s. I listened to the clicking, while the sleet fell
faster and the evening began to close in. What messages were they, I
wondered, that were passing across the mountains? I connected them, idly
enough, with the corner in wheat a famous speculator was endeavouring to
establish in Chicago; and reflected upon the disproportion between the
achievements of Man and the use he puts them to. He invents wireless
telegraphy, and the ships call to one another day and night, to tell the
name of the latest winner. He is inventing the flying-machine, and he
will use it to advertise pills and drop bombs. And here, he has
exterminated the Indians, and carried his lines and his poles across the
mountains, that a gambler may fill his pockets by starving a continent.
"Click--click--click--Pick--pick--pick--Pock--pock--pockets." So the
west called to the east, and the east to the west, while the winds
roared, and the sleet fell, over the solitary mountains and the desolate
iron road.

It was too late now for me to reach my hotel that evening, and I was
obliged to beg a night's rest. The yellow youth assented, with his air
of elaborate indifference, and proceeded to make me as comfortable as he
could. About sunset, the storm passed away over the plains. Behind its
flying fringes shot the last rays of the sun; and for a moment the
prairie sea was all bared to view, as wide as the sky, as calm and as
profound, a thousand miles of grass where men and cattle crept like
flies, and towns and houses were swallowed and lost in the infinite
monotony. We had supper and then my host began to talk. He was a
democrat, and we discussed the coming presidential election. From one
newspaper topic to another we passed to the talk about signalling to
Mars. Signalling interested the youth; he knew all about that; but he
knew nothing about Mars, or the stars. These were now shining bright
above us; and I told him what I knew of suns and planets, of double
stars, of the moons, of Jupiter, of nebulae and the galaxy, and the
infinity of space, and of worlds. He chewed and meditated, and presently
remarked: "Gee! I guess then it doesn't matter two cents after all who
gets elected president!" Whereupon we turned in, he to sleep and I to
lie awake, for I was disturbed by the mystery of the stars. It is long
since the notion of infinite space and infinite worlds has impressed my
imagination with anything but discomfort and terror. The Ptolemaic
scheme was better suite