12/22/03

Romance enters my life. My marriage in New York. Idylls among the Colorado Rockies. The burning of the Miner.

On the Miner’s exchange list, the most interesting newspaper to me was the New York Herald. It was loaded with want ads, not only the Sunday edition, but also every day of the week. The personal columns were a never-failing source of interest to me, and every day I would pore over the wants and troubles of the “agony column” to the exclusion of every story of war, pestilence, tragedy, pathos, or bathos.

Time had slipped quickly by, and I was going on thirty-six and still “heart and fancy free.” The girls of Silverton of marriageable age were few, and the one I knew best and sometimes escorted to dances always showed alarm when I started to get serious. I had a good home but no one to share it with, with as little prospect of finding a suitable companion as Robison Crusoe on his desert Island. It was therefore not surprising that one day, in casting my eye over the day’s personals in the latest copy of the New York Herald, I was suddenly transfixed by the following: “Two ladies, unattached, afflicted with a sense of ennui, would correspond with a Western gentleman. X Y Z, Washington Star.”

I cut out the advertisement and spent half the night in framing a letter that would attract those ladies and relieve them of their ennui, a letter which would stand apart from the hundreds of answers they would receive. As a matter of fact, they did receive hundreds of letters, and no longer did they complain of that tired feeling. They had entered the advertisement in the paper as a lark and source of amusement. Each day they would meet at their rendezvous with their bundle of letters, and would laugh at the merits and demerits of the various love-lorn wights who had the temerity to put their heartthrobs on paper.

Across the continent, in the little mountain town, after many days of anxious waiting, watching for the arrival of the mail, and hoping that there would be a letter for me, I was greatly elated to receive a reply stating that of all the letters received, mine was the most attractive! A correspondence ensued, and one of the ladies proved to be Mrs. Olivia Star, the widow of a general, a woman of wealth and owner of one of the palatial residences of Massachusetts Avenue, Washington, D.C. The other was Mrs. Ida M. Stone, not so wealthy, but a brilliant writer and possessing a delightful disposition. Through an absorbing correspondence I learned that she was the daughter of a professor of the Glens Falls Academy. She had a sister Mrs. Hathaway (Hatcher), the widow of a Congressman from Missouri, and both were members of the Congressional Club. I had no great difficulty in persuading Mrs. Stone that her lark could easily be turned into a matter of lifetime importance, and soon I very happily laid plans for a trip East to meet her.

It was November when I telegraphed Mrs. Stone of my coming, and arranged to meet her in New York. The train was late arriving in Jersey City, and the cab that I chartered seemed to take hours in reaching Forty-second and Broadway, where the two sisters were awaiting my coming at the St. Cloud Hotel. We met in the parlors of the hotel, and after mutual greetings and my embarrassment had worn off, we ordered dinner in their apartment. Over the various courses, we discussed the situation, and by the time the evening was over we were so entranced with each other that we decided to be married the following evening, November 23, 1891.

The wedding took place in the apartment of the bride in the St. Cloud Hotel in the presence of Mrs. Hathaway (Hatcher) and the wife of the minister. My bride was arrayed in a beautiful dress of pearl gray silk, and about her throat was a necklet of precious stones with a pendant of a gold cross. Her hair, a golden chestnut, curled gloriously about her sweet face, and she carried a corsage of roses which I had provided.

We left for Washington the next afternoon to spend a brief honeymoon at the Shoreham Hotel, after which we took the train for Colorado to make our home. Our arrival at Silverton was the occasion for a boisterous greeting from a large crowd that had gathered at the station and around our dwelling. The same night we were treated to a real old Charivari from the younger element, with all the embellishments of rice, old shoes, noisy wash boilers, caroling (?) and attempted kidnapping. The occasion of course ended in a happy party, for which I had expectantly provided in the way of refreshments.

The change from the comforts of a large city to a mining camp lying under a blanket of six feet of snow must have a been a heavy strain on my wife, she stayed with it and did not complain. Her sweet disposition was ever a joy to me. When spring came and the trails were open, with a saddle horse that was a beauty to look at, a single-footer with a gait that was a constant delight, Ida had the happiest time of her life. In my search for mining news she would accompany me to the highest mines, would follow me through the stopes, climb the upraises, and join me in the bucket that lowered me in the winzes.

We had a summer home in one of the picturesque spots that abound in the San Jun, about seven miles north of Silverton. The house was built of peeled logs, with a shingle roof and windows all around that afforded a view of the surrounding peaks. It was perched on a bit of a table land a hundred feet above the highway, with tall spruce timber all about, while a never-failing stream of mountain water, clear as crystal and sparkling as the nectar of the gods, rushed by on its way to join the waters of Cement Creek. We had brought some of her furniture and rugs from Washington, where Ida owned a house on Third Street, and with some things from the Silverton home, we were as snug as the proverbial bug.

