The grand total would have been twice as large, but the streets were very narrow, and hundreds who wanted to bid could not get within a block of the stand, and could not make themselves heard.

These grew tired of waiting and many of them went home long before the auction was over.

This was the greatest day Virginia ever saw, perhaps.
Gridley sold the sack in Carson city and several California towns; also in San Francisco.

Then he took it east and sold it in one or two Atlantic cities, I think.

I am not sure of that, but I know that he finally carried it to St.Louis, where a monster Sanitary Fair was being held, and after selling it there for a large sum and helping on the enthusiasm by displaying the portly silver bricks which Nevada's donation had produced, he had the flour baked up into small cakes and retailed them at high prices.
It was estimated that when the flour sack's mission was ended it had been sold for a grand total of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in greenbacks! This is probably the only instance on record where common family flour brought three thousand dollars a pound in the public market.
It is due to Mr.Gridley's memory to mention that the expenses of his sanitary flour sack expedition of fifteen thousand miles, going and returning, were paid in large part if not entirely, out of his own pocket.