Word: comstocking
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Around the time of the Civil War, Nevada's Virginia City, site of the fabulous Comstock Lode, was the wildest, hell-roaringest mining town in the world. Men who arrived haggard, filthy and penniless soon made thousands of dollars a week from the blue-black silver ore, gorged themselves on oysters, caviar, champagne. The streets thundered all night with brawling, boozing, wenching. Sam Brown, one of the first "bad men" of the old West, literally carved a man to pieces with his bowie knife, went to sleep on a table while his awed companions collected and removed the fragments...
There was loud-mouthed Henry Comstock, called "Old Pancake" because he practically lived on flapjacks. There were Eilley and Lemuel Sanford ("Sandy") Bowers, she a boardinghouse keeper, he an illiterate mule skinner. They had a 20-ft. claim on the richest part of the lode, and at one time were taking $18,000 a week out of it. They built a mansion with solid silver doorknobs, made a trip to Europe to get furniture, tried to get an interview with Queen Victoria...
...Portugal, at the same rank; while swell-shirted Herbert Claiborne Pell, the Newport bolshevik, moved from the hot spot at Lisbon to one at Budapest, as Minister to Hungary. Edwin Carleton Wilson, at Uruguay and William Dawson, at Panama, changed jobs, both at Ambassadorial rank, and spare, smooth Alexander Comstock Kirk was promoted from Rome Embassy counselor to Minister to Egypt...
Other bolters-of-the-week: Walter N. Rothschild, director of Abraham & Straus, huge Brooklyn department store; the Oregon Journal, traditionally Democratic Portland paper; Bess Streeter Aldrich, best-selling novelist and Hollywood scenarist; former Democratic Governor Charles H. Martin of Oregon, former Democratic Governor William A. Comstock of Michigan, Roman Catholic Bishop Joseph Schrembs of Cleveland...
Vice-Chairmen--Professors Paul H. Buck, Mason Hammond, and Charles H. Taylor, and Richard M. Gummere; secretary, Philip Hofer; treasurer, Harold J. Coolidge; counsellors--William P. Bunyon, President Ada L. Comstock of Radcliffe, Professor Samuel H. Cross, Henry R. Hope, Dean James M. Landis of the Harvard Law School, Miss Gladys H. McCafferty, Professor Edward S. Mason, John M. Russell, and Professors Arthur M. Schlesinger and Warren A. Seavey...