THE COLORADO PIONEERS
"_Around the man who seeks a noble end
Not angels, but divinities attend._"
"_In the deep heart of man a poet dwells
Who all the day of life his summer story tells;
Scatters on every eye dust of his spells,
Scent, form, and color: to the flowers and shells
Wins the believing child with wondrous tales;
Touches a cheek with colors of romance,
And crowds a history into a glance;
Gives beauty to the lake and fountain,
Spies over-sea the fires of the mountain;
When thrushes ope their throat, 'tis he that sings,
And he that paints the oriole's fiery wings.
The little Shakespeare in the maiden's heart
Makes Romeo of a plough-boy on his cart;
Opens the eye to Virtue's starlike meed
And gives persuasion to a gentle deed._"
EMERSON
Not even the starry splendor of Colorado skies or the untold magic
of the atmosphere vibrating with unwritten music, pictorial with
such scenes as no artist ever put on canvas; not even the scientific
achievements in feats of civil and electrical engineering; not even any
advancement of the arts and the development of industries, commerce, or
economics that bring the general life into increasing harmony with the
physical environment,--none of these things, important and significant
as they are, touch the profoundest interest of Colorado. For this
supreme interest is that of the noble men and women whose lives have
left to the state the legacy of their hopes, their efforts, their
earnestness, and their faith. "Much is made of the Pilgrim Fathers who
landed on Plymouth Rock," editorially remarked the "Denver Republican"
in an article on "Pioneers' Day," in June of 1906; "and if there had
been phonographs in those days to preserve the record of the speech of
one of those old fugitives from European persecution, with what delight
the men and women of this generation would listen to the tones which
come from the instrument! But, after all, were the Pilgrim Fathers,
canonized by nearly three hundred years of tradition, any braver, any
more venturesome, any more worthy of honor, than the pioneers who
fought Indians and struggled against adverse fortune of every kind
while they laid in fear and hope the foundations of this great state?"
Among the poems of Walt Whitman is one entitled "The Beginners," which
interprets a high quality of life. The lines are as follows:
"How they are provided for upon the earth (appearing at intervals):
How dear and dreadful they are to the earth:
How they inure to themselves as much as to any--what a paradox appears
this age:
How people respond to them, yet know them not:
How there is something relentless in their fate, all times:
How all things mischoose the object of their adulation and reward,
And how the same inexorable price must still be paid for the same great
purchase."
The price was paid by the pioneers of Colorado. They poured out
lavishly all their hope, their indomitable energy, their patience,
which was faith, as well. They planted, knowing that not to themselves
would come the harvest. They builded that those yet to come might
have shelter. They gave to Colorado such an endowment of potent
but invisible force that its momentum pervades the air to-day. The
accelerated ratio of power with which spiritual forces proceed defies
even the ablest of the statisticians.
In all the chapters of American history there are none more thrilling
than the story of the early life in Colorado; there are no chapters
that more vividly demonstrate the absolutely present and practical aid
of the divine guidance of God acting through His messengers,--those who
have lived on earth and have gone on into the life more abundant.
The lives of the remarkable men and women who have been canonized by
the church have left the world the better for their being and humanity
the richer for the inheritance of their experience. Their history is
not to be held merely as tradition or as superstition. Let one visit
in Italy Assisi, the home of St. Francis; Siena, the home of St.
Catherine, and follow the footsteps of others whose names enrich the
church calendar, to their homes and haunts, and their record becomes
vivid and vitalized as, to a stranger visiting Boston, might become
the footsteps of her noble and consecrated lives which are yet almost
within universal personal remembrance: the lives of Lydia Maria Child,
William Lloyd Garrison, Emerson, Whittier, Lucy Stone, Lowell, Mary A.
Livermore, James Freeman Clarke, and Phillips Brooks,--men and women
whom Boston may well hold as her prophets and her saints. They, too,
were of the order of "The Beginners." They sowed the seeds of the
higher life. They were receptive to all high counsels from the ethereal
world, from the divine realms; they listened to great truths which the
multitude did not hear, and they gave it anew by voice and by pen, till
all the world might hear and read and receive it. They were, indeed,--
"God's prophets of the Beautiful."
