Resignation, the cowardice that apes a kind
of courage and that lives in the very air of health resorts, is cast
aside at a breath of such a prospect. The man can open the door; he
can be up and doing; he can be a kind of a man after all and not
merely an invalid.
But it is a far cry to the Rocky Mountains. We cannot all of us go
farming in Colorado; and there is yet a middle term, which combines
the medical benefits of the new system with the moral drawbacks of
the old. Again the invalid has to lie aside from life and its
wholesome duties; again he has to be an idler among idlers; but this
time at a great altitude, far among the mountains, with the snow
piled before his door and the frost flowers every morning on his
window. The mere fact is tonic to his nerves. His choice of a place
of wintering has somehow to his own eyes the air of an act of bold
contract; and, since he has wilfully sought low temperatures, he is
not so apt to shudder at a touch of chill. He came for that, he
looked for it, and he throws it from him with the thought.
A long straight reach of valley, wall-like mountains upon either hand
that rise higher and higher and shoot up new summits the higher you
climb; a few noble peaks seen even from the valley; a village of
hotels; a world of black and white - black pine-woods, clinging to
the sides of the valley, and white snow flouring it, and papering it
between the pine-woods, and covering all the mountains with a
dazzling curd; add a few score invalids marching to and fro upon the
snowy road, or skating on the ice-rinks, possibly to music, or
sitting under sunshades by the door of the hotel - and you have the
larger features of a mountain sanatorium.
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