The Chalice Of Courage: A Romance of Colorado

								


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                             THE CHALICE OF COURAGE



                             A Romance of Colorado



                             BY CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY
Author of "The Island of Regeneration," "The Better Man," "Hearts and
the Highway," "As the Sparks Fly Upward," etc., etc.

    With Illustrations By

    HARRISON FISHER and J. N. MARCHAND



    NEW YORK

    DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY

    1912



    COPYRIGHT, 1911

    BY W. G. CHAPMAN



    COPYRIGHT, 1912

    BY DODD, MEAD & COMPANY



    Published, February, 1912

              To My Beloved Friend

             JOHN B . WALKER, JR.



    Great-hearted, Great-souled, High-spirited

    Man of Colorado.

PREFACE

Prefaces, like much study, are a weariness to the flesh; to some people,
not to me. I can conceive of no literary proposition more attractive
than the opportunity to write unlimited prefaces. Let me write the
preface and I care not who writes the book. Unfortunately for my
desires, I can only be prefatory in the case of my own. Happily my own
are sufficiently numerous to afford me some scope in the indulgence of
this passion for forewords.
I suppose no one ever sat down to write a preface until after he had
written the book. It is like the final pat that the fond parent gives to
the child before it is allowed to depart in its best clothes. I have
seen the said parent accompany the child quite a distance on the way,
keeping up a continual process of adjustment of raiment which it was
evidently loath to discontinue.
And that is my case exactly. Here is the novel with which I have done my
best, which I have written and rewritten after long and earnest thought,
and yet I cannot let it go forth without some final, shall I say caress?
And as it is, I really have nothing of importance to say! The final
pats and pulls and tugs and smoothings do not materially add to the
child's appearance or increase its fascination, and I am at a loss to
find a reason for the preface except it be the converse of the statement
about the famous and much disliked Dr. Fell!
Perhaps, if I admit to you that I have been in the ca�on, that I have
followed the course of the brook, that I have seen that lake, that I
have tramped those trails, it will serve to make you understand, dear
reader, how real and actual it all is to me. Yes, I have even looked
over the precipice down which the woman fell. I have talked with old
Kirkby; Robert Maitland is an intimate friend of mine; I have even met
his brother in Philadelphia and as for that glorious girl Enid--well,
being a married man, I will refrain from any personal appraisement of
her qualities. But I can with propriety dilate upon Newbold, and even
Armstrong, bad as he was, has some place in my regard.