Mr. Taylor had frequently met Mark Twain, but never to his knowledge, Bret Harte. In common with other men who had known the Great American Humorist, Mr. Taylor smiled at the bare mention of his name. Twain's breezy, hail-fellow-well-met manner, combined with his dry humor, insured him a welcome at all the camps; he was a man who would "pass the time of day" and take a friendly drink with any man upon the road. Twain, he told me, and a man with whom he was traveling on one occasion, lost their mules. They tracked them to a creek and concluding the mules had crossed it, Twain said to his companion: "What's the use of both of us getting wet? I'll carry you!" The other complying, Twain reached in safety the deepest part of the creek and, purposely or not, dropped him. A man, to play such pranks as this, must be sure of his standing in a primitive community. Mr. Taylor is known to everyone in Nevada County as "Ben." His genial manner and kindly nature are apparent at a glance. But while Ben Taylor was on friendly terms with Mark Twain, he was never so intimate with him as with Bayard Taylor, whom, it seems, he much resembled. This accidental likeness, combined with the similarity of names, caused many more or less amusing but embarrassing complications, since they were frequently taken for each other and received each other's correspondence. I asked Ben Taylor - he rightly dislikes "Mister," perhaps the ugliest and most inappropriate word in the English language - if the shootings and hangings which figure so prominently in the stories of the romancers were not exaggerations. He said he certainly was of that opinion. I said: "As a matter of fact, did you ever see a man either shot or hung for a crime?" "I never did," he replied with emphasis. "But I once came across the bodies of several men who had been strung up for horse-stealing; that, however, was not in Grass Valley." Ben Taylor was present when Lola Montez horsewhipped Henry Shibley, editor of the Grass Valley National, for what she considered derogatory reflections on herself, published in his paper. It can readily be understood that Grass Valley was at that time a place of importance, when Lola Montez considered it worth while to stay there several years and sing and dance for the miners. In parting, Ben Taylor told me pathetically that his wife had died a few years before and he had never recovered from the blow; "I am merely marking time until the end comes," he added. Since his married daughter and family live with him, he is assured in his latter days of loving care and attention. Chapter VI