I was still cogitating over that when the train started. We scrambled aboard and, resuming our seats in the observation car, looked back at the receding station. There, in strong black letters on a white sign, we saw, for the first time, the name of the town:
CHAPTER XXX
UNDER PIKE'S PEAK
What a curious thing it is, that mental process by which a first impression of a city is summed up. A railway station, a taxicab, swift glimpses through a dirty window of streets, buildings, people, blurred together, incoherently, like moving pictures out of focus; then a quick unconscious adding of infinitesimal details and the total: "I like this city," or: "I do not like it."
It was late afternoon when the train upon which we had come from eastern Kansas stopped at the Denver station—a substantial if not distinguished structure, neither new nor very old, but of that architectural period in which it was considered that a roof was hardly more essential to a station than a tower.
Passing through the building and emerging upon the taxi stand, we found ourselves confronted by an elaborate triple gateway of bronze, somewhat reminiscent of certain city gates of Paris, at which the octroi waits with the inhospitable purpose of collecting taxes. However, Denver has no octroi, nor is the Denver gate a barrier. Indeed, it is not even a gate, having no doors, but is intended merely as a sort of formal portal to the city—a city proud of its climate, of the mountain scenery, and of its reputation for thoroughgoing hospitality. Over the large central arch of this bronze monstrosity the beribboned delegate (arriving to attend one of the many conventions always being held in Denver) may read, in large letters, the word "Welcome"; and when, later, departing, he approaches the arch from the city gate, he finds Denver giving him godspeed with the word "Mizpah."