A COLORADO SKETCH 29 



pleasant dinner at an excellent restaurant, not 

 inaptly styled the "Delmonico" of the West. 

 During dinner one of those sudden and violent 

 storms peculiar to that region came on. When we 

 sat down the stars were shining clear and hard 

 with the brilliancy that is so beautiful in those 

 high altitudes on a cold dry mid-winter night, and 

 not a breath of wind disturbed the stillness of the 

 air ; but, before we had half satisfied the appetites 

 engendered by the keen frosty atmosphere, the 

 stars were all shrouded in cloud, the gale was 

 howling through the streets, and snow was whirl- 

 ing in the air, piHng up in drifts wherever it found 

 a lodgment, and sifting in fine powder through 

 every chink and cranny in the door. It did not 

 last long. Before morning the sky was clear, 

 cloudless, steely, star-bespangled as before, and 

 when we left by an early train for Longmont 

 Station the sun was shining undimmed upon 

 fields of freshly-fallen snow. 



By way of enlivening the journey we were 

 treated by thoughtful nature to a magnificent 

 spectacle — a beautiful exhibition of that pheno- 

 menon known, I believe, as a parhelion. The sun 

 was only a few degrees above the horizon. The 

 sky was very clear and intensely blue overhead, 



