_The Tabors lived opulently and showily right up to the moment of the Silver Panic in 1893 when their fortune came tumbling down. In the same year, 1895, that Augusta died a wealthy woman in California, they were bankrupt. Tabor became a day laborer and Baby Doe did the hardest sort of manual work. Finally Tabor was appointed postmaster of Denver. The Tabors and their two little girls moved into two rooms at the Windsor and here they lived until Tabor’s death in 1899. His dying words to Baby Doe were, “Hang on to the Matchless. It will make millions again.” But the people of Denver, attending performances in the Tabor Theatre, looked at the curtain and quoted Kingsley’s sad couplet:_ “So fleet the works of men, back to the earth again, Ancient and holy things fade like a dream.”] [Illustration: THE MATCHLESS MINE BECAME BABY DOE’S HOME _For nearly thirty-six years after Tabor’s death, Baby Doe followed her husband’s injunction. Between leases, and sometimes during leases, she lived in a small tool cabin beside the shaft and the hoist house. At the time of the author’s visit, in 1927, the mine looked as above. This shot is taken looking west, in the direction of Leadville, and a spur of Fryer Hill is blocking a view of the continental divide. Baby Doe furnished the cabin (at the left) with plain furniture and subsisted on cheap edibles. But the cabin was always extremely neat and her coal and wood in tidy piles. Below is one of the last pictures taken of her, October 6, 1933, and shows her characteristic clothing. In winter, she wrapped her feet in burlap._] [Illustration: Baby Doe at the Matchless Mine.] [Illustration: FORTUNE HUNTERS _After Baby Doe’s body was found frozen, March 7, 1935, vandals entered her cabin, ransacked her belongings, ripping up the mattress and overturning everything, while they tried to find a fortune they imagined she had hidden. But all the effects, that had been preserved from her glorious days, were with the nuns or in Denver warehouses. Baby Doe, herself, was neat and tidy._] [Illustration: JACOB SANDS’ HOUSE IN ASPEN _Baby Doe’s friend bought a cottage at Hunter and Hopkins in 1889 and later he rented this house on Main Street. Both his residences still stand and are the delight of the tourists. In 1898, he and his wife and their children moved to Leadville, then Arizona, and are now lost to history._] [Illustration: THE ETERNAL SNOWS VIEWED FROM FRYER HILL _When Baby Doe walked to town by the road that led into Leadville’s Eighth Street, this was the view that faced her across the Arkansas Valley. The mountains are miles away but seem close in the rarified atmosphere. They are Elbert (Colorado’s highest) to the left and Massive to the right. Below is the Matchless Mine after its partial restoration in 1953._]