The Death of a Gold Town

Editor Fitzroy of the small-town newspaper Mine and Mill is dismayed to see the vitality and pioneer strength of his small town fade before the forces of violence, inexplicable deaths, corruption by bribery and acts of vengeance amongst the ordinary citizens of Fiddletown. he decides to log, to chart, as it were, in his paper and his diary the dismal decay of the early California gold town. He sometimes uses his poetic pen to capture the sad events, the inexplicable failures of ordinary people to show civility and compassion. "Gold! fear was not of tomorrow but of an irrecoverable sacrifice of home, honor and charity in the name of gold-a sacrifice and corruption of the conscience like mephisto the gold miners had traded their souls for the golden metal. That fear lingered beneath outward forms of pleasure and happiness, like a waiting spirit of death."