Trout Lake

Box Cañon Looking Inward

Ouray, Colorado

Box Cañon Looking Outward

Ironton Park

Bear Creek Falls

 

 "A wilderness of weird fantastic shapes."

PREFACE

"Of making many books there is no end."—Eccles. 12:12.

 

When the above words were written by Solomon, King of Israel, about three thousand years ago, they were possibly inspired by the existence even at that early period of an extensive and probably overweighted literature.

The same literary conditions are as true to-day as when the above truism emanated from that most wonderful of all human intellects. Every age and generation, as well as every changing religious or political condition, has brought with it its own peculiar and essentially differing current literature, which, as a rule, continued a brief season, and then vanished, perishing with the age and conditions which called it into being; leaving, however, an occasional volume, masterpiece, or even quotation, to become classic, and in the form of standard literature survive for generations, and in many instances for ages.

Poetry has always occupied a unique position in literature; and though from a pecuniary stand-point usually unprofitable, it enjoys the decided advantage of longevity.

The mysterious ages of antiquity have bequeathed to all succeeding time several of earth's noblest epics, while the contemporaneous prose, if any existed, has long lain buried in the inscrutable archives 

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