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Dec

Sprinkles Gold Dust on Floor

   Posted by: admin   in Entertainment, Tall tales

The Fort Dodge Messenger: Dec. 1, 1903

Sprinkles Gold Dust on Floor

Joaquin Miller, the Poet, Tells of a Dance Given in the Klondike

The Floor Becomes Slippery

Miners Sprinkle Gold Dust on it to Keep the Women From Falling.

At one of his lectures just after his return from the Klondike Joaquin Miller told the following story: “One night I was invited to a dance in a miner’s cabin and while Bill Dalton scraped away on his fiddle we just hoed it down. But eh miners tramped in and out so much between dances that before midnight the ladies declared the floor was so slippery they couldn’t dance another step unless something was done. Then something was done that never was possible in mining days in California. Each miner gallantly opened his buckskin powder pouch and sprinkled gold dust on the floor! And this was repeated throughout the night. And in the morning, ladies and gentlemen, those miners never troubles themselves about sweeping up that gold dust. They just hitched up their dog sleds and rode away.

At this point of Miller’s narrative there was a slight agitation in the audience, an ominous sign of incredulity, but Miller was equal to it. With a wave of his hand toward one of the boxes, he said, “And my old friend up there in the box, Captain John Healy, will substantiate what I say.”

It was a master stroke of the poet, for the house burst into applause and greatly embarrassed the modest millionaire mining and railroad promoter of Alaska, who unsuspectingly had accepted Miller’s invitation to attend the lecture in the afternoon.

(Editor’s note: There is nothing in the article that indicates origin. I doubt that this lecture occurred in Fort Dodge. But it is an interesting story, nonetheless.)

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