An enthusiastic young millionaire, the son of a pioneer, determined that my companion and I ought to see the mountain parks.
It was winter, and for reasons all too plainly visible from Denver, no automobiles had attempted the ascent since fall, for the mountain barrier, rearing itself majestically to the westward, glittered appallingly with ice and snow.
"We can have a try at it, anyway," said our friend.
So, presently, in furs, and surrounded by lunch baskets and thermos bottles, we set out for the mountains in his large six-cylinder machine.
Emerging from the city, and taking the macadamized road which leads to Golden, we had our first uninterrupted view of the full sweep of that serrated mountain wall, visible for almost a hundred miles north of Denver, and a hundred south; a solid, stupendous line, flashing as though the precious minerals had been coaxed out to coruscate in the warm surface sunshine.
There was something operatic in that vast and splendid spectacle. I felt that the mountains and the sky formed the back drop in a continental theater, the stageof which is made up of thousands of square miles of plains.
Striking a pleasant pace we sped toward the barrier as though meaning to dash ourselves against it; for it seemed very near, and our car was like some great moth fascinated by the flash of ice and snow. However, as is usual where the air is clear and the altitude great, the eye is deceived as to distances in Colorado, and the foothills, which appear to be not more than three or four miles distant from Denver, are in reality a dozen miles away.
Denver has many stock stories to illustrate that point. It is related that strangers sometimes start to walk to the mountains before breakfast, and the tale is told of one man who, having walked for hours, and thus discovered the illusory effect of the clear mountain air, was found undressing by a four-foot irrigation ditch, preparatory to swimming it, having concluded that, though it looked narrow, it was, nevertheless in reality a river.
Nor is optical illusion regarding distances the only quality contained in Denver air. Denver and Colorado Springs are of course famous resorts for persons with weak lungs, but one need not have weak lungs to feel the tonic effect of the climate. Denver has little rain and much sunshine. Her winter air seems actually to hold in solution Colorado gold. My companion and I found it difficult to get to sleep at night because of the exhilarating effect of the air, but we would awaken inthe morning after five or six hours' slumber, feeling abnormally lively.
I spoke about that to a gentleman who was a member of our automobile mountain party.
"There's no doubt," he replied, as we bowled along, "that this altitude affects the nerves. Even animals feel it. I have bought a number of eastern show horses and brought them out here, and I have found that horses which were entirely tractable in their habitual surroundings, would become unmanageable in our climate. Even a pair of Percherons which were perfectly placid in St. Louis, where I got them, stepped up like hackneys when they reached Denver.
"I think a lot of the agitation we have out here comes from the same thing. Take our passionate political quarreling, or our newspapers and the way they abuse each other. Or look at Judge Lindsey. I think the altitude is partly accountable for him, as well as for a lot of things the rest of us do. Of course it's a good thing in one way: it makes us energetic; but on the other hand, we are likely to have less balance than people who don't live a mile up in the air."
As we talked, our car breezed toward the foothills. Presently we entered the mouth of a narrow cañon and, after winding along rocky slopes, emerged upon the town of Golden.
Golden, now known principally as the seat of the State School of Mines, used to be the capital of Colorado. Spread out upon a prairie the place might assume anair of some importance, but stationed as it is upon a slope, surrounded by gigantic peaks, it seems a trifling town clinging to the mountainside as a fly clings to a horse's back.
The slope upon which Golden is situated is a comparatively gentle one, but directly back of the city the angle changes and the surface of the world mounts abruptly toward the heavens, which seem to rest like a great coverlet upon the upland snows.
Rivulets from the melting white above, were running through the streets of Golden, turning them to a sea of mud, through which we plowed powerfully on "third." As we passed into the backyard of Golden, the mountain seemed to lean out over us.
"That's our road, up there," remarked the Denver gentleman who sat in the tonneau, between my companion and myself. He pointed upward, zig-zagging with his finger.
We gazed at the mountainside.
"You don't mean that little dark slanting streak like a wire running back and forth, do you?" asked my companion.
"Yes, that's it. You see they've cut a little nick into the slope all the way up and made a shelf for the road to run on."
"Is there any wall at the edge?" I asked.
"No," he said. "There's no wall yet. We may have that later, but you see we have just built this road."
"Isn't there even a fence?"
"No. But it's all right. The road is wide enough."
Presently we reached the bottom of the road, and began the actual ascent.
"Is this it?" asked my companion.
"Yes, this is it. You see the pavement is good."
"But I thought you said the road was wide?"
"Well, it is wide—that is, for a mountain road. You can't expect a mountain road to be as wide as a city boulevard, you know."
"But suppose we should meet somebody," I put in. "How would we pass?"
