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TERRITORIAL ENTERPRISE

Sunday……….May 20, 1883

FROM EASTERN NEVADA.

The Merry Month of May—Church Festivities and Amenities—Hobart’s Boiler Scale Ideas—Base Range Base Ball—The Glory and Obnoxiousness of Wealth—Unportable Dollars—Journalistic Luck—Memorial Day.

[Correspondence of the Enterprise.]

AUSTIN, Nev., May 18, 1883.

"Hail, all Hail, thou merry month of May," should have been written by the author of "Beautiful Snow." Anyhow there has been more merry hail played with the weather during the present month of May than the oldest Austinite ever saw, either before or since the flood. Hail squalls are the order of the day, and three inches of snow the order of each night, to melt or run off or soak in by noon. The soil here takes up water like a sponge, being of a decomposed granite formation, without much clay, therefore it is never muddy two hours after a hailstorm or a flood. Bishop Whitaker, who is paying his annual visit to the various parishes of his diocese in the eastern part of the State, arrived here from Belmont Tuesday evening, and is circulating pleasantly among his Episcopal and other Gentile friends. The ladies of the church had arranged for an elaborate and attractive strawberry and ice cream festival to be given last evening, but postponed it on account of the weather until some time next week. Strawberries are plentiful enough, and bigger than ever before seen here, but the bountiful surplus of hail and snow was too much of a stand-off for the ice cream proposition. Since the departure of Rev. Mr. Eastman for more verdant and nutritious pastures in the East, our handsome little Episcopal church has been without a pastor having been assigned to fill Mr. Eastman’s place, the church will probably remain shut down, so to speak, for the present. It is a good field for a smart and popular preacher.

SCALY SENATORIAL IDEAS.

Hon. W. W. Hobart paid us a flying visit last Friday, to look after some little business matters. Hobart was one of the old timers here, being associated in business with Gridley, the famous Sanitary Flour-sack man, therefore he found a host of friends to shake hands and smile with. He attended the ball of the A. O. H. in the evening and got no sleep, as he left on the morning train. Hobart is happy and prosperous. He makes his headquarters in San Francisco, and is traveling agent for a patent arrangement for preventing scale in boilers. He says it is the biggest thing in America, and he expects to make big money, like John Mackay, during the next year or two. Some of our shrewd political sharps, however, affect to look upon this brief visit from Hobart as having something deeper than boiler scale in its significance; that his boiler scale proposition was merely a blind to conceal sundry political wires he is laying for himself or somebody else, which will be developed in next year’s campaign—perhaps for Jones as United State Senator. Nobody seems to know of any wires or signs of wires laid by him, however, and the chances are that he did not lay any. In fact he declared that he had gone out of politics altogether, and gone in devotedly on boiler scale as a basis of future wealth and fame. He is an experienced newspaper man, but nobody suspected that he had an eye to starting a new daily paper in Austin.

BASE RANGE BASEBALL.

Last year a baseball club from Eureka came and played a big match game with a club of our Austin boys, and returned home to the Base Range badly beaten. The other day a new club from here went over to Eureka, to follow up that victory and scoop up the Base Rangers on their own dunghill, as it were. Latest advices from there, however, are to the effect that our boys got seriously scooped themselves; score 21 to 14. They will ride home nevertheless, and can, no doubt, explain the cause of this strange and unexpected discrepancy in the count. The slag, base metal and furnace-fumed atmosphere of Eureka operate as so many heavy influences, preventing the best players from winning. The Eureka boys had every advantage in being acclimated.

ALMIGHTY DOLLARS.

The most experienced moralists on the subject of the Fair divorce are quite unanimous on the proposition that, had it not been for an overplus of almighty dollars in the family, there would not have been any separation or divorce. They argue that, were it not for those golden millions unexpectedly accumulated, the affections of our Uncle James would not have strayed away from the wife of his less noted and more impecunious days. Those who knew them best, when poor, remember that they got along very happily together, and even in the first developing of their great financial prosperity, domestic happiness and mutual affection reigned within their little family circle. Those who have similarly rolled on Fortune’s wheels into the sphere of unlimited and unexpected wealth may be able to explain and account for such domestic changes, but to most of us it is a consoling as well as powerful argument against getting rich and allowing our better natures to be sordidly or otherwise vitiated, or crushed beneath an overpowering weight of almighty dollars. But the sequel to this domestic romance may be looked for in some future matrimonial alliance, for people who become rich and noted are always the most watched and enviously talked about—another argument against getting rich. And after all, even the richest man in the world ever saw cannot take a cent away when he dies, but has to leave his whole pile for somebody else to enjoy or squander, while he lies beneath their feet, far more helpless and infinitely poorer than when he first came into the world. Here in Austin, recently, an old pioneer died. He was considered poor, but had been a man of public note and respectability, and, although he had no wife and family to care for him in his old age, kind friends provided for his every want, smoothed his way to the mystic beyond, and a large procession followed his remains to the cemetery. When his little box, which he had kept at the bank for safe-keeping, was then opened, instead of containing, as was supposed, merely documents and papers, they found not only a lot of valuable notes and mining stocks, but several hundred dollars in gold coin; in fact, quite a little bonanza for the Public Administrator, or somebody else, to dispose of. The old pioneer had none but an ideal enjoyment of it in life, and left it behind to be a matter of astonishment to his sympathizing friends. Speaking about

LIFE’S CHANGES

And fortunes, I noticed an item in the ENTERPRISE the other day about a remarkable printer, who put by a nickel every time one of his fellow-workmen went out to get a drink, and in the course of a few years found himself a rich man. That reminds us of the newspaper proprietor who had to furnish the nickels every time the printers went out to take a drink. By and by he found himself a poor man and fired out, while every one of those remarkable printers subsequently became newspaper proprietors, or other styles of bonanza men, in various parts of the country.

MEMORIAL DAY,

Or, as many erroneously and not appropriately designate it, Decoration Day, is near at hand, and should be generally observed in proper style. Here in Austin it will be. We have a Post of the Grand Army, and a newly-organized military company, who will observe the day, and there will doubtless be a general turn-out on the occasion, unless the present chronically stormy weather should prevail to a discouraging extent. ALF DOTEN.