In trains there is a most conspicuous neglect of smokers. I found, for instance, on my journey from New York to Chicago, that the only place I could smoke in was the end compartment of the fourth car from my own. That is to say, let it be as stormy and dark as it may, you have to pass from other car to the other half the length of the train, and when you do get to "the smoking compartment" you find it is only intended to hold five passengers. I confess I am surprised that these palace cars, otherwise so agreeable, should be such hovel cars for smokers. Nor, by the way, seeing that the company specially notifies that the passage from one car to the other is "dangerous" while the train is in motion, do I think it fair that smokers should be encouraged, and indeed compelled, to run bodily risks in order to arrive at their tobacco. Some day no doubt there will be Pullman smoking cars, and when there are--I will find something else to grumble at.
Imagine then my astonishment when arriving at the Windsor Hotel at Denver, I was shown into a bona-fide smoking-room, with cosy chairs, well carpeted, with a writing table properly furnished, all the newspapers of the day, and a roaring fire in an open fireplace! Here at last was civilization. Here was a room where a man might sit with self-respect, and enjoy his pipe over a newspaper, smoke while he wrote a letter, foregather over tobacco with a friend in a quiet corner! No noise of loquacious strangers, no mob of outsiders to make the room as common as the street, no fusillade of expectoration, no stove to desiccate you--above all, no coloured "gentleman" to come in and say, "Smoke nut 'lard here, sar!" I was delighted. But my curiosity, at such an aberration into intelligence, led me to confide in the manager.
"How is it," I asked, "you have got what no other hotel in America that I have stayed in has got--a comfortable smoking-room after the English style?"
"Guess," said he, "because an English company built this hotel!"
And I went upstairs, at peace with myself and all English companies.
The first view of Denver is very prepossessing, and further acquaintance begets better liking. Indeed on going into the streets of "the Queen City of the Plains" I was astonished. The buildings are of brick or stone, its roads are good and level, and well planted with shade-trees, its suburbs are orderly rows of pretty villas, adorned with lawn, and shrubs, and flowers. Though one of the very youngest towns of the West, it has already an air of solidity and permanence which is very striking, while on such a day as I saw it, it is also one of the very cleanest and airiest. And the snow-capped hills are in sight all round.