|WHEN I visit Greeley I am asked over and over again as to the practical
workings of woman suffrage in Wyoming, and when I go back to Wyoming I
am asked how prohibition works practically in Greeley, Col. By telling
varied and pleasing lies about both I manage to have a good deal of fun,
and also keep the two elements on the anxious seat.
There are two sides to both questions, and some day when I get time
and have convalesced a little more, I am going to write a large book
relating to these two matters. At present I just want to say a word
about the colony which bears the name of the Tribune philosopher, and
nestles so lovingly at the chilly feet of the Rocky mountains. As I
write, Greeley is apparently an oasis in the desert. It looks like
a fertile island dropped down from heaven in a boundless stretch of
buffalo grass, sage hens and cunning little prairie dogs. And yet you
could not come here as a stranger, and within the colonial barbed wire
fence, procure a bite of cold rum if you were President of the United
States, with a rattlesnake bite as large as an Easter egg concealed
about your person. You can, however, become acquainted, if you are of a
social nature and keep your eyes open.
I do not say this because I have been thirsty these few past weeks and
just dropped on the game, as Aristotle would say, but just to prove that
men are like boys, and when you tell them they can't have any particular
thing, that is the thing they are apt to desire with a feverish yearn.
That is why the thirstful man in Maine drinks from the gas fixture; why
the Kansas drinkist gets his out of a rain-water barrel, and why other
miracles too numerous to mention are performed.
Whisky is more bulky and annoying to carry about in the coat-tail
pocket than a plug of tobacco, but there have been cases where it was
successfully done. I was shown yesterday a little corner that would hold
six or eight bushels. It was in the wash-room of a hotel, and was about
half full. So were the men who came there, for before night the entire
place was filled with empty whisky bottles of every size, shape and
smell. The little fat bottle with the odor of gin and livery stable was
there, and the large flat bottle that you get at Evans, four miles away,
generally filled with something that tastes like tincture of capsicum,
spirits of ammonia and lingering death, is also represented in this
great congress of cosmopolitan bottles sucked dry and the cork gnawed
half up.
When I came to Greeley, I was still following the course of treatment
prescribed by my Laramie City physician, and with the rest, I was
required to force down three adult doses of brandy per day. He used
to taste the prescription at times to see if it had been properly
compounded. Shortly after my arrival here I ran out of this remedy
and asked a friend to go and get the bottle refilled. He was a man not
familiar with Greeley in its moisture-producing capacity, and he was
unable to procure the vile demon in the town for love or wealth. The
druggist even did not keep it, and although he met crowds of men with
tears in their eyes and breath like a veteran bung-starter, he had to
go to Evans for the required opiate. This I use externally, now, on the
vagrant dog who comes to me to be fondled and who goes away with his
hair off. Central Colorado is full of partially bald dogs who have wiped
their wet, cold noses on me, not wisely but too well.