Such persons were living a twofold life during their entire earthly
pilgrimage, and we may well recall their lives and link them with those
of the great and the holy men and women of all ages and all climes.
The pathfinders of human progress do not live for personal ease,--
"The hero is not fed on sweets."
These are royal natures, who come into the world not to enjoy ease and
prosperity, but who bring with them the high destiny of sacrifice.
Their lives are companioned with struggle and conflict. Of such
experiences as theirs well might be asked the question so impressively
conveyed in these noble lines by America's great woman poet,--our poet
who sang the song of the nation's "Battle-Hymn,"--Julia Ward Howe:
"What hast thou for thy scattered seed,
O Sower of the plain?
Where are the many gathered sheaves
Thy hope should bring again?"
"The only record of my work
Lies in the buried grain."
"O Conqueror of a thousand fields!
In dinted armor dight,
What growths of purple amaranth
Shall crown thy brow of might?"
"Only the blossom of my life
Flung widely in the fight."
"What is the harvest of thy saints,
O God! who dost abide?
Where grow the garlands of thy chiefs
In blood and sorrow dyed?
What have thy servants for their pains?"
"This only--to have tried."
These Shining Ones are on earth to serve as co-workers with the divine
power; to serve through good fortune or ill fortune; through evil
report or good report,--still to serve; still to follow The Gleam.
These are the men who
"... make the world within their reach
Somewhat the better for their being
And gladder for their human speech."
The names of many of these heroic pioneers of Colorado may be unwritten
save in the pages of the Recording Angel; but they live and are
immortal in the influence they have left as a heritage to succeeding
generations, in the trains of thought and purposes they initiated,
and in all that potent power of generous aims and noble ideals,--for
all advancing civilization rests on lofty ideals. "While the basis of
civilization must be material," says the Rev. Dr. Charles Gordon Ames
of Boston, "its life must be spiritual. Its end and object must be the
soul, and not the body; and it will provide all best things for the
body, that the soul may be worthily housed and served. The higher and
chief interests of society will always be intellectual, affectional,
aspirational--human and humane. The true, the beautiful, and the
good--almost unknown to the barbarian, and often mocked at by the
Philistines of modern society--will be sought for as men seek for gold
and pearls of great price. Wealth will bring its offering to the altars
of education and art and worship. Science, as it searches the worlds of
matter and of mind, will find new and sacred parables and gospels of
grace. Learning will be a priestess of truth. The imagination of man
will wander and wander in the wide creation, free, fearless, and glad,
knowing that the Father's house is everywhere, and that his child may
be everywhere at home."
In many of the pioneer households of Colorado, whether those of
plenty or of privation, the children had the inestimable advantage of
the refined and beautiful atmosphere of a home in which high ideals
and lofty devotion to intellectual progress and spiritual culture
prevailed. If schools were insufficient, there were the trained
educational methods of both the father and the mother under which they
were reared and taught; and poverty of purse cannot greatly matter
where there is no poverty of the spirit.
Well may these pioneers of Colorado be held as belonging to that order
of humanity which the poet calls "The Beginners." Some of them were
unlettered and untaught save in the great school of life itself; some
of them were rich in learning and culture; but they all shared in
common a devotion to progress differing only in degree or conception:
they shared common sacrifices; they gave their best energies to the
development of a great and beautiful state whose increasing rate of
progress is to them an immortal monument. These leaders of humanity
whom the poet so finely characterizes as "The Beginners" are an order
of people always appearing on earth. They are of those who hear the
Song in the air and behold the Star in the sky. They are the persons
who discern--and follow--The Gleam. Their lives are rich in service
and sacrifice. Their kingdom is not of this world. Their lives are not
unfrequently cheerless and cold, but on their altar fires glows the
living coal sent down from heaven. They fast that others may feast.
They accept privations that others may revel in possessions. They pay
the inexorable price for the same great purchase. They are those who
are sent on earth peculiarly set apart to co-operate with God in the
larger fulfilment of the divine laws. They pay the inexorable price of
toil and labor and sorrow and sacrifice. They rise into the everlasting
triumph and the beauty and the joy of spirituality of life. They give
all for this; they find all in it. But let no one resign his hopes or
his dreams. Let no one doubt, for an instant, that all of goodness and
beauty and sweetness and joy that he longs for is on its way toward
him. It is only a question of time. Let him be patient, which is not a
mere passive and negative condition, but one full of intense activities
and serene poise; let him be patient and believing, and make room in
his life for that immortal joy which no man taketh from him.
