Among the poems of Walt Whitman is one entitled "The Beginners," which interprets a high quality of life. The lines are as follows:
"How they are provided for upon the earth (appearing at intervals):
How dear and dreadful they are to the earth:
How they inure to themselves as much as to any—what a paradox appears this age:
How people respond to them, yet know them not:
How there is something relentless in their fate, all times:
How all things mischoose the object of their adulation and reward,
And how the same inexorable price must still be paid for the same great purchase."
The price was paid by the pioneers of Colorado. They poured out lavishly all their hope, their indomitable energy, their patience, which was faith, as well. They planted, knowing that not to themselves would come the harvest. They builded that those yet to come might have shelter. They gave to Colorado such an endowment of potent but invisible force that its momentum pervades the air to-day. The accelerated ratio of power with which spiritual forces proceed defies even the ablest of the statisticians.
In all the chapters of American history there are none more thrilling than the story of the early life in Colorado; there are no chapters that more vividly demonstrate the absolutely present and practical aid of the divine guidance of God acting through His messengers,—those who have lived on earth and have gone on into the life more abundant.