the city of denver probably does more to keep the eastern man who is mining or ranching from returning once a year to his own people, and from spending his earnings at home, than any other city in the west. it lays its charm upon him, and stops him half-way, and he decides that the journey home is rather long, and puts it off until the next year, and again until the next, until at last he buys a lot and builds a house, and only returns to the east on his wedding journey. denver appeals to him more than do any of these other cities, for the reason that the many other eastern men who have settled there are turning it into a thoroughly eastern city—a smaller new york in an encircling range of white-capped mountains. if you look up at its towering office buildings, you can easily imagine yourself, were it not for the breadth of the thoroughfare, in down-town new york; and though the glimpse of the mountains at the end of the street in place of the spars and mast-heads of the east and north rivers undeceives you, the mud at your feet serves to help out the delusion. denver is a really beautiful city, but—and this, i am sure, few people in new york will believe—it has the worst streets in the country. their mud or their dust, as the season wills it, is the[216] one blot on the city’s fair extent; it is as if the city fathers had served a well-appointed dinner on a soiled table-cloth. but they say they will arrange all that in time.

the two most striking things about the city to me were the public schools and the private houses. great corporations, insurance companies, and capitalists erect twelve-story buildings everywhere. they do it for an advertisement for themselves or their business, and for the rent of the offices. but these buildings do not in any way represent a city’s growth. you will find one or two of such buildings in almost every western city, but you will find the people who rent the offices in them living in the hotels or in wooden houses on the outskirts. in denver there are not only the big buildings, but mile after mile of separate houses, and of the prettiest, strictest, and most proper architecture. it is a distinct pleasure to look at these houses, and quite impossible to decide upon the one in which you would rather live. they are not merged together in solid rows, but stand apart, with a little green breathing-space between, each in its turn asserting its own individuality. the greater part of these are built of the peculiarly handsome red stone which is found so plentifully in the silver state. it is not the red stone which makes them so pleasantly conspicuous, but the taste of the owner or the architect which has turned it to account. as for the public schools, they are more like art museums outside than school-houses; and if as much money and thought in proportion are given to the instruction as have been put upon the buildings, the children of denver threaten to grow up into a most disagreeably superior class of young persons. denver possesses those other things which make a city livable, but the public schools and the private houses were to me the most distinctive features. the denver club is quite as handsome and well ordered a club as one would find in new york city, and the university club, which is for the younger men, brings the wanderers from different colleges very near and pleasantly together. its members can sing more different college songs in a given space of time than any other body of men i have met. the theatres and the hotels are new and very good, and it is a delight to find servants so sufficiently civilized that the more they are ordered about and the more one gives them to do, the more readily they do it, knowing that this means that they are to be tipped. in the other western cities, where this pernicious and most valuable institution is apparently unknown, a traveller has to do everything for himself.

you will find that the people of a city always pride themselves on something which the visitor within their gates would fail to notice. they have become familiar with those features which first appeal to him, have outgrown them, and have passed on to admire something else. the citizen of denver takes a modest pride in the public schools, the private houses, and the great mountains, which seem but an hour’s walk distant and are twenty miles away; but he is proudest before all of two things—of his celery and his cable-cars. his celery is certainly the most delicious and succulent that grows, and his cable-cars are very beautiful white and gold affairs, and move with the delightfully terrifying speed of a toboggan. riding on these cable-cars is one of the institutions of the city, just as in the summer a certain class of young people in new york find their pleasure in driving up and down the avenue on the top of the omnibuses. but that is a dreary and sentimental journey compared with a ride on the grip-seat of a cable-car,[220] and every one in denver patronizes this means of locomotion whether on business or on pleasure bent, and whether he has carriages of his own or not. there is not, owing to the altitude, much air to spare in denver at any time, but when one mounts a cable-car, and is swept with a wild rush around a curve, or dropped down a grade as abruptly as one is dropped down the elevator shaft in the potter building, what little air there is disappears, and leaves one gasping. still, it is a most popular diversion, and even in the winter some of the younger people go cable-riding as we go sleighing, and take lap-robes with them to keep them warm. there is even a “scenic route,” which these cars follow, and it is most delightful.

