14 PREFACE 



and the scenery back of it so beautiful. And 

 the roar of the water faUing over the JNlill 

 Dam gave it a thrill never to be forgotten 

 by me. For years it held me in that trance. 

 It inspired me to draw pictures, and day after 

 day, month after month I used to draw its 

 people on the smooth surface of the pine 

 boxes that brought dry goods to the town, 

 and, strangety, many of them I mounted on 

 fiery Arabian steeds, and the strangest part of 

 Silverton is that it never releases me a day 

 from its hold. A day never passes that I don't 

 hurry over its streets and see its last remaining 

 pioneers, and in my vision replace those that 

 have gone. I yet hear the roar of Silver 

 Creek as it pours like a sheet of silver over the 

 Mill Dam below the "old red shop"; then 

 again I see it each day as the years go by as I 

 first remember seeing it the evening I lost the 

 copper toe from the new boot. I have thought 

 of it while seated in the ruins of the Coloseum 

 at Rome, thought of it in London and Paris 

 and Constantinople, thought of it while rest- 

 ing in the death-like silence of the shadow of 

 the Sphinx, and told of it near the Eujihrates 

 River in Arabia, while among the wild tribes 