The town of Greeley, with its felicitous location midway between the
two state capitals, Denver and Cheyenne, fifty miles from each, and
which is already the principal town of Northern Colorado as Pueblo is
of the southern part of the state, has a romantic and thrilling story
connected with its founding. In the history of Colorado, among the
many men whose lives stand out in noble pre-eminence, was that of the
founder of Greeley, Hon. Nathan Cook Meeker, whose personal life is
inseparably associated with the interesting town which owes to him its
origin.
The Meekers trace their ancestry to men who went to England from
Antwerp about 1500. In 1639 Robert and William Meeker came to this
country and settled in New Haven. Thirty years later William Meeker
removed to New Jersey, and the town of Elizabeth was founded by him
and named for his wife. He was a leader in the affairs of the day,
held prominent office, and in 1690 he died, leaving the old Meeker
homestead in Newark, New Jersey, which is still in the possession of
his descendants. One of his sons was Joseph Meeker, also prominent
in promoting the conditions of progress, and he was the grandfather
of Nathan Cook Meeker, the founder of Greeley, who inherited the
qualities that have made the family a marked one in America. When he
was but seventeen he carried on an extensive correspondence with Henry
Clay, John Tyler, George D. Prentice, and other noted men of the day,
discussing with them subjects of importance, and he was a contributor
even in these early years to the "Louisville Journal," then edited
by George D. Prentice, and now the "Courier-Journal," edited by the
brilliant Colonel Henry Watterson; to the New Orleans "Picayune," and
other leading papers. Even in his early youth Mr. Meeker seems to have
been a man of perpetual aspiration and honorable ambition carried out
to achievement, and by means of his own energy and persistence he
graduated in 1840 from Oberlin College, became a teacher, and later
(for literary work was his dominant gift) became a regular contributor
to the "New York Mirror," edited by N. P. Willis, the poet, and the
most brilliant man of letters of his day. Mr. Meeker wrote both prose
and poetry,--essays, romance, and verse alike flowing from his facile
pen. He is the author of three books, one of which he dedicated to
President Pierce, and which is in the Boston Public Library among the
choice and rare works not allowed for general circulation but kept
intact for the special use of scholars and researchers. He became one
of the leading writers of the day on sociology, advancing many ideas
which are to-day maintained by thoughtful students of the questions
involved in this subject.
Founding towns seemed to "run in the family," and even as his
great-grandfather founded the town of Elizabeth, New Jersey, so Nathan
Cook Meeker felt the impulse to stamp his own strong and progressive
individuality on new communities. He became the secretary and librarian
(in 1844) of the Ohio Trumbull Phalanx, a colony founded to realize in
practical form the theories of Fourier, and somewhat similar to the
famous Brook Farm experiment. Mr. Meeker also co-operated in founding
the Western Reserve Institute, of which, many years afterward, Hon.
James A. Garfield became president.
About this time he married Arvilla Delight, a daughter of Levi Smith of
Connecticut and a descendant of Elder Brewster; a woman whose singular
force, exaltation, and beauty of character may be traced through a
notable New England ancestry. The family soon removed to the Western
Reserve in Ohio. Mrs. Meeker had been known in her sweet girlhood as
the beauty of the town. She was a woman of exceptional refinement
and culture; for many years a teacher, and, more than all, of a
spirituality of character that added to her life its dignity and grace.
The spell of destiny, the burden always laid upon "The Beginners,"
seemed to be on Nathan Cook and Arvilla Delight Meeker; for no history
of the work of the husband could be written that did not include that
of the wife. Like Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne, their lives were
conjoined in that perfect mutual response of spiritual sympathy which
alone makes the mystic marriage a divine sacrament.