May is the month that the snow pictures ornament the peaks above timberline. From our windows we had front seats at one of the greatest shows on earth. Before us was a scene of sublime interest, and so vast that the human eye could not encompass it. For miles across the rocky slopes, crevices, jutting spurs, and cave-like openings begin to show their lines, and points above the melting snow, leaving figures of grotesque shapers, and forming pictures that change from day to day with the influence of the warm spring sun.

Two saddle horses carried us to town when we needed supplies, and on the arrival of my wife’s sister from Washington for a visit, I added a fat burro to our livestock, which led contented lives on the rich mountain grass that covered the hillsides. In fact at times they were too contented, as I found to my chagrin when I wanted to catch them for a trip to Silverton.

We made frequent excursions to nearby places of interest, and often parties of young people from town would join us and we would ride to Gladstone, a mining village three miles above our cottage, to watch the stamps dropping in the Gold King mill and the gold washing in long strings along the concentrating tables. From Gladstone the waters of the south fork of Cement Creek joined the main stream, and we would follow the trail to the lake that forms the headwaters of the branch. There, with the mountains rising almost perpendicularly on three sides of us, with the blue water of the lake filling what appears to be the neck of an ancient crater, we would spread our lunch and loll around to count the threads of mineral that rise from the solid rock not unlike the threads of a spider’s web, through which the great Ariadne lode, as it courses through the mountain, rises above the surface like a section of the Chinese wall.

On one of these trips we visited the Ariadne Mine, my wife and I on the saddle horses and her sister on the burro. “It wasn’t so high up,” she said. We climbed the long, steep, zig-zag trail through the heavy forest to timberline, and then the trail emerged into a wide expanse of the Ariadne Basin. The snow had yet disappeared from the flat, but its surface was frozen and the animals went over it without difficulty. The peaks above us were bare on the sunny side, and the columbines were already in full bloom on the bare spots of the flats. The day was an ideal one, and the few fleecy clouds floating above through the deep sapphire blue of the brilliant Colorado sky served to make the scene still more beautiful. Across the floor of the basin, the mine houses were far up on the mountain’s slope, which is steep and smooth except for the zig-zag trails leading from each of the mine openings. As we gazed up this awe inspiring slope, my sister-in-law thought she would stay below and pick flowers, leaving my wife and me to make the climb alone.

Back and forth on the switch-backs our horses climbed the steep trail, as we watched the small figure of our sister below us growing tiny in the distance, stooping here and there to pick her Alpine flowers. We reached and passed the two lower tunnels, but between us and the top level the trail led around a jutting rock with space barely wide enough for a horse to pass. On the outer side the slope was too steep for a foothold, and I had once seen a mule slip off at that point – it did not stop sliding for a thousand feet. My wife however, was a fearless horsewoman, and I allowed her to take the lead. As she approached the rock, which was less than a hundred feet from the upper tunnel, her horse shied, but she urged him on until they reached the point of the curve around the rock, where he rose on his hind legs and pawed the air as he turned outward. In an instant I was off my horse, and leaping below the trail I caught the weight of the animal as he was coming down. Ida, agile as a panther, slipped off the saddle on the upper side, and I swung the horse back on the trail. We lead the horses the rest of the way to the mine, but are spirits were too depressed to enter the tunnel.

We were late returning home that day. Mrs. Hathaway (Hatcher) had gathered her flowers but was having difficulty in making her burro behave himself. He simply would not go! I got behind him and pushed, but he pointed his ears backward and stiffened his forelegs, and there he stuck. My wife petted his nose, they both pulled his bridle, and I coaxed, but all to no purpose. Finally after an hour or so, the darn thing walked off as if nothing had happened, and we had no further trouble. That evening, after taking off the burro’s saddle, I found a sharp piece of rock in the blanket which had been chafing him had worked loosed, so the sturdy little animal was forgiven.

That night we were roused from our beds by the clatter of horse’s hoofs coming up the road, and as he neared the house the rider began shouting “Fire! Fire!” at the top of his lungs. I flung open the door and asked the visitor what was the cause for all the noise. He replied that the “Miner” office in Silverton was on fire, and that if I expected to save anything I must hurry. Throwing on my clothes as I dived out the door, I caught my sorrel mare “Nellie” and raced to town on a dead run. My building was on the corner of the main street. It was a two-story wooden structure, the upper story fitted up for living quarters and the ground floor being occupied by the printing plant. A large crowd had gathered around, but no attempt had been made to salvage any of the material. At the time of my arrival, the volunteer fire department had the blaze under control. The damage was largely confined to the upper story, and the printing office was still capable of operation.

This event marked another change in my life. I did not have the heart to rebuild in the face of the increasing depression, so I sold what was left of the building to the masons, who wanted a permanent lodge room, and put a man in charge of the a paper, giving him power of attorney to act. The slump in the price of silver had stopped shipments from the Ariadne, and I decided to close the mine until a better price could be obtained for the metals.

Whereupon, in August ’92 my wife and I packed up our belongings, bid our fiends goodbye, and boarded the narrow-gauge train (which by that time had been extended up the Animas Canyon from Durango) bound for New York City, with the intention of embarking in some small business until a revival in mining should make its appearance.