Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 March 1894 — An Abandoned City. [ARTICLE]

An Abandoned City.

“A poet could write on ‘The Desorted Village’ with Virginia City as a subject and surpass Goldsmith’s immortal production on the same topic,” said E. L. Hearne, of San Francisco. "The first time that I wai ever there the population of Virginia City was greater than that of the entire State now. Everything ran wide open. Magnificent hotels and opera halls, palatial residences, stores that would have done credit to New York, millionaires who spent money fioely, maintaining a society that for brilliancy and gayety could net bo equaled in the United States. 1 was there a short time ago. The hotels and opera houses are closed, the residences empty, the stores removed to other and more prosperous places. Dwellings that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars are given over to the bats, and the broken panes of glass, the shutters hanging upon a single hinge and flapping in the wind, give a grewsome sense of loneliness. In years to come it will afford magnificent spectacles of ruins, and even now in some sections of the town there is a sense to the beholder of being in a citv of the past. Millions wore made anil lost, and the history’ of Virginia City would be one of the most thrilling stories ever written."—Gldbe-Demo-crat.