Page:A Literary Courtship (1893).pdf/171

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entertainment as we bowled along, past the flourishing collection of "sample rooms" in Colorado City. There was not much talking done. As we approached Manitou it was curious to see how the mountains seemed to gather themselves together and frown at our intrusion, a sort of dumb protest which never appears to make a deep impression on any one but the writers of descriptions in prose and verse. Manitou looked wonderfully Alpine, lying in a cleft of the hills, so narrow that the village had been obliged to find room for itself by climbing up the hillsides on either hand. The big hotels were nearly all closed, and there was a Sunday-like calm in the street, but the noisy brook went rollicking through the valley, and as we got opposite the soda spring, the beginning of a huge drove of cattle emerged from the Ute Pass with deep and various lowings and bellowings. By the time we had reached "the Perch," the streets were swarming with the great beasts, accompanied by