"There's room enough to pass," said the Denver gentleman. "You've only got to be a little careful. But there is no chance of our meeting any one. Most people wouldn't think of trying this road in winter because of the snow."
"Do you mean that the snow makes it dangerous?" asked my companion.
"Some people seem to think so," said the Denver gentleman.
Meanwhile the gears had been singing their shrill, incessant song as we mounted, swiftly. My seat was at the outside of the road. I turned my head in the direction of the plains. From where I sat the edge of the road was invisible. I had a sense of being wafted along through the air with nothing but a cushion between me and an abyss. I leaned out a little, and looked down at the wheel beneath me. Then I saw that several feet of pavement, lightly coated with snow, intervened between the tire, and the awful edge. Beyond the edge was several hundred feet of sparkling air, and beyond the air I saw the roofs of Golden.
"Ain't Nature wonderful!""Ain't Nature wonderful!"
One of these roofs annoyed me. I do not know the nature of the building it adorned. It may have been a church, or a school, or a town hall. I only know that the building had a tower, rising to an acute point from which a lightning rod protruded like a skewer. When I first caught sight of it I shuddered and turned my eyes upward toward the mountain. I did not like to gaze up at the heights which we had yet to climb, but I liked it better on the whole than looking down into the depths below.
"What mountain do you call this?" I asked, trying to make diverting conversation.
"Which one?" asked the Denver gentleman.
"The one we are climbing."
"This is just one of the foothills," he declared.
"Oh," I said.
"If this is a foothill," remarked my companion, "I suppose the Adirondacks are children's sand piles."
"See how blue the plains are," said the Denver gentleman sweeping the landscape with his arm. "People compare them with the sea."
I did not wish to see how blue the plains were, but out of courtesy I looked. Then I turned my eyes away, hastily. The spacious view did not strike me in the sense of beauty, but in the pit of the stomach. In looking away from the plains, I tried to do so without noticing the town below. I did not wish to contemplate that pointed tower, again. But a terrible curiosity drew my eyes down. Yes, there was Golden, looking like a toy village. And there was the tower, pointing up at me. I could not see the lightning rod now, but I knew that it was there. Again I looked up at the peaks.
For a time we rode on in silence. I noticed that the snow on the slope beside us, and in the road, was becoming deeper now, but it did not seem to daunt our powerful machine. Up, up we went without slackening our pace.
"Look!" exclaimed the Denver gentleman after a time. "You can see Denver now, just over the top of South Table Mountain."
Again I was forced to turn my eyes in the direction of the plains. Yes, there was Denver, looking like some dream island of Maxfield Parrish's in the sea of plain.
I tried to look away again at once, but the Denver man kept pointing and insisting that I see it all.
"South Table Mountain, over the top of which you are now looking," he said, "is the same hill we skirted in coming into Golden. We were at the bottom of it then. That will show you how we have climbed already."
"We must be halfway up by now," said my companion hopefully.
"Oh, no; not yet. We are only about—" There he broke off suddenly and clutched at the side of the tonneau. Our front wheels had slipped sidewise in thesnow, upon a turn, and had brought us very near the edge. Again something drew my eyes to Golden. It was no longer a toy village; it was now a map. But the tower was still there. However far we drove we never seemed to get away from it.
Where the brilliant sunlight lay upon the snow, it was melting, but in shaded places it was dry as talcum powder. Rounding another turn we came upon a place of deep shadow, where the riotous mountain winds had blown the dry snow into drifts. One after the other we could see them reaching away like white waves toward the next angle in the road.
My heart leaped with joy at the sight, and as I felt the restraining grip of the brakes upon our wheels, I blessed the elements which barred our way.
"Well," I cried to our host as the car stood still. "It has been a wonderful ride. I never thought we should get as far as this."
"Neither did I!" exclaimed my companion rising to his feet. "I guess I'll get out and stretch my legs while you turn around."
"So will I," I said.
Our host looked back at us.
"Turn around?" he repeated. "I'm not going to turn around."
My companion measured the road with his eye.
"It is sort of narrow for a turn, isn't it?" he said. "What will you do—back down?"
"Back nothing!" said our host "I'm going through."
The pioneer in him had spoken. His jaw was set. The joy that I had felt ebbed suddenly away. I seemed to feel it leaking through the soles of my feet. We had stopped in the shadow. It was cold there and the wind was blowing hard. I did not like that place, but little as I liked it, I fairly yearned to stop there.
I heard the gears click as they meshed. The car leaped forward, struck the drift, bounded into it with a drunken, slewing motion, penetrated for some distance and finally stopped, her headlights buried in the snow.
Again I heard a click as our host shifted to reverse. Then, with a furious spinning of wheels, which cast the dry snow high in air, we made a bouncing, backward leap and cleared the drift, but only to charge it again.