denver and colorado springs pretend to be jealous of one another; why, it is impossible to understand. one is a city, and the other a summer or health resort; and we might as properly compare boston and newport, or new york and tuxedo. in both cities the eastern man and woman and the english cousin are much more in evidence than the born western man. these people are very fond of their homes at denver and at the springs, but they certainly manage to keep fifth avenue and the sound and the back bay prominently in mind. half of those women whose husbands are wealthy—and every one out here seems to be in that condition—do the greater part of their purchasing along broadway below twenty-third street, their letter-paper is stamped on union square, and their husbands are either part or whole owners of a yacht. it sounds very strange to hear them, in a city shut in by ranges of mountain peaks, speak familiarly of larchmont and hell gate and new london and “last year’s cruise.” colorado springs is the great pleasure resort for the whole[221] state, and the salvation and sometimes the resting-place of a great many invalids from all over the world. it lies at the base of pike’s peak and cheyenne mountain, and is only an hour’s drive from the great masses of jagged red rock known as the garden of the gods. pike’s peak, the garden of the gods, and the mount of the holy cross are the proudest landmarks in the state. this last mountain was regarded for many years almost as a myth, for while many had seen the formation which gives it its name, no one could place the mountain itself, the semblance of the cross disappearing as one drew near to it. but in 1876 mr. hayden, of the government survey, and mr. w. h. jackson, of denver, found it, climbed it, and photographed it, and since then artists and others have made it familiar. but it will never become so familiar as to lose aught of its wonderfully impressive grandeur.

there are also near colorado springs those mineral waters which give it its name, and of which the people are so proud that they have turned colorado springs into a prohibition town, and have made drinking the waters, as it were, compulsory. this is an interesting example of people who support home industries. there is a casino at the springs, where the hungarian band plays in summer, a polo field, a manufactured lake for boating, and hundreds of beautiful homes, fashioned after the old english country-house, even to the gate-keeper’s lodge and the sun dial on the lawn. and there are cañons that inspire one not to attempt to write about them. there are also many english people who have settled there, and who vie with the eastern visitors in the smartness of their traps and the appearance of their horses. indeed, both of these cities have so taken on the complexion of the east that one wonders whether it[222] is true that the mining towns of creede and leadville lie only twelve hours away, and that one is thousands of miles distant from the city of new york.

it is possible that some one may have followed this series of articles, of which this is the last, from the first, and that he may have decided, on reading them, that the west is filled with those particular people and institutions of which these articles have treated, and that one steps from ranches to army posts, and from indian reservations to mining camps with easy and uninterrupted interest. this would be, perhaps it is needless to say, an entirely erroneous idea. i only touched on those things which could not be found in the east, and said nothing of the isolation of these particular and characteristic points of interest, of the commonplace and weary distances which lay between them, and of the difficulty of getting from one point to another. for days together, while travelling to reach something of possible interest, i might just as profitably, as far as any material presented itself, have been riding through new jersey, pennsylvania, or ohio. indians do not necessarily join hands with the cowboys, nor army posts nestle at the feet of mountains filled with silver. the west is picturesque in spots, and, as the dramatic critics say, the interest is not sustained throughout. i confess i had an idea that after i had travelled four days in a straight line due west, every minute of my time would be of value, and that if each man i met was not a character he would tell stories of others who were, and that it would merely be necessary for me to keep my eyes open to have picturesque and dramatic people and scenes pass obligingly before them. i was soon undeceived in this, and learned that in order to reach the west we read about, it would be necessary for me to leave the railroad, and that i must pay for an hour of interest with days of the most unprofitable travel. matthew arnold said, when he returned to england, that he had found this country “uninteresting,” and every american was properly indignant, and said he could have forgiven him any adjective but that. if matthew arnold travelled from pittsburg to st. louis, from st. louis to corpus christi, and from corpus christi back through texas to the indian territory, he not only has my sympathy, but i admire him as a descriptive writer. for those who find the level farm lands of indiana, illinois, missouri, kansas, and the ranches of upper texas, and the cactus of southern texas, and the rolling prairie of the indian territory interesting, should travel from liverpool to london on either line they please to select, and they will understand the englishman’s discontent. hundreds of miles of level mud and snow followed by a hot and sandy soil and uncultivated farm lands are not as interesting as hedges of hawthorn or glimpses of the thames or ivy-covered country-houses in parks of oak. the soldiers who guard this land, the indians who are being crowded out of it, and the cowboys who gallop over it and around their army of cattle, are interesting, but they do not stand at the railroad stations to be photographed and to exhibit their peculiar characteristics.

