When a man is properly drunk it is as though he is in a room by himself — there is a physical, impenetrable separation between him and his fellows.

He was thinking about the two futures, the immediate and the distant.

— You are heading to San Francisco? — asked Charlie.

— You bet I am. Four months I’ve been away, and the closer I get I can’t hardly believe it. I got it all worked out to the last detail.

— Got what worked out?

— All the things I’m going to do. — We did not ask that he elaborate, but he needed no invitation to continue. — First thing I’m going to do is rent a clean room, up high so I can look down and see everything as it passes. The second thing I’m going to do is call for a piping hot bath. Third thing is I’m going to sit in it with the window open and listen to the town. Fourth thing I’m going to do is have a shave, to the bare cheek, and a haircut, close-cropped and parted. Fifth thing I’m going to do is buy a new outfit from the hat to the boots. Shirt, undershirt, pants, stockings, all of it.

— I have to go to the toilet. — Charlie interrupted, and he walked away into the forest. The prospector was undisturbed by my brother’s rudeness and in fact did not appear to notice it. He was staring into the fire as he spoke; he, probably would have continued talking even I had left:

— Sixth thing Im going to do is eat a steak as big as my head. Seventh thing I’m going to do is get very, very drunk. Eighth thing I’m going to do is get a pretty girl and lie down a while. Ninth thing I’m going to do is talk with her about her life, and she’ll ask about mine, and we’ll go back and forth like this, civilized and properly. Tenth thing I’m going to do is no one’s business in the world but my own. Eleventh thing I’m going to do is send her away and stretch out in the clean, soft bed, like this. — He stretched out his arms as wide as he was able. — Twelfth thing, boy, I’m going to sleep and sleep and sleep!

In the static world of hard facts and figures it was approximately twenty-five minutes before the gold ceased glowing, but the moments that passed while we worked the river were neither brief or long, were in fact somehow removed from the very restriction or notion of time — we were outside of time, is how it felt to me; our experience was so uncommon we were elevated to a place where such concerns as minutes and seconds were not only irrelevant but did not exist. This feeling, speaking personally, was brought on not only by the wealth our evergrowing piles of gold represented, but also from the thought that this experience was born of one man’s unique mind, and though I had never before pondered the notion of humanity, or whether I was happy or unhappy to be human, I now felt a sense of pride at the human mind, its curiosity and perseverance; I was obstinately glad to be alive, and glad to be myself. The gold from our buckets shone in dense shafts of light and the branches and limbs of the surrounding trees were bathed in the glow of the river. There was a warm wind pushing down through the valley and off the surface of the water; it kissed my face and caused my hair to dance over my eyes. This moment, this one position of time, was the happiest I will ever be as long as I am living, I have since felt it was too happy, that men are not meant to have access to this kind of satisfaction; certainly it has tempered every moment of happiness I have experienced since. At any rate, and perhaps this is just, it was not something we could hold on to for very long. Everything immediately after this went just black and wrong as could be imagined, everything after this was death in one or the other way.