This time we managed to get through. Nor did we stop at that. Having passed the first drift, we retained our momentum and kept on through those that followed, hitting them as a power dory hits succeeding waves in a choppy sea, churning our way along with a rocking, careening, crazy motion, now menaced by great boulders at the inside of the road, now by the deadly drop at the outside, until at last we managed, somehow, to navigate the turning, after which we stopped in a place comparatively clear of snow.
Our host turned to us with a smile.
"She's a good old snow-boat, isn't she?" he said.
With great solemnity my companion and I admitted that she was.
Even the Denver gentleman who occupied the tonneau with us, seemed somewhat shaken.
"Of course the snow will be worse farther up," he said to our host. "Do you think it is worth going on?"
"Of course it is," our host replied. "I want these boys to see the main range of the Rockies. That's what we came up for, isn't it?"
"Yes," said my companion, "but we wouldn't want you to spoil your car on our account."
It was an unfortunate remark.
"Spoil her!" cried our host. "Spoil this machine? You don't know her. You haven't seen what she can do, yet. Just wait until we hit a real drift!"
The cigar which I had been smoking when I left Denver was still in my mouth. It had gone out long since, but I had been too much engrossed with other things to notice it. Instead of relighting it, I had been turning it over and over between my teeth, and now in an emotional moment, I chewed at it so hard that it sagged down against my chin. I removed it from my mouth, and tossed it over the edge. It cleared the road and sailed out into space, down, down, down, turning over and over in the air, as it went. And as I watched its evolutions, my blood chilled, for I thought to myself that the body of a falling man would turn in just that way—that my body would be performing similar aerial evolutions, should our car slew off the road in the course of some mad charge against a drift.
I was by this time very definitely aware that I hadmy fill of winter motoring in the mountains. The mere reluctance I had felt as we began to climb had now developed into a passionate desire to desist. I am no great pedestrian. Under ordinary circumstances the idea of climbing a mountain on foot would never occur to me. But now, since I could not turn back, since I must go to the top to satisfy my host, I fairly yearned to walk there. Indeed, I would have gladly crawled there on my hands and knees, through snowdrifts, rather than to have proceeded farther in that touring car.
Obviously, however, craft was necessary.
"I believe I'll get out and limber up a little," I said, rising from my seat.
My companions of the tonneau seemed to be of the same mind. All three of us alighted in the snow.
"How far is it to the top?" I asked our host.
"A couple of miles," he said.
"Is that all?" I replied. "Couldn't we walk it, then?"
I was touched by the avidity with which my two companions seized on the suggestion. Only our host objected.
"What's the matter?" he demanded in an injured tone. "Don't you think my car can make it? If you'll just get in again you'll soon see!"
"Heavens, no!" I answered. "That's not it. Of course weknowyour car can do it."
"Yes; oh, yes, of course!" the other two chimed in.
"All I was thinking of," I added, "was the exercise."
"That's it," my companion cried. "Exercise. Wehaven't had a bit of exercise since we left New York."
"I need it, too!" put in the Denver man. "My wife says I'm getting fat."
"Oh, if it's exercise you want," said our host, "I'm with you."
Even the spirits of the chauffeur seemed to rise as his employer alighted.
"I think I had better stay with the car, sir," he said.
"All right, all right," said our host indifferently. "You can be turning her around. We'll be back in a couple of hours or so."
The chauffeur looked at the edge.
"Well," he said, "I don't know but what the exercise will do me good, too. I guess I'll come along if you don't mind, sir."
On foot we could pick our way, avoiding the larger drifts, so that, for the most part, we merely trudged through snow a foot deep. But it was uphill work in the sun, and before long overcoats were removed and cachéd at the roadside, weighted down against the wind with stones. Now and then we left the road and took a short cut up the mountainside, wading through drifts which were sometimes armpit deep and joining the road again where it doubled back at a higher elevation. Presently our coats came off, then our waistcoats, until at last all five of us were in our shirts, making a strange picture in such a wintry landscape.
Now that the dread of skidding was removed I began to enjoy myself, taking keen delight in the marvelous blue plains spread out everywhere to the eastward, and inhaling great drafts of effervescent air.
When we had struggled upward for perhaps two hours we left the road and assailed a little peak, from the top of which our host believed the main range of the Rockies would be visible. The slope was rather steep, but the ground beneath the snow was fairly smooth, giving us moderately good footing. By making transverse paths we zigzagged without much difficulty to the top, which was sharp, like the backbone of some gigantic animal.