but after one leaves these different states and rides between the mountain ranges of colorado, he commits a sin if he does not sit day and night by the car-window. it is best to say this as it shows the other side of the shield.

you may, while travelling in the west, enjoy the picturesque excitement of being held up by train robbers, but you are in much more constant danger of being held up by commercial travellers and native western men, who demand[226] that you stand and deliver your name, your past history, your business, and your excuse for being where you are. neither did i find the west teeming with “characters.” i heard of them, and indeed the stories of this or that pioneer or desperado are really the most vivid and most interesting memories i have of the trip. but these men have been crowded out, or have become rich and respectably commonplace, or have been shot, as the case may be. i met the men who had lynched them or who remembered them, but not the men themselves. they no longer overrun the country; they disappeared with the buffalo, and the west is glad of it, but it is disappointing to the visitor. the men i met were men of business, who would rather talk of the new court-house with the lines of the sod still showing around it than of the indian fights and the killing of the bad men of earlier days when there was no court-house, and when the vigilance committee was a necessary evil. these were “well-posted” and “well-informed” citizens, and if there is one being i dread and fly from, it is a well-posted citizen.

the men who are of interest in the west, and of whom most curious stories might be told, are the eastern men and the englishmen who have sought it with capital, or who have been driven there to make their fortunes. some one once started a somewhat unprofitable inquiry as to what became of all the lost pins. that is not nearly so curious as what becomes of all the living men who drop suddenly out of our acquaintanceship or our lives, and who are not missed, but who are nevertheless lost. i know now what becomes of them; they all go west. i met some men here whom i was sure i had left walking fifth avenue, and who told me, on the contrary, that they had been in the west for the last two years. they had once walked fifth avenue, but they dropped out of the procession one day, and no one missed them, and they are out here enjoying varying fortunes. the brakesman on a freight and passenger train in southern texas was a lower-class man whom i remembered at lehigh university as an expert fencer; the conductor on the same train was from the same college town; the part owner of a ranch, whom i supposed i had left looking over the papers in the club, told me he had not been in new york for a year, and that his partner was “jerry” black, who, as i trust no one has forgotten, was one of princeton’s half-backs, and who i should have said, had any one asked me, was still in pennsylvania. another man whom i remembered as a “society” reporter on a new york paper, turned up in a white apron as a waiter at a hotel in ——. i was somewhat embarrassed at first as to whether or not he would wish me to recognize him, but he settled my doubts by winking at me over his heavily-loaded tray, as much as to say it was a very good joke, and that he hoped i was appreciating it to its full value. we met later in the street, and he asked me with the most faithful interest of those whose dances and dinners he had once reported, deprecated a notable scandal among people of the four hundred which was filling the papers at that time, and said i could hardly appreciate the pity of such a thing occurring among people of his set. another man, whom i had known very well in new york, turned up in san antonio with an entirely new name, wife, and fortune, and verified the tradition which exists there that it is best before one grows to know a man too well, to ask him what was his name before he came to texas. san antonio seemed particularly rich in histories of those who[230] came there to change their fortunes, and who had changed them most completely. the english gave the most conspicuous examples of these unfortunates—conspicuous in the sense that their position at home had been so good, and their habits of life so widely different.

