5 
A Tribute to Alice "Eastwood, 
something of a blessing in her mind. “Since then,” said the old 
lady, “I have never seemed to miss people when they are gone.” 
When Alice was fourteen the scene of her life shifted com¬ 
pletely. Her father sent for her to join him and resume family 
life in Denver, Colorado. He had acquired a new store. While 
living quarters were being constructed, the oldest daughter 
worked as nursegirl for a Frenchman named Jacob Scherrer, to 
help pay for the new home. She was responsible for a two-year- 
old and a tiny baby, but had the run of a comprehensive multilin¬ 
gual library when they were asleep. Her starved mind absorbed 
language as desert sand the rain. She read voraciously and indis¬ 
criminately—all through Miss Muhlbach’s historical romances, 
Dumas, dime novels, heavy classics, and scientific treatises. 
During that summer she made her first discovery of treasure 
in the Colorado mountains. On a camping trip with the Scherrer 
family, she came upon mountain meadows covered in rich pro¬ 
fusion with summer-blooming flowers. The experience partook 
of revelation. 
Descended from the mountains, Alice kept house for her fam¬ 
ily in comfortable quarters behind the store, and attended public 
school. A perspicacious teacher and fine musician named Anna 
Palmer introduced her to the delights of choral singing, directed 
her reading and, in one year, helped her to catch up with her own 
age and enter high school. With avidity the young girl stored up 
treasures of the mind and never seemed aware of the fact that her 
clothes were shabby and her hands reddened by unending chores 
at home and in the store. As she said in later years, “I always felt 
superior to such things.” 
