Tabor

“ There is the moonlight view out of the bush on the northern flank of Tabor, the leap of the sun over the edge of Bashan, summer morning in the Shephelah, and sunset over the Mediterranean, when you see it from the gateway of the ruins on Samaria down the glistening Vale of Barley. ”

“ Leadville, the Saddle Rock Cafe, and the gay, boisterous mining and promoting crowd about me all swam dizzily away from my consciousness as I dropped down in a chair between the great silver king, Horace Tabor, and his manager, Bill Bush. I was in love! That was all I knew.
I was in love with a married man. I, a divorced woman, whose future with Jake was merely a nebulous suggestion. Yet here I was, beside the man I had dreamed of for so long—
“Surely, Bill, we should have champagne on this auspicious occasion?” Mr. Tabor went on. ”

“ If we can’t make the barque, we can make land somewhere.”
“Aye, aye,” said Tabor, with a sly leer, “and live on roast-beef and turkey while we’re making it.”
With heavy hearts and many misgivings we shipped our oars, heartily wishing the whale in the devil’s try-pots; for we thought it rather hard that our lives should be risked for a few barrels of oil. For two hours we pulled a long, lazy, dogged stroke, without a sign of relief. At last Tabor stood up on the bow to look out, and we lay on our oars. ”

“ Tabor, the central position, a mountain whose summit is 1500 feet above the plain, is bare and shapeless on the south, but to the north it is steep, and wooded with oaks and thickets in which the fallow-deer finds a home. About three miles west are the springs from which the Kishon first rises, and from this point a chain of pools and springs, fringed with reeds and rushes, marks, even in the dry season, the course of the river. Along this line, at the base of the northern hills, the chariots and horsemen of Sisera fled. ”

“ Tabor had left home unequivocally in January, but as he was on so many frequent trips to New York, Chicago or Leadville, where he stayed was really not noticed until that autumn.
At the festive opening night of the Tabor Grand Opera House, with Emma Abbott singing Lucia, Box A of the six fashion boxes was conspicuously empty. That was the box Tabor had reserved for himself and family. It was wreathed in flowers and a huge pendant of roses hung above it. He was on the stage or in the wings waiting for the ceremony of dedication. ”

“ To employ the soldiers, whom idleness always seduced into license, it was determined to make an attack upon Mount Tabor, where the Mussulmans had fortified themselves.
Mount Tabor, so celebrated in the Old and New Testament, arises like a superb dome amidst the vast plain of Galilee. The declivity of the mountain is covered with flowers and odoriferous plants; from the summit of Tabor, which forms a level of a league in extent, may be seen, travellers say, all the banks of the Jordan, the Lake of Tiberias, the Sea of Syria, and most of the places in which Christ performed his miracles. ”

“ Tabor's terror of the alienist; and her absurd suggestion that he himself was insane clenched the matter. What supported it still more was that if this were so, then all these honest people had from point to point spoken the truth; Mr. Tabor had, as he said, trusted me to the edge of caution; Lady had told the truth in fear, and Reid under pressure; Sheila had told the truth, only inflated and colored by superstition. ”

“ The people who live at the foot of the mountain do not allow anyone to approach this spot out of reverence and devotion.
Symbolically: Tabor in Hebrew is the same as bed of purity and light. תא, ta means bed, and אור or, light, and the beth in the middle signifies in. Thus it is, the bed in light. S. Jerome (Hosea, c. 5) gives another meaning. Tabor, he says, means the coming light. Again, Tabor may be translated, ta, i.e., a bed and bor, i.e., a cistern or sepulchre; because on Tabor Moses and Elias spake of the decease of Christ. ”

“ He consoles himself, however, with the reflection that the holy Virgin Mary never loved the tabor, and that no such vulgar instrument was admitted at her wedding; while she had in various ways shown her favour to the jougleurs. “I pray God,” our minstrel continues, “that he will send mischief to him 184 who first made a tabor, for it is an instrument which ought to please nobody. No rich man ought to love the sound of a tabor, which is bad for people’s heads; for, if stretched tight, and struck hard, it may be heard at half a league’s distance:”—
Qui primes sist tabor. ”

