Derma Sutra (1891)
And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books then is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
Ecclesiastes 12:12 (King James Version)
Following the 40th Parallel of Latitude across the western frontiers, trace a straight line over any cartographer’s labors, and the buff-colored plains and cottonwood groves lead directly, inevitably, to this coal-smoke and cog-grind metropolis kneeling at the craggy feet of the Front Range of the Chippewans. And, by night, from her high garret windows overlooking the Littleton Row stockyards, this tall, pale woman watches the city, the wavering gaslights and the orange hellfire of half a hundred great Bessemer converters. Though many of the people of Cherry Creek—both the citizens and those only passing through, the white men and red Indians and negroes and coolies—have seen her, there are none here who know her name, for never has she worn a name—at least not the sort bestowed by mortal men. She was old millenia before the cacophony of this clattering, modern Industrious Age, and she suspects that she will still be watching when this age is done and consigned to history and the next age begins. She peers out through heavy velvet draperies, pressing her face to the glass and wishing, as often she wishes, for even the briefest glimpse of the stars and moon veiled by the unending smokestack exhalations of smog and steam. Whatever beliefs the city might tout on Founder’s Day and hold dear regarding purpose, commerce, and progress, she knows better, that this perpetual cloud has been erected so that humanity might at last lose sight of, and forget, its insignificance before the glittering Vault of Heaven.
Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart Page 20