Contents ▼▲
Front Matter How I Came to Write my Story Who I am My Great Loss My Worldly Wealth Plans for the Future The Gold Fever My Great Disappointment Cured of the Gold Fever My Opportunity How I Might Work My Way Keeping My Bargain At Pueblo A Welcome Time of Rest Outbreak of Gold Fever Opportunity for Money Middleton Agrees With Me Middleton's Proposition Gold Seekers Land Claims Our Ranch Building a Dwelling Corn and Gold Dreams of a Harvest Disappointed Prospectors Returning Evil for Good Striving to Save Our Corn Defending Our Own A Council of War Interview With The Enemy Missouri Miners Make Sport How to Collect The Debt Possession of Cattle Night Before the Battle A War of Words The Prospectors Try to Kill Us A Real Battle A Truce Terms of Peace The Enemy Surrenders The Prospectors Depart The Growth of Our City Farming Or Mining My Share of the Harvest Middleton Goes on a Journey Auraria and Denver Middleton Turns Trader Middleton's Plan A Weighty Problem Middleton's Partner A Change of Homes Arrival At Auraria The Town of Denver We Hire a Shop I Regret Turning Merchant How We Transported Goods Middleton's Advice The Tide of Emigration Finding Goods By the Roadside Gold in Colorado How the Cities Grew A Post Office in Auraria Letters From Home Our Business Flourishes Denver Outstripping Auraria Claim Jumping The Claim Club The Turkey War The Need of Government Union of Denver and Auraria What Others Thought of Us Territory of Colorado Good Citizenship Civil War Breaks Out Need of a Jail Denver in Flames Our Loss By Fire Mrs. Middleton Consoles Us Good Resulting From Evil Middleton's Honesty Rebuilding Denver The Flood Destruction of the Town In Great Peril The City Destroyed Our Lives Are Spared Fears Regarding the Future Uprising of the Indians Begging for Help A Famine Threatens Horrors of an Indian War My Duty at Home Beginning Over Again My Story is Done

Seth of Colorado - James Otis




Striving For Good Citizenship

During all this time while Denver was waxing vigorous, the firm of "Middleton & Wagner "flourished wonderfully, and at times I believed that helping hands were held out to us because I, the junior partner, was the youngest man in the settlement.

It may be, however, that I took overmuch to myself, for all our people of Denver were kind to each other in those early days. Each realized fully that if our town was to grow as we would have it grow, we must dwell together in peace and harmony, observing so far as lay within our power the precepts of the Golden Rule.

I am not trying to make it appear that we were model people, for there was much crime among us; but those who had the best interests of the city at heart did all they could to keep out desperate and ruined prospectors or ne'er-do-wells, who cared nothing either for gold digging or for gaining a living by honest means, but who seemed to think that because our settlement was on the very edge of the wilderness, it might afford them opportunity to ply their evil trades.

The greater number of the merchants had shifted from that quarter of Denver which some of us still called Auraria over to the other side of the creek, because the largest buildings were there and the greatest activity of business; but "Middleton & Wagner" held to their first location.

As Mr. Middleton said, we had prospered so far beyond our expectations in our log warehouse that it would be like flying in the face of Fortune to desert it, and when our capital was sufficiently increased, we purchased the site on which the rude structure stood, in order to put up a building that would be an ornament to our growing city.