the proportion of young english gentlemen who are roughing it in the west far exceeds that of the young americans. this is due to the fact that the former have never been taught a trade or profession, and in consequence, when they have been cheated of the money they brought with them to invest, have nothing but their hands to help them, and so take to driving horses or branding cattle or digging in the streets, as one graduate of oxford, sooner than write home for money, did in denver. he is now teaching greek and latin in one of our colleges. the manner in which visiting englishmen are robbed in the west, and the quickness with which some of them take the lesson to heart, and practise it upon the next englishman who comes out, or upon the prosperous englishman already there, would furnish material for a book full of pitiful stories. and yet one cannot help smiling at the wickedness of some of these schemes. three englishmen, for example, bought, as they supposed, thirty thousand texas steers; but the texans who pretended to sell them the cattle drove the same three thousand head ten times around the mountain, as a dozen supers circle around the backdrop of a stage to make an army, and the englishmen counted and paid for each steer ten times over. there was another texan who made a great deal of money by advertising to teach young men how to become cowboys, and who charged them ten dollars a month tuition fee, and who set his pupils to work digging holes for fence-posts all over[231] the ranch, until they grew wise in their generation, and left him for some other ranch, where they were paid thirty dollars per month for doing the same thing. but in many instances it is the tables of san antonio which take the greater part of the visiting englishman’s money. one gentleman, who for some time represented the isle of wight in the lower house, spent three modest fortunes in the san antonio gambling-houses, and then married his cook, which proved a most admirable speculation, as she had a frugal mind, and took entire control of his little income. and when the marquis of aylesford died in colorado, the only friend in this country who could be found to take the body back to england was his first-cousin, who at that time was driving a hack around san antonio. we heard stories of this sort on every side, and we met faro-dealers, cooks, and cowboys who have served through campaigns in india or egypt, or who hold an oxford degree. a private in g troop, third cavalry, who was my escort on several scouting expeditions in the garza outfit, was kind enough and quite able to tell me which club in london had the oldest wine-cellar, where one could get the best visiting-cards engraved, and why the professor of ancient languages at oxford was the superior of the instructor in like studies at cambridge. he did this quite unaffectedly, and in no way attempted to excuse his present position. of course, the value of the greater part of these stories depends on the family and personality of the hero, and as i cannot give names, i have to omit the best of them.

there was a little english boy who left san antonio before i had reached it, but whose name and fame remained behind him. he was eighteen years of age, and just out of eton, where he had spent all his pocket-money in betting[232] on the races through commissioners. gambling was his ruling passion at an age when ginger-pop and sweets appealed more strongly to his contemporaries. his people sent him to texas with four hundred pounds to buy an interest in a ranch, and furnished him with a complete outfit of london-made clothing. an englishman who saw the boy’s box told me he had noted the different garments packed carefully away, just as his mother had placed them, and each marked with his name. the eton boy lost the four hundred pounds at roulette in the first week after his arrival in san antonio, and pawned his fine clothes in the next to “get back.” he lost all he ventured. at the end of ten days he was peddling fruit around the streets in his bare feet. he made twenty-five cents the first day, and carried it to the gambling-house where he had already lost his larger fortune, and told one of the dealers he would cut the cards with him for the money. the boy cut first, and the dealer won; but the other was enough of a gambler to see that the dealer had stooped to win his last few pennies unfairly. the boy’s eyes filled up with tears of indignation.

“you thief!” he cried, “you cheated me!”

the dealer took his revolver from the drawer of the table, and, pointing it at his head, said: “do you know what we do to people who use that word in texas? we kill them!”

the boy clutched the table with both hands and flung himself across it so that his forehead touched the barrel of the revolver. “you thief!” he repeated, and so shrilly that every one in the room heard him. “i say you cheated me!”

the gambler lowered the trigger slowly and tossed the pistol back in the drawer. then he picked up a ten-dollar gold piece and shoved it towards him.