“ Through Tabor’s prominence in Denver and Leadville, I met and entertained many men interested in politics. The famous beauties, Lily Langtry and Lillian Russell, and other well-known figures of the nineteenth century stage such as Sara Bernhardt, Mme. Modjeska, John Drew, Augustin Daly, William Gillette, Edwin Booth, and Otis Skinner frequently played at the Tabor Opera House, and Tabor and I would entertain them at champagne suppers after their performances. They always seemed to like me and would ask to see me on our fairly frequent visits to New York. ”

“ What has come to you all?" Then as Mr. Tabor hesitated for an answer, she turned with a despairing little gesture to her daughter. "You tell me what it is, Miriam," she cried.
Mr. Tabor rose from the table. "With your permission, my dear, Crosby and I will go out and smoke," he said. "There isn't anything the matter. You only imagine it, and you need Lady to tell you so."
Mrs. Tabor turned to me quickly. "You can smoke here just as well," she said hurriedly, "I like it. And besides, you are the only one who seems to have anything to say this evening. ”

“ Tabor’s lonely cabin on Fryer Hill. When the couple peered through the window, they discovered her prostrate form.
The once proud beauty was dead. Leadville, Denver, Central City and the world reacted immediately, producing a host of memories to round out the details of her extraordinary career. Other reminiscences came from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where she was born, and from Washington, D. C., where she had married Tabor, President Arthur and several members of the cabinet in attendance at the wedding. ”

“ At the corner of the building, discreet swinging doors gave entrance to the bar; and as Mr. Tabor started down the drive, there came from within a stream of savage gutturals and the squeak and clatter of an over-tilted chair. A stocky fellow in a flannel shirt lurched through the swinging doors and followed him at a clumsy run, cursing in a tangle of English and Italian so rapid and furious that by the ear alone I should have thought half a dozen people were involved. It had the multiplied brilliancy of a virtuoso's [Pg 49] piano playing. ”

“ When he heard of Tabor’s plight, he wrote him a check for $15,000 to use in developing his Eclipse mine in Boulder County.
“There’s a true friend,” Tabor remarked with touching humility. It wrung me to the quick to see him act like this, pathetic and almost beaten. When he had had money, and even in the days before I knew him and before he became rich, his generosity and honesty had been proverbial. In return, the world gave him only deceit and niggardliness—and a cold shoulder. Many a night I wept with secret rage at the world as much as sorrow for Tabor. ”

“ Everyone drank too much and Tabor was supposed to have stumbled about with a girl in a gaudy spangled gown which, a few days before the ball, had been on display in the window of the Daniels, Fisher and Smith Dry Goods Emporium on Harrison Avenue, Leadville, bearing a tag marked $500. Bill Bush tried to insinuate that Tabor had bought it as a gift to another one of his loves.
“And why shouldn’t he, Bill?” I asked. “I love the man as he is. You forget I’m not Augusta. If he wants to have a good time among his friends, I think that’s fine. ”

“ Over the telephone next morning, Mr. Tabor was ominously agreeable. "Certainly," he said. "You have a perfect right to the reason. When you have it, I think you will agree that you have no more cause for complaint than you have for remaining in the neighborhood. I will be down at once."
Half an hour later he was seated in my room, polished, choleric, aquiline, a man to be a fierce friend or a difficult enemy. ”

“ You never saw a windmill yet without swearing it was a green dragon with yellow eyes and a three-pronged tail. They are not half so mysterious as you are with that hush-hush expression on your innocent countenance. Tabor's an importer, with a flourishing business in red ink and spaghetti and other products of Sunny It'. Mrs. Tabor's a dear little soul with nerves and an occasional palpitation. Lady's a pippin, and Reid's a strenuous sawbones that lost half a second once in [Pg 67] his youth and has been chasing it ever since. You've been reading too much classical literature. ”

