Leadville

“ Fran told the crestfallen Judy, who had envisaged a gilded palace.
Seated at a longish wooden table, each studied the oversized menu card. Next to such tempting items as sizzled hamburgers with Western trimmings, steak hunter style, and the like were pictures of once famous mines and in fine print, the history of Leadville. Judy, her appetite for the printed word unimpaired, read avidly while munching her food.
“The population of Leadville, once sixty-five thousand, has dwindled to five. Look, here’s a picture of Matchless that Horace Tabor gave to Baby Doe!” ”

“ It now has a population of 15,000 inhabitants and is the county seat of Lake County. Leadville has an elevation of 10,200 feet, enjoying the highest altitude of any city of its size in North America, if not in the world. It lies amid some of the grandest and most magnificent scenery to be found anywhere, and is surrounded by towering, snow-capped mountain peaks, whose glistening summits almost pierce the sky. We find the atmosphere cool and bracing, but so exceedingly rare that a brisk walk or short run will make you pant for breath. ”

“ To be first into Leadville was the aim and ambition of hundreds of excited men, and to accomplish this, human life was endangered and mule flesh recklessly sacrificed. Companies were organized, who put on six-horse stages from Denver, Cañon City and Colorado Springs, and ran three or four coaches together, yet private conveyances took even more than the stages, and hundreds walked, braving the midwinter horrors of Mosquito pass. ”

“ Leadville tortured himself with the thought of that drive, of Gray's softness and nearness, of the little face between the fur of cap and necklet, the little smiling face....
He had been skinning the seal. Much as less powerful men skin a rabbit, he had been tearing the coat, grey and damp, from the smooth pale body. A stone wall, five foot broad at the base and crowned with tamarisk bushes, is what in Cornwall is called a hedge. It is at least a shelter from the wind, and Dick Bennett had been careful to set the furnace in a lew corner. ”

“ The paving of the central streets, the erection of large business buildings, the introduction of public water and gas, the police, the fire-patrol, the morning and evening papers, the telephone and what not, are all indications of the thrift and prosperity of the people but render the city less characteristic and peculiar. The Leadville of ’79 in which we took a keen interest is now a thing of the past. ”

“ In general aspects and conveniences the towns and cities are under excellent municipal regulations. Leadville, formerly one of the most lawless of great mining camps, is to-day a peaceful and prosperous city on a great trans-continental highway. ”

“ As Leadville on his black stallion turned the corner below Church Town, he met the Wastralls wagon coming back from Stowe with a load of coal and oil. The sight of the teamster, leading his horse as it zigzagged across the sharp ascent, brought the other a sudden tingling realization of power. Yesterday Rosevear had been a hind on his wife's farm and Byron, though ostensibly, blusteringly master, had not been able to dismiss him. ”

“ It seems to me no other church would be so popular here. Of the party of ten young men who board with me, I do not think that any one of them has been in a church three times since he came to Leadville. In most respects, all of them are fine young men; but Orthodox doctrines would never gain any ground with them, while Liberal ideas might win the field if the boys could be made to consider them."
Miss Ellis, and all the ladies, indeed, of the Cincinnati Auxiliary, were greatly interested in Leadville, and hoped to do a good work there, aided by our enthusiastic young friend ”

“ Mrs. Wheaton showed The Dispatch credentials from very high sources and a very bulky bundle of railroad passes which gave substantial evidence of the manner in which she and her work are regarded elsewhere.
She has traveled over the United States and Mexico, and parts of Europe, and it remained for a Leadville mayor to break the record and treat her with indignity. She was very much shocked and grieved and said she felt deeply sorry for Leadville, which she had often heard spoken of as a wicked city. ”

“ After a while he sent a waggon load of the dust to be assayed, and there was $9,000 worth of metal in it. He retired with a fortune.
A man with $3,000 and good health could have gone West in 1880, invested it in cattle, and made a fortune. San Francisco was only forty-five years old then, Denver thirty-five, Leadville sixteen, Kansas City thirty-five. They looked a hundred at least. Leadville was then a place of palatial hotels, elegant churches, boulevards and streets. The West was just aching to show how fast it could build cities. Leadville was the most lied about. ”

“ Then the Madame and I saunter homeward—for our comfortable cars seem very homelike to us these frosty evenings—breathing the resinous flavor of the crisply fragrant spruce, and watching the stars spring hastily over the coruscant line that traces the serrated crest of the snowy range.
MARSHALL PASS—EASTERN SLOPE.
Leadville at night is a scene of wild hilarity, and yet of remarkable order. The omnipresent six-shooters that used to outnumber the men of a mining camp ten years ago are rarely seen here in public. If men carry pistols, it is in their pockets ”

“ Why, with your looks, you could get any man you wanted!” one of them said to me.
Most of the talk at the Shoo-Fly that summer and autumn was about the sensational rise of silver and Leadville and Horace Tabor. It was like a fairy tale. For years, placer miners at the head of the Arkansas River had been irritated by peculiar black sand which was very heavy and could not be separated from the gold easily. A decade passed without their recognizing its true worth but during the ’70s several miners worked on secret assays which proved the sand was eroding from carbonates of lead and silver ore. ”

“ She helped found the city of Leadville, mapped roads, built houses, and took in washing from the miners. When the place became settled, the land she had taken up turned into a fortune; and as the silver rattled down the wash-board she felt herself growing rich. She weighs about one hundred and forty pounds. Having her property all in the hands of good agents, she is taking her ease.
There are constantly finds being made that create a great excitement at first; but in most cases they prove inferior to expectation, and soon die away. On the contrary, this has proved a good camp ”

