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Show CHAPTER LII. "ADOPTING A WESTERN BOY." The La Veta Hotel, though completed, was not yet open for visitors. However, we had no reason to regret it, as we were made quite comfortable at the Tabor, where the polite and obliging clerk, Mr. J., brought the pioneers from the highways and byways to talk with me. There were no old people in the country. The oldest gentlemen I met were Col, Smith and Prof. S. Richardson, and they speak of themselves as boys. Said Mr. Rough, " I was one of the million who toiled in the mines and did not strike it rich. Among the fellows who gathered around the camp fire and spun yarns was Dick Irwin. He was at once jovial, bright and witty, of large and varied experience, though his violet eyes did not speak of adventure, and his smoothly shaven face and small, graceful stature gave him the appearance of adolescent youth. " Once upon a time he went to Philadelphia on a visit with Mr. Joe Watson, and while there was invited to a large and rather fashionable party. " Out of courtesy to his host, rather than inclination, he went, but it had been many years since he attended a gathering of that kind, and he felt like a fish out of water. He took a seat in a retired corner and was enjoying the gay scene in his peculiar way, when the two beautiful daughters of the host timidly approached him and asked why he didn't dance. " Pie told them that his early education in that direction 254 |