“here,” he said, “that’ll help take you home. you’re too damned tough for texas!”

the other englishmen in san antonio filled out the sum and sent him back to england. his people are well known in london; his father is a colonel in the guards.

the most notable englishman who ever came to texas was ben thompson; but he arrived there at so early an age, and became so thoroughly western in his mode of life, that texans claim him as their own. i imagine, however, he always retained some of the traditions of his birthplace, as there is a story of his standing with his hat off to talk to an english nobleman, when thompson at the time was the most feared and best known man in all texas. the stories of his recklessness and ignorance of fear, and utter disregard of the value of others’ lives as well as his own, are innumerable. a few of them are interesting and worth keeping, as they show the typical bad man of the highest degree in his different humors, and also as i have not dared to say half as much about bad men as i should have liked to do. thompson killed eighteen men in different parts of texas, and was for this made marshal of austin, on the principle that if he must kill somebody, it was better to give him authority to kill other desperadoes than reputable citizens. as marshal it was his pleasure to pull up his buggy across the railroad track just as the daily express train was about to start, and covering the engineer with his revolver, bid him hold the train until he was ready to move on. he would then call some trembling acquaintance from the crowd on the platform and talk with him leisurely, until he thought he had successfully awed the engineer and established his authority. then he would pick up his reins and drive on, saying to the engineer, “you needn’t think,[236] sir, any corporation can hurry me.” the position of the unfortunate man to whom he talked must have been most trying, with a locomotive on one side and a revolver on the other.

one day a cowboy, who was a well-known bully and a would-be desperado, shot several bullet-holes through the high hat of an eastern traveller who was standing at the bar of an austin hotel. thompson heard of this, and, purchasing a high hat, entered the bar-room.

“i hear,” he said, facing the cowboy, “that you are shooting plug-hats here to-day; perhaps you would like to take a shot at mine.” he then raised his revolver and shot away the cowboy’s ear. “i meant,” he said, “to hit your ear; did i do it?” the bully showed proof that he had. “well, then,” said the marshal, “get out of here;” and catching the man by his cartridge-belt, he threw him out into the street, and so put an end to his reputation as a desperate character forever.

thompson was naturally unpopular with a certain class in the community. two barkeepers who had a personal grudge against him, with no doubt excellent reason, lay in ambush for him behind the two bars of the saloon, which stretched along either wall. thompson entered the room from the street in ignorance of any plot against him until the two men halted him with shot-guns. they had him so surely at their pleasure that he made no effort to reach his revolver, but stood looking from one to the other, and smiling grimly. but his reputation was so great, and their fear of him so actual, that both men missed him, although not twenty feet away, and with shot-guns in their hands. then thompson took out his pistol deliberately and killed them.

a few years ago he became involved in san antonio with[237] “jack” harris, the keeper of a gambling-house and variety theatre. harris lay in wait for thompson behind the swinging doors of his saloon, but thompson, as he crossed the military plaza, was warned of harris’s hiding-place, and shot him through the door. he was tried for the murder, and acquitted on the ground of self-defence; and on his return to austin was met at the station by a brass band and all the fire companies. perhaps inspired by this, he returned to san antonio, and going to harris’s theatre, then in the hands of his partner, joe foster, called from the gallery for foster to come up and speak to him. thompson had with him a desperado named king fisher, and against him every man of his class in san antonio, for harris had been very popular. foster sent his assistant, a very young man named bill sims, to ask thompson to leave the place, as he did not want trouble.

“i have come to have a reconciliation,” said thompson. “i want to shake hands with my old friend, joe foster. tell him i won’t leave till i see him, and i won’t make a row.”

sims returned with foster, and thompson held out his hand.

“joe,” he said, “i have come all the way from austin to shake hands with you. let’s make up, and call it off.”

“i can’t shake hands with you, ben,” foster said. “you killed my partner, and you know well enough i am not the sort to forget it. now go, won’t you, and don’t make trouble.”

thompson said he would leave in a minute, but they must drink together first. there was a bar in the gallery, which was by this time packed with men who had learned of thompson’s presence in the theatre, but fisher and[238] thompson stood quite alone beside the bar. the marshal of austin looked up and saw foster’s glass untouched before him, and said,

“aren’t you drinking with me, joe?”

foster shook his head.

