o
the room, seized the chair and brought it out to us; and we sat there in
our "reserved seats," biding the time when there should be room enough
vacant at the table for us to take our places.

What an indescribable scene it was! The strange-looking wall of propped
doors which we had seen, was the impromptu, wall separating the bedrooms
from the dining-room. Bedrooms? Yes, five of them; that is, five
bedsteads in a row, with just space enough between them to hang up a
sheet, and with just room enough between them and the propped doors for a
moderate-sized person to stand upright if he faced either the doors or the
bed. Chairs? Oh, no! What do you want of a chair in a bedroom which has a
bed in it? Washstands? One tin basin out in the unfinished room. Towels?
Uncertain.

The little triangular space walled off by the sailcloth was a sixth
bedroom, quite private and exclusive; and the big pile of beds on the
dining-room floor was to be made up into seven bedrooms more between the
tables, after everybody had finished supper.

Luckily for us we found a friend here,--a man who has been from the
beginning one of Colorado's chief pioneers; and who is never, even in the
wildest wilderness, without resources of comfort.

"You can't sleep here," he said. "I can do better for you than this."

"Better!"

He offered us luxury. How movable a thing is one's standard of comfort! A
two-roomed pine shanty, board walls, board floors, board ceilings, board
partitions not reaching to the roof, looked to us that night like a
palace. To have been entertained at Windsor Castle would not have made us
half so grateful.

It was late before the "city" grew quiet; and, long after most of the
lights were out, and most of the sounds had ceased, I heard one solitary
hammer in the distance, clink, clink, clink. I fell asleep listening to
it.

CII. IMPORTANCE OF THE UNION. (362)

Mr. President: I am conscious of having detained you and the Senate much
too long. I was drawn into the debate with no previous deliberation, such
as is suited to the discussion of so grave and important a subject. But it
is a subject of which my heart is full, and I have not been willing to
suppress the utterance of its spontaneous sentiments. I can not, even now,
persuade myself to relinquish it, without expressing once more my deep
conviction, that, since it respects nothing less than the union of the
states, it is of most vital and essential importance to the