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Frank Williams memoir, page 17

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snv002303-017
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    University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Libraries

    About six weeks afterwards I shipped the concentrates and they netted me, as I now remember it, about $140. This milling enabled me to pay all my debts and to make a ten day trip to Los Angeles and the coast. I stayed a week in Santa Monica. It was my first view of the ocean. From earliest childhood I had longed to see the ocean and in it I found no disillusionment. To me the ocean is far more interesting than any mountain scenery.Thus ended the rather stirring spring and summer of 1894. It was my first experience in working for myself. During that time I experienced considerable vicissitude of fortune and certainly underwent a variety of mental thrills. All the way from feelings of assured riches to troughs of deepest defection. As I can see now, there was no special occassion for either, especially the former, but I was inexperienced and Vanderbilt was seething with sanguine expectations that year. For a time everyone who saw my mine insisted that it was a bonanza, just like they had seen in Granite Mountain, Leadville, or some other famous camp. Though very busy with my work, particularly when I had men working for me, I tried to take some part in the social and political life of the camp. "There was a Sunday School that year held in the upstairs of Virgil Earps saloon. This, by the way, was the only two story building, at that time, in Vanderbilt. I attended a few times and was asked to take charge as superintendent. I declined as my work was rather pressing and my religous convictions were, I felt, hardly suitable for such a responsibility.