Page:A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains (1879).djvu/206

 hotels much resorted to. It has a fine view of the mountains, specially of Pike's Peak, but the celebrated springs are at Manitou, three miles off, in really fine scenery. To me no place could be more unattractive than Colorado Springs, from its utter treelessness.

I found the s living in a small room which served for parlour, bedroom, and kitchen, and combined the comforts of all. It is inhabited also by two prairie dogs, a kitten, and a deerhound. It was truly homelike. Mrs. cooked an excellent steak, and her husband got the tea ready. They dispense with the dubious comfort and certain discomfort of a "hired girl." Mrs. walked with me to the boarding house where I slept, and we sat some time in the parlour talking with the landlady. Opposite to me there was a door wide open into a bedroom, and on a bed opposite to the door a very sick-looking young man was half lying, half sitting, fully dressed, supported by another, and a very sick-looking young man much resembling him passed in and out occasionally, or leaned on the chimney-piece in an attitude of extreme dejection. Soon the door was half closed, and some one came to it, saying rapidly, "Shields, quick, a candle!" and then there were movings about in the room. All this time the seven or eight people in the room in which I was were talking, laughing, and playing backgammon, and none laughed louder than the landlady, who was sitting where she saw that