THE CHALICE OF COURAGE
A Romance of Colorado
BY CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY
Author of "The Island of Regeneration," "The Better Man,"
"Hearts andthe 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.
"Leave me to myself, I would not take the finest, noblestman on earth—"
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 attractivethan the opportunity to write unlimited prefaces. Let me write thepreface and I care not who writes the book. Unfortunately for mydesires, I can only be prefatory in the case of my own. Happily my ownare sufficiently numerous to afford me some scope in the indulgence ofthis passion for forewords.
I suppose no one ever sat down to write a preface until after he hadwritten the book. It is like the final pat that the fond parent gives tothe child before it is allowed to depart in its best clothes. I haveseen the said parent accompany the child quite a distance on the way,keeping up a continual process of adjustment of raiment which it wasevidently loath to discontinue.
And that is my case exactly. Here is the novel with which I have done mybest, 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 finalpats and pulls and tugs and smoothings do not materially add to thechild's appearance or increase its fascination, and I am at a loss tofind a reason for the preface except it be the converse of the statementabout the famous and much disliked Dr. Fell!
Perhaps, if I admit to you that I have been in the cañon, that I havefollowed the course of the brook, that I have seen that lake, that Ihave tramped those trails, it will serve to make you understand, dearreader, how real and actual it all is to me. Yes, I have even lookedover the precipice down which the woman fell. I have talked with oldKirkby; Robert Maitland is an intimate friend of mine; I have even methis brother in Philadelphia and as for that glorious girl Enid—well,being a married man, I will refrain from any personal appraisement ofher qualities. But I can with propriety dilate upon Newbold, and evenArmstrong, bad as he was, has some place in my regard.
If these people shall by any chance seem real to you and become yourfriends as they are mine, another of those pleasant ties that bind theauthor and his public together will have been woven, knotted, forged.Never mind the method so long as there is a tie. And with this hope,looking out up the winter snows that might have covered the range, as Ihave often seen them there, I bid you a happy good morning.
Cyrus Townsend Brady
St. George's Rectory, Kansas City, Missouri.
Thanksgiving Day, 1911.