Show I j WESTERN MOUNTAIN LIFE A Charm Once Experienced Never to be Forgotten I The Philadelphia Times published in a recent number a description of what several I sev-eral young Philadelphians are doing in the cattle business in Mesa county Colorado Col-orado These young men are Hituated 01 Plateau Creek which flows along the northern slope of the Grand Mesa and which is surrounded by one of the loveliest I love-liest mountain valleys in Colorado Mr I Henry C Townsend of Philadelphia the father of one of the young men referred Ito I I-to in speaking of what his son and his I companions have done said that they exhibited great selfdenial in separating themselves from home and friends to lead an adventurous life on the Western frontier but he added And yet i I were younger and not so wedded to creature crea-ture comforts I would go out with the boys and try Western ranch life for a change The feeling which prompted the Philadelphian delphian to make this last remark is the same which leads many men to seek not for a change but for a permanent abiding place a home in the mountains of the West That there is indeed a pleasure in the pathless woods they know full well who have become used to this life Why it is or whence it comes we will not attempt to say but surely there is a strange fascination about the careless independent in-dependent mountain life which woos one with a power often as seductive as the songs of old To one who enters upon such a life there is at first an attraction which is born of the novelty of the conditions which surround him Soon this wear I off and it is succeeded by a sense f loneliness lone-liness which is hard to bear Here is the crucial test They who at this point fail and return to the habits and the conveniences conve-niences of city life may never regret their j departure from the mountains On the contrary they will probably rejoice as though they had escaped from some dire calamity But over him who remains long enough to forget the loneliness there I comes by slow degrees a strange influence which makes him love his mountain life until its charm grows wellnigh irresistible I irresist-ible ibleHe who has once been caught by the I witchery of this sj > ell will probably never become entirely free from it He may I return to the East and give himself up to I the work of an arduous profession he may marry and see growing around him a family of promising little ones but there will come to him ever and anon the memory of the life left behind him in his distant mountain home Listening he will catch again the noise of the failing ing waters singing their song of regret as they go from their home in the snow to where they will be buried and forgotten in the sea Again there falls upon his ear the sound of that wierd mournful sobbing to which one who has heard it can never refuse to listen I is the sobbing sob-bing and the sighing of the wind through the forests of pine To such an one there must surely come seasons of vain regret in which he will see visions of the life that is gone and the hope which is dead Better for him would it have been never to have come to the mountains Jeer to have tasted of the joys of the West than having done so to have returned to the dull and weary burdenbearing of the East To him heaven is a country of mountains and of babbling brooks and it is i the land of I the hereafter that he hopes to breathe i again the pure air and drink anew of the i lifegiving waters I |