Blacking Usually Is An Unused Luxury, And Frequently Is Not Kept
In Houses.
My boots have only been blacked once during the last
two months.
DENVER, November 9.
I could not make out whether the superiority of the Deer Valley
settlers extended beyond material things, but a teamster I met in
the evening said it "made him more of a man to spend a night in
such a house." In Colorado whisky is significant of all evil and
violence and is the cause of most of the shooting affrays in the
mining camps. There are few moderate drinkers; it is seldom
taken except to excess. The great local question in the
Territory, and just now the great electoral issue, is drink or no
drink, and some of the papers are openly advocating a prohibitive
liquor law. Some of the districts, such as Greeley, in which
liquor is prohibited, are without crime, and in several of the
stock-raising and agricultural regions through which I have
traveled where it is practically excluded the doors are never
locked, and the miners leave their silver bricks in their wagons
unprotected at night. People say that on coming from the Eastern
States they hardly realize at first the security in which they
live. There is no danger and no fear. But the truth of the
proverbial saying, "There is no God west of the Missouri" is
everywhere manifest. The "almighty dollar" is the true divinity,
and its worship is universal. "Smartness" is the quality thought
most of. The boy who "gets on" by cheating at his lessons is
praised for being a "smart boy," and his satisfied parents
foretell that he will make a "smart man." A man who overreaches
his neighbor, but who does it so cleverly that the law cannot
take hold of him, wins an envied reputation as a "smart man," and
stories of this species of smartness are told admiringly round
every stove. Smartness is but the initial stage of swindling,
and the clever swindler who evades or defines the weak and often
corruptly administered laws of the States excites unmeasured
admiration among the masses.[20]
[20] May, 1878. - I am copying this letter in the city of San
Francisco, and regretfully add a strong emphasis to what I have
written above. The best and most thoughtful among Americans
would endorse these remarks with shame and pain. - I. L. B.
I left Deer Valley at ten the next morning on a glorious day,
with rich atmospheric coloring, had to spend three hours sitting
on a barrel in a forge after I had ridden twelve miles, waiting
while twenty-four oxen were shod, and then rode on twenty-three
miles through streams and canyons of great beauty till I reached
a grocery store, where I had to share a room with a large family
and three teamsters; and being almost suffocated by the curtain
partition, got up at four, before any one was stirring, saddled
Birdie, and rode away in the darkness, leaving my money on the
table!
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