er"

I can hear it always--the Call of the Prairie. The passing of sixty
Winters has left me a vigorous man, although my hair is as white as the
January snowdrift in the draws, and the strenuous events of some of the
years have put a tax on my strength. I shall always limp a little in my
right foot--that was left out on the plains one freezing night with
nothing under it but the earth, and nothing over it but the sky. Still,
considering that although the sixty years were spent mainly in that
pioneer time when every day in Kansas was its busy day, I am not even
beginning to feel old. Neither am I sentimental and inclined to poetry.
Life has given me mostly her prose selections for my study.

But this love of the Prairie is a part of my being. All the comedy and
tragedy of these sixty years have had them for a setting, and I can no
more put them out of my life than the Scotchman can forget the heather,
or the Swiss emigrant in the flat green lowland can forget the icy
passes of the glacier-polished Alps. Geography is an element of every
man's life. The prairies are in the red corpuscles of my blood. Up and
down their rippling billows my memory runs. For always I see
them,--green and blossom-starred in the Springtime; or drenched with the
driving summer deluge that made each draw a brimming torrent; or golden,
purple, and silver-rimmed in the glorious Autumn. I have seen them gray
in the twilight, still and tenderly verdant at noonday, and cold and
frost-wreathed under the white star-beams. I have seen them yield up
their rich yellow sheaves of grain, and I have looked upon their dreary
wastes marked with the dull black of cold human blood. Plain practical
man of affairs that I am, I come back to the blessed prairies for my
inspiration as the tartan warmed up the heart of Argyle.

THE PRICE OF THE PRAIRIE

CHAPTER I

SPRINGVALE BY THE NEOSHO

Sweeter to me than the salt sea spray, the fragrance of summer rains;
Nearer my heart than the mighty hills are the wind-swept Kansas plains.
Dearer the sight of a shy wild rose by the road-side's dusty way,
Than all the splendor of poppy-fields ablaze in the sun of May.
Gay as the bold poinsettia is, and the burden of pepper trees,
The sunflower, tawny and gold and brown, is richer to me than these;
And rising ever above the song of the hoarse, insistent sea,
The voice of the prairie calling, calling me.

--ESTHER M. CLARKE.

Whenever I thi