hands, where it remained till it was partly washed away in 1863.  The following little matter of history connected with its palmy days will be best given in the narrator’s own words:  “We had a blacksmith who misused his wife.  The citizens took him down to the bridge, tied a rope around his body and threw him into the river.  They kept up their lick until they nearly drowned the poor cuss, then whispered to him to be good to his wife or his time would be short.  He took the hint, used his wife well, and everything was lovely.  That was the first cold-water cure in Pueblo, and I ain’t sure but the last.”  This incident serves to illustrate the inherent character of American gallantry, for, however wild or in most respects uncivilized men may appear to become under the influence of frontier life, instances are rare in which women are not treated with all the honor and respect due them.  Indeed, I have sometimes thought that the general sentiment concerning woman is more refined and reverential among the bronzed pioneers at the outposts than under the influence of a higher civilization.

The Arkansas, ever changing its winding course after the manner of prairie-rivers, has long since shifted its bed some distance to the south, leaving only a portion of the old bridge to span what in high water becomes an arm of the river, but which ordinarily serves to convey the water from a neighboring mill.  We lean upon its guard-rail while fancy is busy with the past.  We picture the prairie-schooners winding around the mesas and through the gap:  soon they have come to the grove by the river-bank; the horses are picketed and the camp-fire is blazing; brown children play in the sand while their parents lie stretched out in the shadow of the wagons.  They left civilization on the banks of the Missouri more than a month ago, and their eyes are still turned toward those grand old mountain-ranges in the west over which the declining sun is now pouring its transfiguring sheen.  The brightness dazzles the eyes, and the Mexican who rides by on a scarce manageable broncho with nose high in air might be old Juan Chiquito bent upon some murderous errand.  But no:  the rider has stopped the animal, and is soliciting the peaceful offices of a blacksmith, whose curious little shop, bearing the suggestive name of “Ute,” is seen near the bridge.  Here bronchos, mules and burros are fitted with massive shoes by this frontier Vulcan and sent rejoicing upon their winding and rocky ways.  Our sleepy gaze follows along Santa Fe Avenue, and the eye sees little that is suggestive of a modern Western town.  But soon comes noisily along a one-horse street-car, which asserts its just claims to popular notice in consequence of its composing a full half of a system scarce a fortnight old by filling the air with direful screeches as each curve is laboriously described.  And later, when the magnificent overland train, twenty-six hours from Kansas City, steams proudly up to the station, fancy can no longer be indulged.  The old has become new.  The great Plains have been bridged, and the outposts of but a decade ago become the suburbs of to-day.