The Personality of American CitiesHungerford, Edward
History
The Personality of American Cities
Hungerford, Edward
Cities and towns -- United States; United States -- Description and travel; United States -- Social life and customs -- 1865-1918
Exiles these. They had left their nice, comfortable home there in the
snug, New York state city to make the long dreary trek to Denver. They
were clever girls, and it seemed certain that they might find work in
some nice office in the big and growing Colorado city. They were fairly
competent stenographers, and it seemed to them that they might live in
peace and comfort in the new home. It was a change from their big
Syracuse house to a narrow hallroom in a Denver boarding house. Then
upon that came the fruitless search for a "nice place." Hundreds of
other girl stenographers, driven on the long trip West, were pressing
against them. The two Syracusans held their heads high--for a time. Then
they were glad to get the menial places as waitresses.
The man who checks trunks at one of the biggest transfer companies
confessed that he was an exile, too.
"Came out here a dozen years ago with a busted lung," he admitted with a
quizzical smile. "Guess I'll stay for a while longer. But I want to go
back to Baltimore. Before I am done with it I am going back to
Baltimore. I'm going to walk down Charles street once again and breathe
the fragrance of the flowers in the gardens, if it kills me."
A girl in a boarding house leaned up against the wall of the broad and
shady piazza and said she liked Denver "really, truly, immensely."
"Do you honestly?"
"Honestly," she drawled gravely. "God knows, I've got to. I'm a lunger,
although they don't know it here. I've only got one lung, but it's a
good lung," she ended with a little hysterical laugh.
Another exile. The American Siberia, in truth, save that this Siberia is
a near Paradise--a kingdom for exiles where the grass is as green as it
is back in the old East, where the trees cast welcome shade and the
strange new flowers blossom out smiles of hope. But a Siberia none the
less. The big sanitariums all about the city tell that. The keeper of
the Denver Morgue will tell it, too. The suicide rate in Denver runs
high. Desperate folk go out to Colorado to shut the door in the face of
death--and go too late. They are far from home, alone, friendless,
penniless in despair--the figures of the statisticians cannot lie.
The East has this as a debt to pay Denver, and generally she pays it
royally. Denver does not forget the times when the Atlantic seaboard has
come to her assistance--despite the troubles of David H. Moffat in
raising capital for his railroad. Once in a business council there while
the East was getting some rather hard knocks for its "fool
conservatism"--perhaps it had been refusing to buy the bonds of the
mountain-climbing railroad--a big Denver banker got the floor. He was a
man who could demand attention--and receive it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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