leaves have the gloss of varnish--there is no dust
there,--and everything is cleanly, cheerful and reposeful. From the
hotel veranda float the strains of harp and viol; at intervals during
the day and night music helps us to lift up our hearts; there is nothing
like it--except more of it. There is not overmuch dressing among the
women, nor the beastly spirit of loudness among the men; the domestic
atmosphere is undisturbed. A newspaper printed on a hand-press, and
distributed by the winds for aught I know, has its office in the main
lane of the village; its society column creates no scandal. A solitary
bicycle that flashes like a shooting star across the placid foreground
is our nearest approach to an event worth mentioning.

Loungers lounge at the springs as if they really enjoyed it. An amiable
booth-boy displays his well-dressed and handsomely mounted foxskins, his
pressed flowers of Colorado, his queer mineralogical jewelry, and his
uncouth geological specimens in the shape of hideous bric-a-brac, as if
he took pleasure in thus entertaining the public; while everybody has
the cosiest and most sociable time over the counter, and buys only by
accident at last.

There are rock gorges in Manitou, through which the Indian tribes were
wont noiselessly to defile when on the war-path in the brave days of
old; gorges where currents of hot air breathe in your face like the
breath of some fierce animal. There are brilliant and noisy cataracts
and cascades that silver the rocks with spray; and a huge winding cavern
filled with mice and filth and the blackness of darkness, and out of
which one emerges looking like a tramp and feeling like--well! There are
springs bubbling and steeping and stagnating by the wayside; springs
containing carbonates of soda, lithia, lime, magnesia, and iron;
sulphates of potassa and soda, chloride of sodium and silica, in various
solutions. Some of these are sweeter than honey in the honeycomb; some
of them smell to heaven--what more can the pampered palate of man
desire?

Let all those who thirst for chalybeate waters bear in mind that the Ute
Iron Spring of Manitou is 800 feet higher than St. Catarina, the highest
iron spring in Europe, and nearly 1000 feet higher than St. Moritz; and
that the bracing air at an elevation of 6400 feet has probably as much
to do with the recovery of the invalid as has the judicious quaffing of
medicinal waters. Of pure iron springs, the famous Schwalbach contains