hills ahead of you rise sharply across your way. Where is the city? At your very feet, but you do not suspect it.

The sunset light was fading when we reached the edge of the ravine in which the city lies. It was like looking unawares over the edge of a precipice; the gulch opened beneath us as suddenly as if the earth had that moment parted and made it. With brakes set firm, we drove cautiously down the steep road; the ravine twinkled with lights, and almost seemed to flutter with white tents and wagon tops. At the farther end it widened, opening out on an inlet of the San Luis Park; and, in its center, near this widening mouth, lay the twelve-days-old city. A strange din arose from it.

"What is going on?" we exclaimed. "The building of the city," was the reply.

"Twelve days ago there was not

a house here. To-day there are one hundred and five, and in a week more there will be two hundred; each man is building his own home, and working day and night to get it done ahead of his neighbor. There are four sawmills going constantly, but they can't turn out lumber half fast enough. Everybody has to be content with a board at a time. If it were not for that, there would have been twice as many houses done as there are."

We drove on down the ravine. A little creek on our right was half hid in willow thickets. Hundreds of white tents gleamed among them: tents with poles; tents made by spreading sailcloth over the tops of bushes; round tents; square tents; big tents; little tents; and for every tent a camp fire; hundreds of white-topped wagons, also, at rest for the night, their great poles propped up by sticks, and their mules and drivers lying and standing in picturesque groups around them.

It was a scene not to be forgotten. Louder and louder sounded the chorus of the hammers as we drew near the center of the "city;" more and more the bustle thickened; great ox teams swaying unwieldily about, drawing logs and

planks, backing up steep places; all sorts of vehicles driving at reckless speed up and down; men carrying doors; men walking along inside of window sashes, the easiest way to carry them; men shoveling; men wheeling wheelbarrows; not a man standing still; not a man with empty hands; every man picking up something, and running to put it down somewhere else, as in a play; and, all the while, "Clink! clink! clink!" ringing above the other sounds, the strokes of hundreds of hammers, like the "Anvil Chorus."

"Where is Perry's Hotel?" we asked. One of the least busy of the throng spared time to point to it with his thumb, as he passed us. In some bewilderment we drew up in front of a large unfinished house, through the many uncased apertures of which we could see only scaffoldings, rough boards, carpenters' benches, and heaps of shavings. Streams of men were passing in and out through these openings, which might be either doors or windows; no steps led to any of them.

"Oh, yes! oh, yes! can accommodate you all!" was the landlord's reply to our hesitating inquiries. He stood in the doorway of his dining-room; the streams of men we had seen going in and out were the fed and the unfed guests of the house. It was supper time; we also were hungry. We peered into the dining room: three tables full of men; a huge pile of beds on the floor, covered with hats and coats; a singular wall, made entirely of doors propped upright; a triangular space walled off by sailcloth, — this is what we saw. We stood outside, waiting among the scaffolding and benches. A black man was lighting the candles in a candelabrum made of two narrow bars of wood nailed across each other at right angles, and perforated with holes. The candles sputtered, and the hot fat fell on the shavings below.

"Dangerous way of lighting a room full of shavings," some one said. The landlord looked up at the swinging

candelabra and laughed. "Tried it pretty often," he said. "Never burned a house down yet."

I observed one peculiarity in the speech at Garland. City. Personal pronouns, as a rule, were omitted; there was no time for a superfluous word.

"Took down this house at Wagon Creek," he continued, "just one week ago; took it down one morning while the people were eating breakfast; took it down over their heads; putting it up again over their heads now."

This was literally true. The last part of it we ourselves were seeing while he spoke, and a friend at our elbow had seen the Wagon Creek crisis.

"Waiting for that round table for you," said the landlord; "'ll bring the chairs out here's fast's they quit 'em. That's the only way to get the table."

So, watching his chances, as fast as a seat was vacated, he sprang into the room, seized the chair and brought it out to us; and we sat there in our "reserved seats," biding the time when there should be room enough vacant at the table for us to take our places.

What an indescribable scene it was! The strange-looking wall of propped doors which we had seen, was the impromptu wall separating the bedrooms from the diningroom. Bedrooms? Yes, five of them; that is, five bedsteads in a row, with just space enough between them to hang up a sheet, and with just room enough between them and the propped doors for a moderate-sized person to stand upright if he faced either the doors or the bed. Chairs? Oh, no! What do you want of a chair in a bedroom

which has a bed in it? Washstands? One tin basin out in the unfinished room. Towels? Uncertain.

The little triangular space walled off by the sailcloth was a sixth bedroom, quite private and exclusive; and the big pile of beds on the dining-room floor was to be made up into seven bedrooms more between the tables, after everybody had finished supper.

Luckily for us we found a friend here,

a man who has been from the beginning one of Colorado's chief pioneers; and who is never, even in the wildest wilderness, without resources of comfort.

"You can't sleep here," he said. "I can do better for you than this."

66 Better!"

He offered us luxury. How movable a thing is one's standard of comfort! A two-roomed pine shanty, board walls, board floors, board ceilings, board partitions not reaching to the roof, looked to us that night like a palace. To have been entertained at Windsor Castle would not have made us half so grateful.

It was late before the "city" grew quiet; and, long after most of the lights were out, and most of the sounds had ceased, I heard one solitary hammer in the distance, clink, clink, clink. I fell asleep listening to it.

CII. IMPORTANCE OF THE UNION.

MR. PRESIDENT: I am conscious of having detained you and the Senate much too long. I was drawn into the debate with no previous deliberation, such as is suited to the discussion of so grave and important a subject. But it is a subject of which my heart is full, and I have not been willing to suppress the utterance of its spontaneous sentiments. I can not, even now, persuade myself to relinquish it, without expressing once more my deep conviction, that, since it respects nothing less than the union of the states, it is of most vital and essential importance to the public happiness.

I profess, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the preservation of our federal Union. It is

to that Union we owe our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that Union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. That Union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues, in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign influences, these great interests immediately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings; and, although our territory has stretched out wider and wider, and our population spread farther and farther, they have not outrun its protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain of national, social, and personal happiness.

I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the Union, to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty, when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below; nor could I regard him as a safe counselor in the affairs of this government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not how the Union should be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it shall be broken up and destroyed.

While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that, I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise. God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind. When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on