Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 March 1896 — JIM FAIR’S PRESENCE OF MIND. [ARTICLE]

JIM FAIR’S PRESENCE OF MIND.

I*—riiuMi ttwy T»td lip the Sen of the California Billionaire. Charles Fair, the only male heir to the late James G. Fair, sat in the billiard room of the Palace hotel talking to some pioneer friends of his father. “Do yon know, Charley, that a book of reminiscences of your father would sell like hot cakes? You ought to put the data in the bands of some publisher and let him issue the volume. What do yon Think about it?” The son smiled and looked np at the talker, as he replied: “Why don’t you do it?” "Me do it!” exclaimed the man with the publishing ideas. “I didn’t know him.” “Neither did I.” answered Charles. “Nobody knew him. I don’t think a man ever lived who enjoyed his Confidence. I can assure yon that he was the same strange- man to me that he was to others, and his iron rule to keep hia own counsel was never broken. ■ “Whenever he did fall into a confidential and chatty mood it was to jest about something or to theorize. I recall a story he once told Alfred E. Davis, his old partner. The story I have in mind was woven into a serious conversation, and he never cracked a smile over it. Before proceeding, however, I must tell you that in the Cornstock mines a ladder goes down the side of each shaft, and every twelfth rung is iron, so as to give the whole additional strength. Well, father said -temnu —v -■ “ ‘Davis, do yon know I was almost killed onoe in the Crow Point mine ?’ “ ‘How was that, Jim?* , “ ‘This way. I was looking down the shaft to see if everything was all right and lost my balance. Being unable to recover myself, I toppled over and fell —yes, Davis, fell. I must have gone about & hundred feet when it suddenly struck me that if I didn’t bepin doing something pretty quick I would go clear through to hades. So I reached out and grabbed a rung of the ladder. It broke and I grabbed the next. That broke, too, but 1 reached for the third, which also gave way, and the next, and the next, and so on, but it broke my fall, and in about five minutes I reached the bottom, a little jarred up, but perfectly sound.’ “Davis looked at him out of the corners of his eyes a few seconds and said: “ ‘What Aid you do, Jim, when you came to the twelfth rung? Did you grasp at that, too?’ “ ’Why, I missed it. Do you think I wanted to smash everything that was in the mine?’ ” \\ hen Charles finished his story he was laughing more heartily than anyone else in the crowd, and could not be prevained. upon to recall anything more that had come from the lips of his famous financial father.—San Franeiseo (tali. —— —--