Horace Greeley became interested in Mr. Meeker's work and invited him
to a place on the editorial staff of "The Tribune," a position which he
filled with conspicuous ability for several years; but in common with
all idealists, Mr. Meeker was haunted and beset by his visions of a
more Utopian future for humanity. A Colorado journal, recently giving
some reminiscences of the life of its great citizen, said:
"In the fall of 1869 Mr. Meeker made a trip to the West for the
'Tribune,' writing interesting letters by the way. On his return
to New York he was full of the idea of establishing a colony in
Colorado. He mentioned his ambition to John Russell Young, who
talked it over with Mr. Greeley, and that great man, at the first
opportunity, said to the returned correspondent: 'I understand you
wish to lead a colony to Colorado.' When Mr. Meeker answered 'Yes,'
Greeley added, 'I think it would be a great success. Go ahead; "The
Tribune" will stand by you.'
"With such encouragement Mr. Meeker spent the following day in
writing the article announcing his purpose and outlining the plan
which was afterwards adopted as the constitution of the colony.
Mr. Greeley suggested a few minor changes, after which the article
was printed and kept in type for a week, in order, as its author
said, 'that there might be due reflection and no haste.' It was
published in the 'Tribune' of December 14, 1869, with an editorial
indorsement of the plan and its originator. Nine days later the
colony was organized, and yet in that short time more than a
thousand letters had been received in answer to the article. On
the 15th of the next April the certificate of organization of 'The
Union Colony of Greeley' was filed for record."
In less extended detail some outline of the life of the founder of
Greeley, the "Garden City" of Colorado, has already been narrated by
the writer in a previous book;[1] but no adequate reference can be
made to the state in which Mr. Meeker's life and work remains as so
remarkable a contribution and so fundamental a factor, which does not
present in full the story of his relation to its development; and the
matter is thus presented even at the risk of some minor repetitions.
In the spring of 1870 Mr. Meeker led his colony to Colorado. The
colonists wished to give the town the name of its founder, but he
himself insisted that it should bear the name of Greeley, after the
great editor of the "Tribune," of whose staff he was still a member.
Into all the sacrifice and the hardships of this pioneer life Mrs.
Meeker, a woman gently born and bred, entered with the utmost heroism.
From the very inception the undertaking was a signal success. But Mr.
Meeker conceived of still another extension of his activities in the
problem then so prominently before the country,--the civilization of
the Indians. He was appointed agent of the northern Utes, in possession
of the great park region of the Rocky Mountains, on White River. To
it he went in the same spirit in which General Armstrong entered on
his work at Hampton. He had matured certain theories regarding the
proper treatment of the Indians, in bringing them within the pale of
the civilized arts,--theories so wise, so just, so humane, that they
might be studied with advantage. These theories he put to the test. His
youngest daughter, a beautiful and gifted girl, opened a free school
for teaching the Indians. His wife united with him in every kindly and
gracious act by which he strove to win the confidence of the race.
This kindness and gentleness was unmeasured. The family lived a life
of constant sacrifice and effort for the education and training of
the Utes. But the Indian nature is one that wreaks its revenge,--not
necessarily on the aggressor, but on the first comer. Other agents had
been lax, and a number of causes of discontent to which allusion cannot
here be made fanned the smouldering fire. Their chief complaints were
that they were required to work, and to abandon a bit of pasturage,
only a few acres, for the new agency grounds and gardens. Events drew
on like the fates in a Greek tragedy, and on the morning of September
29, 1879, Mr. Meeker was cruelly massacred.
The little town of Meeker marks the site of the Meeker massacre. Here
is a little village of a thousand inhabitants, located on White River,
among the most beautiful of the mountain ranges,--the location being
very much like that of Florence, in Italy,--which is the centre of a
very rich agricultural and grazing region. Meeker is now forty-five
miles from a railroad, the nearest station being Rifle, on the Denver
and Rio Grande, a few miles from Glenwood Springs; but the Moffet road
brings to it railroad connection with Denver. There is an extensive
stage line of over one hundred miles, starting from Rifle and going
on through Meeker up into the mountains, where the hunting attracts a
great number of travellers, and especially many Englishmen. It is in
this region that President Roosevelt's happy hunting-grounds lie, and
he is a familiar and favorite figure in Meeker.
