxide of nitrogen, rhombohedral glucose indications of valedictory and free milling oxide of anti-fat in abundance.

Nellis, who lives near the Mill Creek carbonate claims, came in to town the other day to get an injunction against the miners, so that he could injunct them from prospecting in his cellar, and staking his pie-plant bed.

When he goes out after dark to drive the cow out of his turnip patch, he falls over a stake every little while, with a notice tacked on it, which sets forth that the undersigned, viz., Johnny Comelately, Joe Newbegin, Shoo Fly Smith, and Union Forever Dandelion claim 1,500 feet in length, by 600 feet in width for mineral purposes on this claim, to be known as "The Gal with the skim-milk Eye," together with all dips, spurs, angles or variations, gold, silver, or other precious metals therein contained.

Mr. Nellis says he is glad to see a "boom," and at first he did all he could to make it pleasant for prospectors; but lately he thinks that their sociability has become too earnest and too simultaneous.

I told him that the only way I could see to avoid losing his grip, and having his string-beans dug up prematurely, was to stake the entire ranche as a placer claim, buy him a Gatling gun that would shoot the large size of buckshot, and then trust in the mysterious movements of an overruling Providence.

I do not know whether he took my advice or not; but I am looking anxiously along the Mill-Creek road every day, for a six mule team loaded with disorganized remains, and driven by a man who looks as though he had glutted his vengeance, and had two or three gluts left over on his hands.