Tommy wanted to hang up his little stockin', and did, hangin' it out like a little red signal of distress over the side of his top shelf, and we filled it with everything good we could git hold on.
Dorothy put in a little silver watch she had bought on her travels, not bigger than a warnut, and Miss Meechim put in some of the toys she had bought for children of her acquaintance. I got a good little picture book for him in Chicago, and a set of Authors, and Aronette gin him two little linen handkerchiefs, hemstitched by herself, and his name, "Tommy," worked in the corners. He wuz real tickled with 'em all. I told Miss Meechim that I had hoped to spend Christmas in Salt Lake City. Knowin' that it wuz a warm climate, I thought I could have a Christmas tree out doors; I thought I could take one of them big pine trees I had read on, and invite Brigham Young's wives, the hull on 'em, to my party, bein' out doors I thought there would be room for 'em all, poor creeters!
But Miss Meechim is very cautious, and she said that she wuz afraid that such a party given by folks in my high position might have a tendency to encourage polygamy.
And I said, "I would rather give a dollar bill than do that, and mebbe I had better give it up, for we shan't git there in time, anyway."
And so I did, and spent the Christmas holidays on the cars, and tried to keep my heart and mind in a Christmas mood, but don't spoze I did, so many fond recollections and sad forebodin's hanted me as the cars swep' us on, on through the valley of the Platte river on to Denver. Miss Meechim, who is a power on dates, said that Denver wuz five thousand two hundred feet above the sea.
And Tommy wonnered, wonnered who measured it, and if they did it with a yard stick as his ma measured cloth, and then he wonnered if his ma missed her little boy, and then he laid up aginst me and kinder cried a little, evanescent grief soon soothed.
We stayed in Denver two days, sallyin' out to different points of interest about it, and here I see irrigation carried on, water carried into the channels around the crops and trees some as I've dug little holes round my house-plants to hold water; only of course Denver wuz carryin' it on, on a bigger scale. It is a handsome city with the water of the Platte river brung in and running along in little streams by the curbstones. We rode out to Idaho Springs on a narrer railroad but easy goin', through Clear Creek Canon. I liked the looks of the Springs first-rate (they made me think of Josiah).