"Why is it so especially civilized?"
"It just is, y'know," he answered. "There's polo there."
"But polo doesn't make civilization," I said.
"Oh, yes, it does," he insisted. "I mean to say wherever you find polo you find good clubs and good society and—usually—good tea."
This, and further rumors of a like nature, plus some pleasant letters of introduction, caused my companion and me to remove ourselves, one afternoon, from Denver to the vaunted seat of civilization, some miles to the south.
Colorado Springs is somewhat higher than Denver and seems to nestle closer to the mountains. The moment you alight from the train and see the park, facing the station and the pleasant façade of the Antlers Hotel, beyond, you feel the peculiar charm of the little city. It is well laid-out, with very wide streets, very good public buildings and office buildings, and really remarkable homes.
The homes of Colorado Springs really explain the place. They are of every variety of architecture, and are inhabited by a corresponding variety of people. You will see half-timbered English houses, built by Englishmen and Scots; Southern colonial houses built by people from the South Atlantic States; New England colonial houses built by families who have migrated from the regions of Boston and New York; one-story houses built by people from Hawaii, and a large assortment of other houses ranging from Queen Anne to Cape Cod cottages, and from Italian villas to Spanish palaces. There is even the Grand Trianon at Broadmoor, and an amazing Tudor castle at Glen Eyre.
The society is as cosmopolitan as the architecture. It has been drawn with perfect impartiality from the well-to-do class in all parts of the country and has been assembled in this charming garden town with, for the most part, a common reason—to fight against tuberculosis. This does not mean, of course, that the majority of people in Colorado Springs are victims of tuberculosis, but only that, in many instances, families have moved there because of the affliction of one member.
I say "affliction." Literally, I suppose the word is justified. But perhaps the most striking thing about society in Colorado Springs is its apparent freedom from affliction. One goes to the most delightful dinner parties, there, in the most delightful houses, and meets the most delightful people. Every one seems very gay. Every one looks well. Yet one knows that there are certain persons present who are out there for their health. The question is, which? It is impossible to tell.
In the case of one couple I met, I decided that the wife who was slender and rather pale, had been the cause of migration from the East. But before I left, the stocky, ruddy husband told me, in the most cheerful manner that he had arrived there twenty years before with "six months to live." That is the way it is out there. There is no feeling of depression. There is no air of, "Shh! Don't speak of it!" Tuberculosis is taken quite as a matter of course, and is spoken of, upon occasion, with a lightness and freedom which is likely to surprise the visitor. They even give it what one man designated as a "pet name," calling it "T. B."