There is a little gray-stone Episcopal church among other churches that
adorn this town, which has laid out a handsome park and which has the
perpetual adornment of the beautiful river that flows through it. The
mountains about supply streams that make irrigation easy, and the great
fields of wheat, potatoes, and alfalfa are fertile and prosperous.
Irrigation makes it everywhere possible to control the climatic
conditions.
Meeker is the county seat of Rio Blanco County, in which uranium has
been discovered in two different places; and two oil wells, each at a
cost of four thousand dollars, a creamery, costing nearly six thousand
dollars, and water-works at a cost of sixty thousand dollars, have been
established within the past two years. Fifteen reservoirs and eighty
miles of irrigation ditches were constructed in 1905, and in that year
was harvested, in this county, a quarter of a million bushels of wheat,
oats, and rye.
The basis on which Greeley was founded is thus outlined in the official
documents drawn up by Nathan Cook Meeker:
"I propose to unite with proper persons in the establishment of a
Union colony in Colorado territory. A location which I have seen
is well watered with streams and springs; there are beautiful
pine groves, the soil is rich, the climate healthful, grass will
keep stock the year round, coal and stone are plentiful, and a
well-travelled road runs through the property."
Mr. Meeker proceeded to note the cost of the land,--eighteen dollars
for every one hundred and sixty acres,--and he especially called
attention--for he had the poet's eye--to the grandeur of the Rocky
Mountain scenery, and he added:
"The persons with whom I would be willing to associate must be
temperance men and ambitious to establish good society, and among
as many as fifty, ten should have as much as ten thousand dollars
each, or twenty should have five thousand dollars each, while
others may have from two hundred dollars to one thousand dollars
and upward. For many to go so far without means could only result
in disaster."
The practical wisdom of this clause will be appreciated. The true
idealist is the most practical and wisest of counsellors. It is only
false idealism that leads to destruction. Mr. Meeker's idea was to
make the settlement a village, with ample building lots, and then to
apportion to each family from forty to one hundred and sixty acres
outside for agriculture.
On such a basis as this the Union Colony of Greeley was founded. A
constitution was adopted that is a model of the condensation of the
duties of good citizenship. Industry, temperance, education, and
religion were the pillars on which the superstructure was raised. It
is little wonder that the social quality of Greeley to-day--thirty-six
years after its inauguration as a community--is of the highest type and
exceptional among all the cities of the United States.
Irrigation was the first necessity. A canal thirty miles long was dug,
costing sixty thousand dollars. The Cache la Poudre was first examined
and then tapped to furnish water. The elevation of the surrounding high
bluffs secured the needed descent for the flow of water. The life began.
Greeley is now a town of some seven thousand inhabitants; the seat of
the State Normal College, which its president, Dr. Z. X. Snyder, has
made one of the great educational institutions, not only of Colorado,
but of the United States; a college that draws students from almost
every section, even from New England, so able is President Snyder's
course of instruction and so admirable are the opportunities it
affords for subsequent connection with the fine public school system
in Colorado. A position in any of these offers a higher salary than
can be obtained in the East, to say nothing of many other advantages
associated with the work. Dr. Snyder was one of the eminent educators
of the East; and when some sixteen years since he accepted his present
responsible office, he brought to it the best traditions of Eastern
culture and united them with the zeal and freedom and infinite
energy of the West. The Normal campus of forty acres on high ground,
overlooking the town, with President Snyder's residence in the grounds
and other college buildings near, comprise a beautiful feature of
Greeley. The western view, both from the college and from the home of
President and Mrs. Snyder, over the mountain range including Long's
Peak, is one of almost incomparable beauty. The faculty of the State
Normal comprises thirty specialists; there is a library of thirty
thousand volumes; the laboratory has the latest scientific equipment
of the day; the art department and the music course are admirably
conducted; French, German, and Italian are taught according to the
latest language methods; and athletics, domestic science, nature
studies, all receive due recognition. The "Training School" of the
State Normal College has an attendance of nearly five hundred, and the
graduates of this institution begin work on salaries ranging from five
hundred to twenty-five hundred dollars annually. The tuition is free to
all citizens of Colorado.
