Evening crept through the pines that shadowed us, but the full
glory of the day flamed in that canyon as we went out very
cautiously to a jutting piece of rock - blood-red or pink it
was - that overhung the deepest deeps of all.
Now I know what it is to sit enthroned amid the clouds of sunset
as the spirits sit in Blake's pictures. Giddiness took away all
sensation of touch or form, but the sense of blinding color
remained.
When I reached the mainland again I had sworn that I had been
floating.
The maid from New Hampshire said no word for a very long time.
Then she quoted poetry, which was perhaps the best thing she
could have done.
"And to think that this show-place has been going on all these
days an' none of we ever saw it," said the old lady from Chicago,
with an acid glance at her husband.
"No, only the Injians," said he, unmoved; and the maiden and I
laughed.
Inspiration is fleeting, beauty is vain, and the power of the
mind for wonder limited. Though the shining hosts themselves had
risen choiring from the bottom of the gorge, they would not have
prevented her papa and one baser than he from rolling stones down
those stupendous rainbow-washed slides. Seventeen hundred feet
of steep-est pitch and rather more than seventeen hundred colors
for log or bowlder to whirl through!
So we heaved things and saw them gather way and bound from white
rock to red or yellow, dragging behind them torrents of color,
till the noise of their descent ceased and they bounded a hundred
yards clear at the last into the Yellowstone.
"I've been down there," said Tom, that evening. "It's easy to
get down if you're careful - just sit an' slide; but getting up is
worse. An' I found down below there two stones just marked with
a picture of the canyon. I wouldn't sell these rocks not for
fifteen dollars."
And papa and I crawled down to the Yellowstone - just above the
first little fall - to wet a line for good luck. The round moon
came up and turned the cliffs and pines into silver; and a
two-pound trout came up also, and we slew him among the rocks,
nearly tumbling into that wild river.
. . . . . .
Then out and away to Livingstone once more. The maiden from New
Hampshire disappeared, papa and mamma with her. Disappeared,
too, the old lady from Chicago, and the others.
V
Chicago
"I know thy cunning and thy greed,
Thy hard high lust and wilful deed,
And all thy glory loves to tell
Of specious gifts material."
I HAVE struck a city - a real city - and they call it Chicago.