“well, then,” cried thompson, “the man who won’t drink with me, nor shake hands with me, fights me.”

he reached back for his pistol, and some one—a jury of twelve intelligent citizens decided it was not young bill sims—shot him three times in the forehead. they say you could have covered the three bullet-holes with a half-dollar. but so great was the desperate courage of this ruffian that even as he fell he fired, holding his revolver at his hip, and killing foster, and then, as he lay on his back, with every nerve jerking in agony, he emptied his revolver into the floor, ripping great gashes in the boards about him. and so he died, as he would have elected to die, with his boots on, and with the report of his pistol the last sound to ring in his ears. king fisher was killed at the same moment; and the express spoke of it the next morning as “a good night’s work.”

i had the pleasure of meeting mr. sims at the gambling palace, which was once harris’s, then foster’s, and which is now his, and found him a jolly, bright-eyed young man of about thirty, with very fine teeth, and a most contagious laugh. he was just back from dwight, and told us of a man who had been cured there, and who had gone away with his mother leaning on his arm, and what this man had said to them of his hopes for the future when he left; and as he told it the tears came to his eyes, and he coughed, and began to laugh over a less serious story. i tried all the time to imagine him, somewhat profanely, i am afraid, as a young david standing up before this english giant, who had sent twoscore of other men out of the world, and to picture the glaring, crowded gallery, with the hot air and smoke, and the voice of the comic singer rising from the stage below, and this boy and the marshal of austin facing one another with drawn revolvers; but it was quite impossible.

there are a great many things one only remembers to say as the train is drawing out of the station, and which have to be spoken from the car-window. and now that my train is so soon to start towards the east, i find there are many things which it seems most ungracious to leave unsaid. i should like to say much of the hospitality of the west. we do not know such hospitality in the east. a man brings us a letter of introduction there, and we put him up at the club we least frequently visit, and regret that he should have come at a time when ours is so particularly crowded with unbreakable engagements. it is not so here. one might imagine the western man never worked at all, so entirely is his time yours, if you only please to claim it. and from the first few days of my trip to the last, this self-effacement of my hosts and eagerness to please accompanied me wherever i went. it was the same in every place, whether in army posts or ranches, or among that most delightful coterie of the denver club “who never sleep,” or on the border of mexico, where “bob” haines, the sheriff of zepata county, texas, before he knew who i or my soldier escort might be, and while we were still but dust-covered figures in the night, rushed into the house and ordered a dinner and beds for us, and brought out his last two bottles of beer. the sheriff of zepata county, “who can shoot with both hands,” need bring no letter of[242] introduction with him if he will deign to visit me when he comes to new york. and as for that denver club coterie, they already know that the new york clubs are also supplied with electric buttons.

and now that it is at an end, i find it hard to believe that i am not to hear again the indian girls laughing over their polo on the prairie, or the regimental band playing the men on to the parade, and that i am not to see the officers’ wives watching them from the line at sunset, as the cannon sounds its salute and the flag comes fluttering down.

and yet new york is not without its good points.

if any one doubts this, let him leave it for three months, and do one-night stands at fourth-rate hotels, or live on alkali water and bacon, and let him travel seven thousand miles over a country where a real-estate office, a citizen’s bank, and quick order restaurant, with a few surrounding houses, make, as seen from the car-window, a booming city, where beautiful scenery and grand mountains are separated by miles of prairie and chaparral, and where there is no diana of the tower nor bronze farragut to greet him daily as he comes back from work through madison square. he will then feel a love for new york equal to the chicagoan’s love for his city, and when he sees across the new jersey flats the smoke and the tall buildings and the twin spires of the cathedral, he will wish to shout, as the cowboys do when they “come into town,” at being back again in the only place where one can both hear the tough girl of the east side ask for her shoes, and the horn of the country club’s coach tooting above the roar of the avenue.

the west is a very wonderful, large, unfinished, and out-of-doors portion of our country, and a most delightful place[243] to visit. i would advise every one in the east to visit it, and i hope to revisit it myself. some of those who go will not only visit it, but will make their homes there, and the course of empire will eventually westward take its way. but when it does, it will leave one individual behind it clinging closely to the atlantic seaboard.

little old new york is good enough for him.

the end