A Flight in Spring: In the car Lucania from New York to the Pacific coast and back, during April and May, 1898Knowles, J. Harris (John Harris)
History
A Flight in Spring: In the car Lucania from New York to the Pacific coast and back, during April and May, 1898
Knowles, J. Harris (John Harris)
Railroad travel -- United States; United States -- Description and travel
In the morning we could see how Denver looked by daylight. The little
city is a beauty that need not fear the day. One gets such an agreeable
impression of Denver from the very first. The great Union Station is
attractive, and when one leaves it for home or hotel, one is greeted by
a garden of living green, and by trees and shrubs in flourishing
verdure. These gardens which greet one on emerging from the station,
are like the beautiful initial letters one sees on old manuscripts, all
glittering in gold and colors, inviting one to peruse and value the
precious pages.
We had two lovely days in Denver, and our party scattered about at
will. Some went to call on old friends, and cemented anew the ties
which might rust, but could never break. Some went shopping, while
others lounged in delicious idleness, without helm or oar, just
drifting.
To visit Denver and not see Dean Hart at the Cathedral would be an
irreparable loss. We called upon him, and found him, as he always is,
genial, animated, and brimful of good humor and hospitality. Busy as he
also always is, he yet found time to call at the "Lucania," and to tell
more than one of his good stories.
Some of our party attended a missionary meeting of ladies, held in the
Cathedral, and brought from thence impressions of earnest workers, of
bright, telling speeches, and of much hospitable good cheer.
The Cathedral at Denver is a Romanesque structure, of quite stately
proportions, with an effective interior; some very good stained glass;
a choir screen of wrought iron, interesting in workmanship; and the
whole place has a comfortable sumptuousness quite attractive. It is the
intention to face the outside, some time or other, with native
sandstone, and the interior also with some suitable material of more
ornamental character.
I have a memory of a service held in that Cathedral, which in sad
solemnity I have never seen surpassed.
It was the funeral of a gentleman who lost his life in the wild waters
of the Grand Canon of the Colorado. He was with a railroad surveying
party; the boat he was in was upset, and the waters were so violent,
that his body was instantly sucked down in the boiling depths, and
never more was found.
His dear wife was in London, when the news reached her. At once she
returned to Denver, and hoped that once more she would lay eyes on her
beloved dead. But all in vain. No human hand could reach the depths,
where all that was mortal of her love, was forever hidden.
In this sad condition of circumstances, it was determined to hold the
funeral services, as if the body were present, to his wife and friends,
as it was to God, Whose All-Seeing Eye beholds all depths.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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