178 Reminiscences of 



I stupidly left the material of this work to be 

 written when I should arrive in Paris, having the 

 matter in rough outline. I shall never forget the 

 difficulty I experienced in preparing this work. It 

 seemed impossible to get at it. Of course, I had 

 little time after my arrival to do it. I would wait 

 until I had my collection placed, but then I had no 

 time to spare. I was out every night. General Dix 

 was giving weekly receptions. The American resi- 

 dents were giving nightly dinners, dances, and balls. 

 Theatres and operas and official entertainments to 

 which the commissioners were invited occupied much 

 of my time, which necessitated daily visits to the 

 exposition. 



With associates similar in disposition to my own, 

 our time was given to restaurants, drives on the 

 Bois, and the races; out every night until the small 

 hours, and sometimes accompanied home by the 

 dawning light, for light comes early in Paris in the 

 summer months. 



How I struggled to complete my pamphlet of 

 a hundred pages on far-off Colorado. I never con- 

 sult that old work without smiling at the sentence 

 which I read over a dozen times or more, and was 

 unable to get beyond it. Describing Denver, pleas- 

 antly situated on Cherry Creek: "Rising evenly 

 beyond are higher hills, girt with walls of rock shoot- 

 ing up perpendicularly for hundreds of feet, seeming 

 like embattlements ready to belch forth the crashing 

 weight of iron upon the vales below. Succeeding are 

 ranges of mountains piling in upon each other until 

 they culminate in white peaks at an altitude of from 

 14,000 to 16,000 feet above tide water. These are the 



