The Pioneer's Fountain, which is intended to commemorate the early settlers, could hardly be less suitable. It is large and exceedingly ornate. Surmounting the top of it is a rococo cowboy upon a pony of the same extraction. The pony is not a cow-pony, and the cowboy is not a cowboy, but a theatrical figure: something which might have been modeled by a Frenchman whose acquaintance with this country had been limited to the reading of bad translations of Fenimore Cooper and Bret Harte. At the base of the fountain are figures which, I was informed, represent pioneers. If western pioneers had been like these, there never would have been a West. They are soft creatures, almost voluptuous, who would have wept in face of hostile Indians. The whole fountain seems like something intended for a mantel ornament in Dresden china, but which, through some confusion, had gotten itself enlarged and cast in bronze. Society in Denver has several odd features. For one thing, it is the habit of fashionables, and those who wish to gaze upon them, to attend the theaters on certain nights, which are known as "society night." Thus, the Broadway Theater has "society night" on Mondays, the Denham on Wednesdays, and the Orpheum on Fridays. "Society," of course, means different things to different persons. In Denver the word, used in its most restricted, most elegant, most _recherché_, and most exclusive sense, means that group of persons who are celebrated in the society columns of the Denver newspapers, as "The Sacred Thirty-six." If it is possible for newspapers anywhere to outdo in idiocy those of New York in the handling of "society news," I should say that the Denver newspapers accomplished it. Having less to work with, they have to make more noise in proportion. Thus the arrival in Denver, at about the time I was there, of Lord and Lady Decies caused an amount of agitation the like of which I have never witnessed anywhere. The Denver papers were absolutely plastered over with the pictures and doings and sayings of this English gentleman and his American wife, and the matter published with regard to them revealed a delight in their presence which was childlike and engaging. I have a copy of one Denver paper, containing an interview with Lord and Lady Decies, in which the reporter mentions having been greeted "like I was a regular caller," adding: "The more I looked the grander everything got." The same reporter referred to Decies as "the Lord," which must have struck him as more flattering than when, later, he was mentioned as "His Nibs." The interviewer, however, finally approved the visitors, stating definitely that "they are Regular Folks and they don't four-flush about anything." When it comes to publicity there is one man in Denver who gets more of it than all the "Sacred Thirty-six" put together, adepts though they seem to be.