I must admit that I had not been so anxious to see the main range as my Denver friends had been to have me see it. It did not seem to me that any mountain spectacle could be much finer than that presented by the glittering wall as seen from Denver. I had expected to be disappointed at the sight of the main range, and I am glad that I expected that, because it made all the greater the thrill which I felt when, on topping the hill, I saw what was beyond.
I was by this time very definitely aware that I had my fill of winter motoring in the mountains. The mere reluctance I felt as we began to climb had now developed into a passionate desire to desistI was by this time very definitely aware that I had my fill of winter motoring in the mountains. The mere reluctance I felt as we began to climb had now developed into a passionate desire to desist
I do not believe that any experience in life can give the ordinary man—the man who is not a real explorer of new places—the sense of actual discovery and of great achievement, which he may attain by laboring up a slope and looking over it at a vast range of mountains glittering, peak upon peak, into the distance. The sensation is overwhelming. It fills one with a strange kind of exaltation, like that which is produced by great music played by a splendid orchestra. The golden air,vibrating and shimmering, is like the tremolo of violins; the shadows in the abysses are like the deep throbbing notes of violoncellos and double basses; while the great peaks, rising in their might and majesty, suggest the surge and rumble of pipe organs echoing to the vault of heaven.
I had often heard that, to some people, certain kinds of music suggest certain colors. Here, in the silence of the mountains, I understood that thing for the first time, for the vast forms of those jewel-encrusted hills seemed to give off a superb symphonic song—a song with an air which, when I let my mind drift with it, seemed to become definite, but which, when I tried to follow it, melted into vague, elusive harmonies.
There is no place in the world where Man can get along for more than two or three minutes at a time without thinking of himself. Everything with which he comes in contact suggests him to himself. Nothing is too small, nothing too stupendous, to make man think of man. If he sees an ant he thinks: "That, in its humble way, is a little replica of me, doing my work." But when he looks upon a mountain range he thinks more salutary thoughts, for if his thoughts about himself are ever humble, they will be humble then. Indeed, it would be like man to say that that was the purpose with which mountains were made—to humble him. For it is man's pleasure to think that everything in the universe was created with some definite relation to himself.
However that may be, it is man's habit, when he looks upon the mountains, to endeavor to make up for the long vainglorious years with a brief but complete orgy of self-abnegation. And that, of course, is a good thing for him, although it seems a pity that he cannot spread it thinner and thereby make it last him longer. But man does not like to take his humility that way. He prefers to take it like any other sickening medicine, gulping it down in one big draft, and getting it over with. That is the reason man can never bear to stay for any length of time upon a mountain top. Up there he finds out what he really is, and for man to find that out is, naturally, painful.
As he looks at the mountains the ego, which is 99 per cent. of him, begins to shrivel up. He may not feel it at first. Probably he doesn't. Very likely he begins by writing his own name in the eternal snows, or scratching his initials on a rock. But presently he gazes off into space and remarks with the Poet Towne: "Ain't Nature wonderful!" And, of course, after that he begins to think of himself again, saying with a great sense of discovery: "What a little thing I am!" Then, as his ego shrinks farther, the orgy of humility begins.
"What am I," he cries, "in the eyes of the eternal hills? I am relatively unimportant! By George, I shouldn't be surprised if I were a miserable atom! Yes, that's what I am! I am a frail, wretched thing, created but to be consumed. My life is but a day. I am a poor, two-legged nonentity, trotting about the surfaceof an enormous ball. I am filled with egotism and self-interest. I call myself civilized—and why? Because I have learned to make sounds through my mouth, and have assigned certain meanings to these sounds; because I have learned to mark down certain symbols, to represent these sounds; and because, with my sounds and symbols, I can maintain a ragged interchange of ragged thought with other men, getting myself, for the most part, beautifully misunderstood.
"Of what else is my life composed? Of the search for something I call 'pleasure' and something else I call 'success,' which is represented by piles of little yellow metal disks that I designate by the silly-sounding word, 'money.' I spend six days in the week in search of money, and on the seventh day I relax and read the Sunday newspapers, or put on my silk hat and go to church, where I call God's attention to myself in every way I can, praying to Him with prayers which have to be written for me because I haven't brains enough to make a good prayer of my own; singing hymns to Him in a voice which ought never to be raised in song; telling Him that I know He watches over me; putting a little metal disk, of small denomination, in the plate for Him; then putting on my shiny hat again—which I know pleases Him very much—going home and eating too much dinner."
That is the way man thinks about himself upon a mountain top. Naturally he can only stand it for a little while before his contracting ego begins to shriek in pain.
Then man says: "I have enjoyed the view. I will note the fact in the visitors' book if there happens to be one, after which I will retire from this high elevation to the world below."
Going down the mountain he begins to say to himself: "What wonderful thoughts I have been thinking up there! I have had thoughts which very few other men are capable of thinking! I have a remarkable mind if I only take the time to use it!"
