Ring Camp" in 1868, "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" in 1869, "Poems" in
1871, "Stories of the Sierras" in 1872, "Tales of the Argonauts" in
1875, "Gabriel Conroy" in 1876, "Two Men of Sandy Bar" (a play) in 1877,
"A Phyllis of the Sierras" in 1888. I PEGGY MOFFAT'S INHERITANCE[63] The
first intimation given of the eccentricity of the testator was, I think,
in the spring of 1854. He was at that time in possession of a
considerable property, heavily mortgaged to one friend, and a wife of
some attraction, on whose affections another friend held an encumbering
lien. One day it was found that he had secretly dug, or caused to be
dug, a deep trap before the front door of his dwelling, into which a few
friends in the course of the evening casually and familiarly dropt. This
circumstance, slight in itself, seemed to point to the existence of a
certain humor in the man, which might eventually get into literature;
altho his wife's lover--a man of quick discernment, whose leg was broken
by the fall--took other views. It was some weeks later that while dining
with certain other friends of his wife, he excused himself from the
table, to quietly reappear at the front window with a three-quarter-inch
hydraulic pipe, and a stream of water projected at the assembled
company. An attempt was made to take public cognizance of this; but a
majority of the citizens of Red Dog who were not at dinner decided that
a man had a right to choose his own methods of diverting his company.
Nevertheless, there were some hints of his insanity: his wife recalled
other acts clearly attributable to dementia; the crippled lover argued
from his own experience that the integrity of her limbs could only be
secured by leaving her husband's house; and the mortgagee, fearing a
further damage to his property, foreclosed. But here the cause of all
this anxiety took matters into his own hands and disappeared. [Footnote
63: From "The Twins of Table Mountain." Copyrigh
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