in the new State of Colorado that the
sick man may find, not merely an alleviation of his ailments, but the
possibility of an active life and an honest livelihood. There, no longer
as a lounger in a plaid, but as a working farmer, sweating at his work,
he may prolong and begin anew his life. Instead of the bath-chair, the
spade; instead of the regulated walk, rough journeys in the forest, and
the pure, rare air of the open mountains for the miasma of the
sick-room--these are the changes offered him, with what promise of
pleasure and of self-respect, with what a revolution in all his hopes
and terrors, none but an invalid can know. Resignation, the cowardice
that apes a kind of courage and that lives in the very air of health
resorts, is cast aside at a breath of such a prospect. The man can open
the door; he can be up and doing; he can be a kind of a man after all
and not merely an invalid.

But it is a far cry to the Rocky Mountains. We cannot all of us go
farming in Colorado; and there is yet a middle term, which combines the
medical benefits of the new system with the moral drawbacks of the old.
Again the invalid has to lie aside from life and its wholesome duties;
again he has to be an idler among idlers; but this time at a great
altitude, far among the mountains, with the snow piled before his door
and the frost flowers every morning on his window. The mere fact is
tonic to his nerves. His choice of a place of wintering has somehow to
his own eyes the air of an act of bold contract; and, since he has
wilfully sought low temperatures, he is not so apt to shudder at a touch
of chill. He came for that, he looked for it, and he throws it from him
with the thought.

A long straight reach of valley, wall-like mountains upon either hand
that rise higher and higher and shoot up new summits the higher you
climb; a few noble peaks seen even from the valley; a village of hotels;
a world of black and white--black pine-woods, clinging to the sides of
the valley, and white snow flouring it, and papering it between the
pine-woods, and covering all the mountains with a dazzling curd; add a
few score invalids marching to and fro upon the snowy road, or skating
on the ice-rinks, possibly to music, or sitting under sunshades by the
door of the hotel--and you have the larger features of a mountain
sanatorium. A certain furious river runs curving down the valley; its
pace never varies, it has not a pool for as far as you can follow it