So, as he goes down, his ego keeps on swelling up again until it not only reaches its normal size, but becomes larger than ever, because the man now believes that, in addition to all he was before, he has become a philosopher.
"I must write a book!" he says to himself. "I must give these remarkable ideas of mine to the world!"
And, as you see, he sometimes does it.
The homes of Colorado Springs really explain the place and the society is as cosmopolitan as the architectureThe homes of Colorado Springs really explain the place and the society is as cosmopolitan as the architecture
In a certain city that I visited upon my travels, I met one night at dinner, one of those tall, pink-cheeked, slim-legged young polo-playing Englishmen, who proceeded to tell me in his positive, British way, exactly what the United States amounted to. He said New York was ripping. He said San Francisco was ripping. He said American girls were ripping.
"But," said he, "there are just two really civilized places between your Atlantic and Pacific coasts."
The idea entertained me. I asked which places he meant.
"Chicago," he said, "and Colorado Springs."
"But Colorado Springs is a little bit of a place, isn't it?" I asked him.
"About thirty thousand."
"Why is it so especially civilized?"
"It justis, y'know," he answered. "There's polo there."
"But polo doesn't make civilization," I said.
"Oh, yes, it does," he insisted. "I mean to say wherever you find polo you find good clubs and good society and—usually—good tea."
This, and further rumors of a like nature, plus somepleasant letters of introduction, caused my companion and me to remove ourselves, one afternoon, from Denver to the vaunted seat of civilization, some miles to the south.
Colorado Springs is somewhat higher than Denver and seems to nestle closer to the mountains. The moment you alight from the train and see the park, facing the station and the pleasant façade of the Antlers Hotel, beyond, you feel the peculiar charm of the little city. It is well laid-out, with very wide streets, very good public buildings and office buildings, and really remarkable homes.
The homes of Colorado Springs really explain the place. They are of every variety of architecture, and are inhabited by a corresponding variety of people. You will see half-timbered English houses, built by Englishmen and Scots; Southern colonial houses built by people from the South Atlantic States; New England colonial houses built by families who have migrated from the regions of Boston and New York; one-story houses built by people from Hawaii, and a large assortment of other houses ranging from Queen Anne to Cape Cod cottages, and from Italian villas to Spanish palaces. There is even the Grand Trianon at Broadmoor, and an amazing Tudor castle at Glen Eyre.
The society is as cosmopolitan as the architecture. It has been drawn with perfect impartiality from the well-to-do class in all parts of the country and has been assembled in this charming garden town with, for themost part, a common reason—to fight against tuberculosis. This does not mean, of course, that the majority of people in Colorado Springs are victims of tuberculosis, but only that, in many instances, families have moved there because of the affliction of one member.
I say "affliction." Literally, I suppose the word is justified. But perhaps the most striking thing about society in Colorado Springs is its apparent freedom from affliction. One goes to the most delightful dinner parties, there, in the most delightful houses, and meets the most delightful people. Every one seems very gay. Every one looks well. Yet one knows that there are certain persons present who are out there for their health. The question is, which? It is impossible to tell.
In the case of one couple I met, I decided that the wife who was slender and rather pale, had been the cause of migration from the East. But before I left, the stocky, ruddy husband told me, in the most cheerful manner that he had arrived there twenty years before with "six months to live." That is the way it is out there. There is no feeling of depression. There is no air of, "Shh! Don't speak of it!" Tuberculosis is taken quite as a matter of course, and is spoken of, upon occasion, with a lightness and freedom which is likely to surprise the visitor. They even give it what one man designated as a "pet name," calling it "T. B."
Club life in Colorado Springs is highly developed. The El Paso Club is not merely a good club for such asmall city, but would be a very good club anywhere. One has only to penetrate as far as the cigar stand to discover that—for a club may always be known by the cigars it keeps. So, too, with the Cheyenne Mountain Country Club at Broadmoor, a suburb of the Springs. It isn't one of those small-town country clubs, in which, after ringing vainly for the waiter, you go out to the kitchen and find him for yourself, in his shirtsleeves and minus a collar. Nor, when he puts in his appearance, is he wearing a spotted alpaca coat that doesn't fit. Without being in the least pretentious, it is a real country club, run for men and women who know what a real club is.