The many churches, the excellent public schools, the clubs and
societies for social enjoyment and improvement, indicate the high
quality of life in Greeley. There are three newspapers; and of these
the "Greeley Tribune," founded by Mr. Meeker and now under the able
editorship of Mr. C. H. Wolfe, has created for itself more than a
local reputation. Financially, Greeley stands well, with its several
banks and its solidity of resources.
There is hardly a shabby house to be found in all the town, whether of
residence or business. Every building has a neat and thrifty aspect,
and the art of architecture has been especially studied, for almost
without exception every house, whether large or small, is tasteful and
attractive. A bay window is thrown out here, a little balcony there,
a piazza, a loggia, an oriel window, and the eye is gratified. But,
besides this dainty and tasteful architecture, the one great feature
of Greeley is her beautiful streets. These are due directly to the
taste and the direction of the founder, Mr. Meeker. The streets are one
hundred feet wide, lined invariably--every street in the town--with a
double row of shade trees, giving coolness, beauty, and contributing
much to the modification of the temperature. Every deed granted in
Greeley forbids the sale of any intoxicating liquor. There is not a
saloon in the place. There is not a loafer or a criminal, nor are there
any poor in the unfortunate sense of the large cities. No police are
needed. The jail is locally known as a mere ornamental appendage to the
fine forty thousand dollar courthouse.
For many years it has been felt that some expression should be made in
honor of the memory of the founder of Greeley, and this has now taken
form in the project for the "Meeker Memorial Library," which is in
preparation. The beautiful young city is itself, however, the best
memorial of its noble founder. It is a living monument of perpetually
increasing greatness and beauty; and who to-day can wander under the
shade of the beautiful trees which in a double row line every street
and boulevard--trees planted in 1870 under Mr. Meeker's personal
superintendence--without hearing amid the rustle of their whispering
leaves the poet's words, that fall like a benediction:
"Be of good cheer, brave spirit; steadfastly
Serve that low whisper thou hast served; for know,
God hath a select family of sons
Now scattered wide thro' earth, and each alone,
Who are thy spiritual kindred, and each one
By constant service to that inward law,
Is weaving the sublime proportions
Of a true monarch's soul. Beauty and strength,
The riches of a spotless memory,
The eloquence of truth, the wisdom got
By searching of a clear and loving eye
That seeth as God seeth. These are their gifts,
And Time, who keeps God's word, brings on the day
To seal the marriage of these minds with thine,
Thine everlasting lovers. Ye shall be
The salt of all the elements, world of the world."
The glamour of romance can never fade from Colorado, whose entire
history is one of heroic deeds and splendid energy; but the primitive
stage of the state is already left far behind with the nineteenth
century. In its intellectual and scientific development the years of
the twentieth century have almost exceeded its twenty-four years
of life as a state in the nineteenth. The tide of immigration still
continues, but from being the objective point of mining activities
where fortune hunters rushed to find a royal road to riches, it is
now a state of agriculture and of commerce. Social conditions are
thus altered; and though some of these conditions are those of mining
regions, as in the Cripple Creek district, they have altered from the
typical Bret Harte mining-camp life to those of orderly progress,--to
the life dominated by twentieth-century ideals of humanity; the
life whose framework is seen in public-school systems, in religious
observance, in the liberal reading of periodical and other literature,
and in the maintenance of public libraries as a necessity in every
community.
