I sent the coachman down to fetch the costumer and when he arrived, I commanded:
“Now make me clothes exactly to fit these figures. I want Nimrod with red hunting hoots and a derby hat. I want Diana in flowing chiffon and panties underneath, and I want Psyche in stiff satin.”
He surveyed me as if I were crazy.
“The maid next door says her mistress can’t stand these naked figures—they shock her,” I explained. “These clothes are for the neighbor’s benefit, not mine.”
The costumer did as he was bid and in a couple of weeks, my statues were all fitted out to the Queen’s taste—Queen Victoria’s. But underneath the banter of my attitude and the humor of my little stunt, there was a heart that was sore. My husband couldn’t rise as he should and my children were excluded from the normal place they should hold, because I and my former actions were frowned on. Any wife and mother must know how deeply worried I was behind my pertness and bravery.
Yet suddenly all this didn’t matter. Real tragedy fell on us. The year 1893 arrived and with it the silver panic. Almost overnight, we who had been the richest people in Colorado were the poorest. It seems incredible that it should have all happened so quickly, but with one stroke of President Cleveland’s pen, establishing the demonetization of silver, all of our mines, and particularly the Matchless, were worthless.
Tabor’s other holdings which had sounded so spectacular and so promising on paper, turned out, many of them, to be literally paper. He had been duped or cheated by associates and friends for years without either of us realizing it. Some of his real estate was already mortgaged, and, when the blow first fell, he mortgaged the rest. Afterward we learned what a mistake that was. We should have learned to economize immediately.
But none of the mining men believed the hard times would last. Ten Denver banks failed in three days during July and our cash went when they crashed. Gradually, with no money coming in, we could not meet payments on the mortgages. The banks wouldn’t loan us any more money and our property began to fall on the foreclosure block.
“Take my jewels and sell them, Tabor,” I volunteered.
“No, the day will come when you’ll wear them again. I’ll make another fortune. That gold mine I bought near Ward and never developed will help us out. The world wants gold now—not silver.”