When you sit at luncheon at the large round table in the men's café you may find yourself between a famous polo-player from Meadowbrook, and a bronzed young ranch-owner, who will tell you that cattle rustling still goes on in his section of the country. The latter you will take for a perfect product of the West, a "gentleman cowboy," from a novel. But presently you will learn that he is a member of that almost equally fictitious thing, an "old New York family," that he has been in the West but a year or two, and that he was in "Tark's class" at Princeton. So on around the table. One man has just arrived from Paris; another from Honolulu, or the Philippines, or China or Japan. And when, as we were sitting there, a man came in whom I had met in Rome ten years before, I said to myself: This is not life. It is the beginning of a short story by some disciple of Mrs. Wharton: A group of cosmopolitans seated around a table in a club. Casual mention of Bombay, Buda-Pesth and Singapore. Presently some man will flick his cigarette ash and say, "By the way, De Courcey, what ever became of the queer little chap we used to see at the officer's mess in Simla?" Whereupon De Courcey, late of the Lancers, and second son of Lord Thusandso, will light a fresh Corona and recount, according to the accepted formula, the story of The Queer Little Chap.
I could even imagine the illustrations for the story. They would be by Wenzell, and would show us there, in the club, like a group of sleek Greek statues, clothed in full afternoon regalia of the most unbelievable smoothness—looking, in short, not at all like ourselves, or anybody else.
However, the story of The Queer Little Chap was not told. That is the trouble with trying to live short stories. You can get them started, sometimes, but they never work out. If the setting is all right, the story somehow will not "break," whereas, on the other hand, when the surroundings are absolutely wrong, when the wrong people are present, when the conditions are utterly impossible, your short story will break violently and without warning, and will very likely cover you with spots. The trouble is that life, in its more fragmentary departments, lacks what we call "form" and "composition." There is something amateurish about it. Nine editors out of ten would reject a short story written bythe Hand of Fate, on this ground, and would probably advise Fate to go and take a course in short-story-writing at some university. No; Fate has not the short story gift. She writes novels—rather long and rambling, most of them, like those of De Morgan or Romaine Rolland. But even her novels are not popular. People say they are too long. They can't be bothered reading novels which consume a whole lifetime. Besides, Fate seldom supplies a happy ending, and that's what people want, now-a-days. So, though Fate's novels are given away, they have no vogue.
Having somehow digressed from clubs to authorship I may perhaps be pardoned for wandering still further from my trail here to mention Andy Adams.
A long time ago, ex-Governor Hunt expressed lack of faith in the future of Colorado Springs because, at that time, there was not much water to be found there, and further because the town had "too many writers of original poetry." So far as I could judge, from a brief visit, things have changed. There is plenty of water, and I did not meet a single poet. However, I did meet an author, and he is a real one. Andy Adams' card proclaims him author, but more than this, his books do, also. Himself a former cowboy, he writes cowboy stories which prove that cowboy stories need not be as false, and as maudlinly romantic as most cowboy stories manage to be. You don't have to know the plains to know that Mr. Adams' tales are true, any more than you have to know anatomy to understandthat a man can't stand without a backbone. Truth is the backbone of Mr. Adams' writings, and the body of them has that rare kind of beauty which may, perhaps, be likened to the body of some cowboy—some perfect physical specimen from Mr. Adams' own pages.
I have not read all his books, and the only reason why I have not is that I have not yet had time. But so far as I have read I have not found one false note in them. I have not come upon a "lone horseman" riding through the gulch at eventide. I have not encountered the daughter of an eastern millionaire who has ridden out to see the sunset. Nor have I stumbled on a romantic meeting or a theatrical rescue.
So far as I know, Mr. Adams' book "The Log of a Cowboy," is preëminently the classic of the plains. One of its greatest qualities is that of ceaseless movement. Three thousand head of cattle are driven through those chapters, from the Mexican frontier to the Canada border, and those cattle travel with a flow as irresistible as the unrelenting flow of De Quincey's Tartar tribe.
The author is one of those absolutely basic things, a natural story teller, and the fine simplicity of his writing springs not from education ("All the schooling I ever had I picked up at a cross-roads country school house"), not from an academic knowledge of "literature," but from primary qualities in his own nature, and the strong, ingenuous outlook of his own two eyes.
Mr. Henry Russell Wray tells of a request from eastern publishers for a brief sketch of Adams' life. Heasked Adams to write about two hundred words about himself, as though dealing with another being. The next day he received this:
A native of Indiana; went to Texas during his youth; worked over ten years on cattle ranches and on the trail, rising from common hand on the latter to a foreman. Quit cattle fifteen years ago, following business and mining occupations since. When contrasted with the present generation is just beginning to realize that the old days were romantic, though did not think so when sitting a saddle sixteen to twenty-four hours a day in all kinds of weather. His insight into cattle life was not obtained from the window of a Pullman car, but close to the soil and from the hurricane deck of a Texas horse. Even to-day is a better cowman than writer, for he can yet rope and tie down a steer with any of the boys, though the loop of his rope may settle on the wrong foot of the rhetoric occasionally. He is of Irish and Scotch parentage. Forty-three years of age, six feet in height and weighs 210 pounds.
