Mabel Barbee Lee, "Cripple Creek Days"

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Mabel_Barbee_Lee, "Cripple Creek Days" (1958)

 

책 겉표지 뒤쪽에서:

 

Mabel barbee Lee has written a rousing tale of early days in Cripple Creek, Colorado. She speaks with authority because she arrived there as a child in 1862, and with wide-eyed wonder saw the whole place turn to gold.

 

With his divining rod, Mabel's father tapped gold ore on Beacon Hill but missed becoming a millionaire by selling his claim short. Nonetheless, life was rich for young Mabel in a becoming town ... with characters around like the promoter Windy Joe and (seen from a distance) the madam Pearl De Vere; with something always going on, whether a celebration or a disatrous fire or train wreck or a no-nonsense miner's strike.

 

"More entertaining by far than the run of fictional westerns, more authentic, of course, and a great deal more moving." --- W. M. Teller, Saturday Review

 

 

본문에서:

 

     Meanwhile, the ever-rising stream of gold threathened to engulf him[W. S. Stratton] and in order to keep ahead of it, he gave away thousands of dollars to churches of all denominations, the Salvation Army, Colorado College, the Colorado School of Mines and many individuals. Although he owned the municipal railway system he bought bicycles for all the laundry girls in the city so that they wouldn't have to walk to work or pay car fare. He gave $15,000 to his old Leadville friend Haw Tabor. who has lost his own fortune and was trying to make a comeback on his old Matchless Mine.... A talented lad named Louis Persinger happened to make his way into Stratton's parlor one evening and played such beautiful violin music for him that he decided to send this young prodigy to Germany for study under some of Europe's finest teachers.

     His bounty wa often impulsive and eccentric, and as surprising as it was welcome. He might send a load of coal at Christmas to a man whom he scarcely knew, or make out checks for $50,000 for each of his mine foremen. But it was the city of Colorado Springs that really blossomed under his philanthrophy.... (p. 193)

 

     When the will was opened, the rumble of disappointment and indignation shook the foundations of homes and institutions all over Colorado. A half million went to his relatives ... and a few friends and servants. The remaining $6,000,000 was to be used to the establishment and maintenance of a home for the poor children and old people of El Paso County, as a memotial to his father, Myron Stratton. In explanation, the will stated,

 

          It is my special desire and command that the inmates of said home shall not be clothed and fed as paupers usually are at public expense, but that they shall be decently and comfortably clothed and amply provided with wholesome food and necessary medical attendances, care and nursing to protect their health and insure their comfort.

          Those will qualify for admission who are by reason of youth, age, sickness or other infirmity unable to earn a livelihood, and who are not, by reason of insanity or gross indecency, unfit to associate with worthy persons of the condition in life above named.

(p. 197)

 

     "Not one of 'em ever expected a word of thanks," Griff Lewis said, putting his hand on my arm. "They wanted to make your father's dream come true. What they did was for John's girl."

     The four o'clock whistles had blown when I left the Lewis Pharmacy and the sidewalk was crowed with miners just off dayshift.... It seemed to me, as I hurried down Bennett Avenue, that I had come home, at last, to my father's world and had found warmth and human kindness beyond measure or understanding. (p. 232)