“ Tabor was very hurt at this, the more so because there seemed to be an element of truth in her words. The attitude toward him in Leadville had changed and Tabor really loved that mining camp—it was always “home” to him, much more than Denver. And in later years, I felt the same way, although just then I was eager to conquer fresh fields.
“Never mind,” I said. “I’m sure she’s wrong—and besides what do you care about that ugly old mining camp? You’re a big man going to do the biggest things for the nation. And what if Governor Pitkin doesn’t like you? ”

“ But most of her friends as she grew up called her Silver. Lillie, the first little girl, was blonde like myself, but Silver was dark like Tabor, and very lovely in appearance.
By the time she was born, many of Tabor’s mines had fallen off in output, but the Matchless was still bearing up. Some of Tabor’s other investments had not turned out as we thought, although we were still hopeful and felt it was just a question of time. We continued to live on the same lavish scale; Tabor mortgaged the Tabor Block and the Opera House until some of the other mines he had bought should begin to pay. ”

“ My great husband, Tabor, could not have spoken other than truthfully and prophetically from his deathbed and if I was to live true to his command, I must always believe.
“I have no reason for living if I do not have faith in the Matchless. No dear one is left to me. I have only this one legacy of my great love. It is my mission and my life,” were the thoughts that ran through my head as I left the banker’s office. But now I had exhausted my last resource. No future was ahead of me, no work to do and no place to live. The mine was doomed—and my heart sank to the lowest depths. ”

“ I could not make him share my belief that Tabor would recoup everything. In my innermost heart, I knew he would. But here was a new kind of man in Colorado who did not look at life the way the first-comers did. Those men were plungers, gay and generous. When they had money, they spent it and when they didn’t, they had the bravery to start out on new ventures and make other fortunes. When a friend was down, they loaned him more than he needed and forgot the loan. That was Tabor. But not these newcomers who were settling and growing prosperous in Colorado. ”

“ The Tabors lived opulently and showily right up to the moment of the Silver Panic in 1893 when their fortune came tumbling down. In the same year, 1895, that Augusta died a wealthy woman in California, they were bankrupt. Tabor became a day laborer and Baby Doe did the hardest sort of manual work. Finally Tabor was appointed postmaster of Denver. The Tabors and their two little girls moved into two rooms at the Windsor and here they lived until Tabor’s death in 1899. His dying words to Baby Doe were, “Hang on to the Matchless. It will make millions again.” ”

“ That was January 27, 1883, and by February 3, he was being sworn in at Washington. I have never seen anyone so delighted and happy as Tabor was, leaving Denver. He was fifty-two years old but you would have thought he was twelve and had been given his first pony. I, too, was joyful and expectant.
“And what a wedding we’ll have, Baby!” he said in parting. “I’ll fix all the details and send for you to be married just before my term is up. If all goes well, you’ll have both a priest and a president at your ceremony! A lover couldn’t do more. ”

“ Tabor, do come in. I’m all alone. And being Sunday night, the servants are all out—had to answer the door, myself.”
He led me into a gloomy spacious room lit only by one reading lamp and by the flames from the fireplace.
“It’s a pretty bad night for you to be out,” he remarked.
“Oh, I don’t mind. It’s nothing to the Leadville blizzards I face all the time up at the mine. I’m used to a hard life.” ”

“ Some times we didn’t have enough to eat. But I carried my head high, knowing that Tabor luck was sure and that our fortunes were bound to change.
Tabor was past sixty-five and suddenly he was an old man. He worked as an ordinary laborer in Leadville, wheeling slag at the smelter. But he was not up to the strenuous physical effort. And the pay was only $3.00 a day. At the other end of town, the Matchless was shut down and her shafts and drifts were fast filling with water after the stopping of the pumps.
63
Desperation haunted our every move. ”

“ Mr. F. W. Tabor is a materializing medium whose [Pg 183] specialty is the trumpet test for the production of spirit voices. I had a sitting with him at the house of Mr. X, of Washington, D. C., on the night of Jan. 10, 1897. Seven persons, including the medium, sat around an ordinary-sized table in Mr. X—’s drawing room, and formed a chain of hands, in the following manner: Each person placed his or her hands on the table with the thumbs crossed, and the little fingers of each hand touching the little fingers of the sitters on the right and left. ”