Though I met Mr. Adams at Colorado Springs, I shall, for obvious reasons, let my description of him rest at that.
When writing of clubs I should have mentioned the Cooking Club, which is one of the most unique little clubs of the country. The fifteen members of this club are the gourmets of Colorado Springs—not merely passive gourmets who like to have good things set before them, but active ones who know how to prepare good things as well as eat them. Every little while, throughout the season, the Cooking Club gives dinners, to which each member may invite a guest or two. Each takes his turnin acting as host, his duties upon this occasion being to draw up the menu, supply materials, appoint members to prepare certain courses, and, wearing the full regalia of a chef, superintend the preparation of the meal, which is cooked entirely by men belonging to the club. Wine is not served at Cooking Club dinners, the official beverage being the club Rum Brew, which has a considerable local reputation, and is everywhere pronounced adequate. Not a few of the members learned to cook in the course of prospecting tours in the mountains, and the Easterner who, with this fact in mind, attends a Cooking Club dinner is led to revise, immediately, certain preconceived ideas of the hard life of the prospector. No man has a hard life who can cook himself such dishes. Indeed, one is forced to the conclusion that Colorado is full of undiscovered mines, which would have been uncovered long ago, were it not that prospectors go up into the mountains for the primary purpose of cooking themselves the most delightful meals, and that mining is—as indeed it should be—a mere side issue. For myself, while I have no taste for the hardy life of the mountaineer, I would gladly become a prospector, even if it were guaranteed in advance that I should discover nothing, providing that Eugene P. Shove would go along with me and make the biscuits.
Aside from its clubs Colorado Springs has all the other things which go to the making of a pleasant city. The Burns Theater is a model of what a theater should be. The Antlers Hotel would do credit to the shoresof Lake Lucerne. Where the "antlers" part of it comes in, I am unable to say, but as nothing else was lacking, from the kitchen, down stairs, to Pike's Peak looming up in the back yard, I have no complaint to make.
I suppose that every one who has heard of Colorado Springs at all, associates it with the famous Garden of the Gods.
Before I started on my travels I was aware of the fact that the two great natural wonders of the East are Niagara Falls and the insular New Yorker. I knew that the great, gorgeous, glittering galaxy of American wonders was, however, in the West, but the location and character of them was somewhat vague in my mind. I knew, of course, that Pike's Peak was a large mountain. I knew that the giant redwoods were in California. But for the rest, I had the Grand Cañon, the Royal Gorge, and the Garden of the Gods associated in my mind together as rival attractions. I do not know why this was so, excepting that I had been living on Manhattan Island, where information is notoriously scarce.
Now, though I saw the Royal Gorge, though I rode through it in the cab of a locomotive, with my hair standing on end, and though I found it "as advertised," I have no idea of trying to describe it, more than to say that it is a great cleft in the pink rocks through which run a river and a railroad, and that how the latter managed to keep out of the former was a constant source of wonder to me.As for the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, it affects those who behold it with a kind of literary asthma. They desire to describe it; some try, passionately; but they only wheeze and look as though they might explode. Since it is generally admitted that no one who has seen it can describe it, the task would manifestly devolve upon some one who has not seen it, and that requirement is filled by me. I have not seen it. I am not impressed by it at all. I am able to speak of it with coherence and restraint. But even that I shall not do.
With the Garden of the Gods it is different. The place irritated me. For if ever any spot was outrageously overnamed, it is that one. As a little park in the Catskills it might be all well enough, but as a natural wonder in the Rocky Mountains, with Pike's Peak hanging overhead, it is a pale pink joke. If I had my way I should take its wonder-name away from it, for the name is too fine to waste, and a thousand spots in Colorado are more worthy of it.
The entrance to the place, between two tall, rose-colored sandstone rocks may, perhaps, be called imposing; the rest of it might better be described as imposition. Guides will take you through, and they will do their utmost, as guides always do, to make you imagine that you are really seeing something. They will point out inane formations in the sandstone rock, and will attempt to make you see that these are "pictures." They will show you the Kissing Camels, the Bear and Seal,the Buffalo, the Bride and Groom, the Preacher, the Scotsman, Punch and Judy, the Washerwoman, and other rock forms, sculptured by Nature into shapes more or less suggesting the various objects mentioned. But what if they do? To look at such accidentals is a pastime about as intelligent as looking for pictures in the moon, or in the patterns of the paper on your wall. As nearly as Nature can be altogether silly she has been silly here, and I think that only silly people will succeed in finding fascination in the place—the more so since Colorado Springs is a prohibition town.
