Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 April 1887 — Does Gold Grow? [ARTICLE]

Does Gold Grow?

Years ago I wrote and published in a London magazine an ..article in which I undertook to prove that gold grows—grows the same as grain and potatoes or anything else. I reckon I did my work crudely, not knowing anything about chemistry or even the ordinary terms of expression about such matters, and so my earnest and entirely correct sketch was torn all to pieces and laughed to scorn.

Well, I have at last found positive proof of my general statement right here in these mountains by the Pacific Sea. Briefly and simply, I have found a"piece of petrified wood with a little vein or thread of geld in it. How did that gold get into this piece of wood ? Was it placed there by the finger of God on the morning of creation, as men have claimed was the case with the gold fonnd in the veins of the mountains? Nonsense! Gold grows. Certain conditions of the air, or certain combinations of earth and air and waier, and whatever chemicals may be required, and then a rock, a piece of quartz, or petrified tree, for the"gotd"t(fgrow'it;aTsd‘there“isyour gold crop., Of course, gold jjroxys. slowly. Centuries upon centuries, it may be, are required to .make the least sign of growth. But it grows just as I asserted years ago; and here at last I hold in my hand such testimony as no man in this world will be rash enough to question—a portion of a petrified tree with a thread of gold in it—Joaquin Hitler, in Chicago Times. A man dying’ left a thousand pounds to an individual who years Imfore ran away with his wife. He said in his will that he never forgot a favor.