It is hard to find a friend,' I said. 'It is the hardest thing in this world,' he agreed.

Do you know how much a hundred dollars is?' he asked. I said that I did not and he answered, 'It is a hundred dollars.

It is hard to find a friend,' I said. 'It is the hardest thing in this world,' he agreed.

I do not know what it was about that boy but just looking at him, even I wanted to clout him on the head. It was a head that invited violence.

It is true, I thought. I am living a life.

We can all of us be hurt, and no one is exclusively safe from worry and sadness.

This perhaps was what lay at the root of the hysteria surrounding what came to be known as the Gold Rush: Men desiring a feeling of fortune; the unlucky masses hoping to skin or borrow the luck of others, or the luck of a destination. A seductive notion, and one I thought to be wary of. To me, luck was something you either earned or invented through strength of character. You had to come by it honestly; you could not trick or bluff your way into it.