The story of prohibition there is curious. In 1870, N. C. Meeker, Agricultural Editor of the New York "Tribune," under Horace Greeley, started a colony in Colorado, bringing a number of settlers from the East, and naming the place Greeley. With a view to eliminating the roughness characteristic of frontier towns in those days, Mr. Meeker made Greeley a prohibition colony.
When, a year after, General William J. Palmer and his associates started to build the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad from Denver to Colorado Springs, a land company was formed, subsidiary to the railway project, and desert property was purchased on the present site of the Springs. The town was then laid out and the land retailed to individuals of "good moral character and strict, temperate habits."
In each deed given by the land company there was incorporated an anti-liquor clause, whereby, in the event of intoxicating liquors being "manufactured, sold or otherwise disposed of in any place of public resort on the premises," the deed should become void and the property revert to the company. Shortly after the formation of the colony the validity of this clause was tested. The suit was finally carried to the United States Supreme Court, where the rights of the company, under the prohibition clause, were upheld.
General Palmer, later, in discussing the history of Colorado Springs, explained that the prohibitory clause was not inserted in the deeds for moral reasons, but that "the aim was intensely practical—to create a habitable and successful town."
The General and his associates had had ample experience of new western railroad towns, and wished to eliminate the disagreeable features of such towns from Colorado Springs. Even then, though the prohibition movement had not been fairly launched in this country these practical men recognize the fact that Meeker had recognized; namely that with saloons, dance halls and gambling places, gunfighting and lynchings went hand in hand.
It is recorded that the restriction seemed to work against the town at first, but, on the other hand, such growth as came was substantial, and Colorado Springs attracted a better class of settlers than the wide open towns near-by. The wisdom of this arrangement isamply proven, to-day, by a comparison of Colorado Springs with the neighboring town of Colorado City, which has not had prohibition.
Even before Colorado Springs existed, General Palmer had fallen in love with the place and determined that he would some day have a home at the foot of the mountains in that neighborhood. In the early seventies he purchased a superb cañon a few miles west of the city, and the Tudor Castle which he built there, and which he named Glen Eyrie, because of the eagles' nests on the walls of his cañon, remains to-day one of the most remarkable houses on this continent.
Every detail of the house as it stands, and every item in the history of its construction expresses the force and originality which were such strong attributes of its late proprietor.
The General was an engineer. In the Civil War he was colonel of the 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry, and was breveted a general. After the war he went into the West and became a railroad builder. Evidently he was one of those men, typical of his time, who seem to have had a craving to condense into one lifetime the experiences and achievements of several. He was, so to speak, his own ancestor and his own descendant; there were, in effect, three generations of him: soldier, railroad builder, and landed baron. In his castle at Glen Eyrie one senses very strongly this baronial quality. Clearly the General could not be content with a mere modern house. He wanted a castle, and above all, anold castle. And, as Colorado is peculiarly free of old castles, he had to build one for himself. That is what he did, and the superb initiative of the man is again reflected in the means he used. The house must be of old lichen-covered stone, but, being already past middle age, the General could not wait on Nature. Therefore he caused the whole region to be scoured for flat, weathered stones which could be cut for his purpose. These he transported to his glen, where they were carefully cut and set in place, so that the moment the new wall was up it was an old wall. Finding the flat stones was easy, however, compared with finding those presenting a natural right angle, for the corners of the house. Nevertheless, all were ultimately discovered and laid, and the desired result was attained. After the house was done the General thought the roof lacked just the proper note of color, so he caused it to be torn off, and replaced with tiles from an old church in England.
Perhaps the most splendid thing about the place is an enormous hall, paneled in oak, with a gallery and a beamed barrel ceiling, but there are other features which make the house unusual. On the roof is a great Krupp bell, which can be heard for miles, and which was used to call the General's guests home for meals. There is a power plant, a swimming pool, a complicated device for recording meteorological conditions in the mountains. And of course there are fireplaces in which great logs were burned; yet there are no chimneys onthe house. The General did not want chimneys issuing smoke into his cañon, so he simply did not have them. Instead, he constructed a tunnel which runs up the mountainside behind the house and takes care of the smoke, emitting it at an unseen point, far above.
Meanwhile the General played Santa Claus to Colorado Springs, giving her parks and boulevards. One day, while riding on his place, he was thrown from his horse and a vertebra was fractured, with the result that he was permanently prostrated. After that he lay for some time like a wounded eagle in his eyrie, his mind as active as ever. He was still living in 1907, when the time for the annual reunion of his old regiment came around. Unable to go East, he invited the remaining veterans to come to him by special train, as his guests. So they came—the remnants of that old cavalry regiment, and passed in review, for the last time, before their Colonel, lying helpless with a broken neck.