The dawn of literary and artistic development in Colorado is very
evident,--a dawn that is already of such radiant promise as to forecast
the day when this state shall contribute to our greatest national
literature. A large number of individual writers could already be named
whose work in books, magazine articles, and excellent journalism might
well be held as typical of the best culture of the entire country. The
first wild turmoil of a new and richly varied state has given way to
a prosperous, progressive commonwealth. Material progress must still
always precede the higher growth, yet the air is vital with ideas,
and the vision of Colorado is always toward the stars. The beauty
and majesty of the environment cannot but react upon the people. The
growth of women's clubs has been one steady factor of progress, with
most favorable effect on all the general life of intellectual and moral
advancement. The public libraries in every centre establish and develop
the reading habit. While a love for beauty is an element in human life,
the influence of the transcendent majesty and incomparable sublimity
of the Colorado scenery will continue to prove a source of inspiration
to the mental and moral life of the people. The changing colors of
the mountains are a constant delight. Colorado offers a perpetual
feast of beauty. Her resources are infinite. Colorado combines all
the exaltation of the untried with an abundance of the conveniences
and luxuries of the older civilization; and of this Centennial State
it is difficult to record facts and statistics that do not seem to
suggest the tales of a thousand nights. With resources and with scenic
loveliness which no language could exaggerate, it is still only to
those who themselves know and appreciate the grandeur of this state
that any interpretation of it will appear as rather within than as
at all beyond the limits of the most statistical and demonstrable
facts. The East has already outgrown the tradition that the entire
trans-Mississippi region is a howling wilderness. Colorado is no longer
as vague as is Calcutta to the average mind. Dr. Edward Everett Hale
exclaimed that he desired his sons to know that there was something in
the world besides Beacon Street, and this ambition has of late years
become too prevalent to leave even the extreme East in any absolute and
total ignorance of the wonderful West. Still it may be true that the
flying visions from Pullman-car windows are marvellously extended and
intensified by increasing familiarity with the almost incredibly swift
progress of this region.
A typical illustration of the fallibility of human judgment is seen in
the attitude taken in 1838 by the great Daniel Webster on the floor of
the United States Senate against an appropriation for a post route west
of the Missouri River.
"What do we want," said he, "of this vast worthless area,--this region
of savages and wild beasts, of deserts, shifting sands, and whirlwinds
of dust, of cactus and prairie dogs? To what use could we ever hope to
put these great deserts, or these endless mountain ranges, impregnable
and covered to their base with eternal snow? What use have we for such
a country? Mr. President, I will never vote one cent from the public
treasury to place the Pacific Coast one inch nearer Boston than it is
to-day."
It is a far cry from this "vast worthless area," as Mr. Webster termed
it in 1838, to the grand and richly promising state of to-day, with its
splendid young cities where art and science unite with literature and
ethics in the rapid development of social progress; with its mountain
ranges climbed in palace cars; its electric transit and electric
lighting; its vivid and forceful achievements, that even in each
decade concentrate the progress of a century, as seen in the past.
It is not a mere vagary, but rather a practical and momentous fact,
that Colorado is peculiarly the realm receptive to invisible potencies
and mental impressions. Science is now confronted with the question
as to whether thought and electricity may be identified as the same
force under different degrees of manifestation. "There is an elemental
essence--a strange living force--which surrounds us on every side, and
which is singularly susceptible to the influence of human thought,"
says an English scientist, and he continues: "This essence responds
with the most wonderful delicacy to the faintest action of our minds
or desires; and this being so, it is interesting to note how it is
affected when the human mind formulates a definite thought or desire."
All the significance of a thousand years may be concentrated in an
instant's thought, as all the heat stored up in all the forests of the
world is concentrated in a small quantity of radium. Emerson embodies
this truth in the stanza:
"His instant thought a poet spoke,
And filled the age his fame;
An inch of ground the lightning strook
But lit the sky with flame."
It is intensity, not duration, that is of consequence, and that
determines results. To state that there is something in the Colorado
air that incites active and lofty thought; that uplifts the soul and
enables one to discern the practical processes for identifying the
most marvellous scenic grandeur of the civilized world with the most
advanced processes of applied industries, is to state a simple fact.
Phillips Brooks once said:
"I know no ideal humanity that is not filled and pervaded with
the superhuman. God in man is not unnatural, but the absolutely
natural. That is what the incarnation makes us know.... The truths
of heaven and the truths of earth are in perfect sympathy.... The
needs of human nature are supreme, and have a right to the divinest
help."
The early explorers and pioneers in Colorado felt this truth, so
finely stated by Bishop Brooks, even if they did not formulate it in
words. The apparently insuperable obstacles of a land where the desert
disputed the space with the Titanic mountain ranges piled against the
sky, incited them to effort rather than paralyzed their energy. It
is fitting that this most ideal state, rich in resources of almost
undreamed-of variety and importance, should present a significant
object lesson in the working out of the problem involved in the higher
civilization of the twentieth century. The future of Denver, of Pueblo,
Colorado Springs, Greeley, and other important centres, is a most
important part of the future of the nations. The Star of high destiny
shines on the Centennial State.