“ His honesty, good judgment, and fidelity caused his services to be eagerly sought by the mining companies, which—after the Leadville discoveries—abounded in Colorado, and at the date at which our narrative opens he had acquired a fortune of about $300,000, which was invested mainly in mortgages upon business property in Denver. But he made no attempt at further attendance on Cupid’s 23court, and, indeed, gave but little attention to society. ”

“ After that revealing look Leadville had walked quietly past his wife out of the house. His dark thoughts, his secret hopes had risen to the surface. He had held them in for months but, in the end, they had escaped from him in a glance.
His footsteps died away on the hard mud of the yard, the warm silence fell again over the kitchen and, in the midst of it, a modern Lot's wife, Mrs. Byron sat strangely still. The steam died off the surface of the water, the sun crept a little farther into the room and the untidy pile of breakfast crocks gave back a glint here and a dazzle there. Mrs. ”

“ 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. ”

“ During the summer months there is an almost constant round of church and society picnics and private pleasure parties coming down to the lakes from Leadville, so that nearly every day brings a fresh influx of visitors, enlivening the resort, and dispelling all tendency to monotony. ”

“ Henwood and tell'n to come out and measure 'er for 'er coffin."
Leadville viewed the task set him with disfavour. "I can't abide that job."
"It bain't a bit of good for 'ee to talk like that, my dear," said Mrs. Tom, as to a fractious child, "you know it's got to be done. As well 'av it done first as last."
"I know that." Traffic in the gruesome ceremonial of death was repugnant to him and he would have liked to take a broom and sweep these women and their blacks out of Wastralls, to clear the place of them and have it once more sweet and clean. "Still 'tis 'ard lines on a poor feller." ”

“ It was a grand drive we had over those bracing uplands, and we were sorry when this portion of our stage came to an end, and we found ourselves descending from them through a deep rocky cutting, overhung with shady trees, into the very charming village of Leadenham, that struck us as being clean, neat, and picturesque, a dreamy spot yet not dull. The houses there are well built of stone, and most of them have pleasant gardens, and all of them look cheerful. ”

“ Leadenhall is situated on the south side of Leadenhall Street. It is a large stone fabric, consisting of three large courts or yards, as has been observed already; part of it is at present a warehouse, in the occupation of the East India Company, where the finest calicoes, and other curiosities of the Eastern part of the world, are reposited; another part of it is for Colchester baize, and is open every Thursday and Friday. Here was also anciently a chapel, and a fraternity of sixty priests constituted to celebrate Divine Service every day to the market people ”

“ But I suspect you don’t, and the weight of the attached line would make it all but impossible in any case.”
“I’d thought of that,” said Michael. “But I didn’t know what else to try..... Tell me the truth, John. Is it hopeless? I think another prison cell would be the death of me. But if there’s no other way. . .I’ll turn myself in along with Purceville, and try to reach the new Secretary---”
The fisherman shook his head. “No. Your kin have turned themselves in once already, and you see the result. ”

“ Another mile and a half brings us to Leadenham, where the east and west road from Sleaford to Newark crosses the Great North road. The fine tall spire is seen from all the country round, for it stands half way up the cliff. ”

“ Ledwith walked in wonderland. "The hand of God is surely there," was his one saying. The last day of his pilgrimage he had a long private talk with Arthur. They had indeed become father and son, and their mutual tenderness was deep.
Honora knew from the expression of the two men that a new element had entered into her father's happiness.
"I free you from your promise, my child," said Ledwith, "my most faithful, most tender child. It is the glory of men that the race is never without such children as you. You are free from any bond. ”

“ In March 1658 he first landed in the English colony of Rhode Island. All the New England settlements were opposed to the admission of quakers. They were usually subjected to barbarous flogging with knotted and pitched cords on landing, and were promptly banished. When Leddra arrived the assembly had just passed a law imposing a fine of 100l. upon any person who should introduce one or the 'cursed sect' into the territory, with a further penalty of 5l. for every hour the outlaw was concealed. ”

“ They went into a tea-shop and sat down. "Is the Guardian all right?" Henry asked.
"Oh, yes," said Leadenham wearily, "as right as any [Pg 429] thing is. Nobody in Fleet Street knows how long his job'll last. Half the men on the Daily Circle have had the sack. Some of our chaps have gone! Fleet Street's full of men looking for jobs. About fifty papers have smashed up since the thing began ... sporting papers mostly. It frightens you, this sort of thing!..."
He came away from Fleet Street as quickly as possible. The nervous, hectic state of the journalists made him feel nervous too. ”

“ We have already, in treating of the roads from Grantham, through the villages of Manthorpe, Belton, Syston, Barkstone, Honington, Carlton Scroop, Normanton, Caythorpe and Fulbeck, brought the account of this road northwards as far as Leadenham. Here the Sleaford and Newark main road crosses it, and Leadenham spire is a fine landmark for all the neighbourhood. It is to be noted that, common as the Danish termination ‘by’ is in all parts of the county, the Saxon ‘ton’ just about here and on the west side generally, is even more frequent. ”

“ Chapter XI. Life Alone.
When I was a very young man, I had occasion to travel two hundred miles down the valley of the Connecticut River. I had just finished a delightful summer excursion in the service of the State of New Hampshire as a geologist,--and I left the other geological surveyors at Haverhill.
I remembered John Ledyard. Do you, dear Young America? John Ledyard, having determined to leave Dartmouth College, built himself a boat, or digged for himself a canoe, and sailed down on the stream reading the Greek Testament, or "Plutarch's Lives," I forget which, on the way. ”