17. Harry's Letters, December 31, 1865 - February 11, 1866

Office of Carson Daily Appeal. Carson City, Nevada, Dec 31st 1865

Dear Nellie:- Although it is Sunday, I was obliged to busy myself all this forenoon in turning out "machine poetry" enough to finish up my couriers' address, a copy of which I send you. It contains many local allusions, the gist of which will be unintelligible to you without an explanation; and "hits" that require a key, are hardly worth transmitting all the way from Nevada to Maine. However, I will explain the hints at a change in our currency and the discomfiture of the bankers. The money powers of this state and of California have managed to so control

legislation that what is known as a "Specific Contract Act" has been passed in California and a similar enactment is one of the Nevada laws. Under that act, if a man borrows a certain amount of another, in gold, he is obliged to buy gold in return. The spirit of the law is to nullify the law of Congress making all debts payable in currency -- or in other words to throw discredit upon the national currency and drive it out of circulation -- or rather to prevent its getting into circulation. That law has been pronounced void by our Supreme Court, hence the "great wail of woe" from certain private bankers in Virginia City. The

"mint" allusions and those which refer to the building of a Pacific Railroad, you will understand. Poor as my rhyming is, it contains some truth of little poetry, and the address will probably secure the carrier, Henry, a smug little sum of spending money for New Years Day.

Looking at my watch, I find that it is twenty five minutes apast eleven P.M. -- 1866 with you, and within thirty five minutes of a brand new year for us. I shall remain up and awake to "Hail the coming, speed the parting guest."

Lance Nightingill went up to Virginia City day before yesterday

and in accordance with instructions from me, selected a diamond ring which will be sent here tomorrow or next day, and which I shall send to you, if it suits me -- and from Lance's description, I guess it will. I don't mean by that that it will be such a jewel as you deserve to have -- but that will be neat and appropriate for every day wear. One half the pleasure in making you its possessor is lost by my not being where I can place in on your finger with my own hands.

As my watch counts the moments which mark the exit of the old year, I am reminded that time flies swiftly; yet the hours seem to lag wearily and slow between the mails which bring me those priceless letters which my darling's pen indites for me alone in her room in "the Mansion." And in my growing

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impatience I begrudge old father time the days and weeks he steals from what should be our honeymoon.

Hark! The solitary bell out of whose brazen throat is clanged our fire alarms, our funeral tollings and our church mornings "starts the frighted air of night" with a "tin - tinabulation which musically wells" twelve distinct beats "upon the bosom of the palpitating air" -- by all of which interlarded scraps from Poe's Bells, I mean that the night watchman has sounded the knell of 1865 and that 1866 having been ushered into this breathing world, it becomes my