rt. Fain would I guide my light, frivolous
thoughts long enough into the calm channels of serious reflection to
bid you, my kind readers, a dignified farewell and express the sincere
hope that, when we have prospected life's mortal vein to the end of
time and our souls soar on the last blast of Gabriel's trumpet to
shining sands on shores of bliss eternal.

AN UNCANNY STONE.

(A sequel to the last chapter of "Wooed by a Sphinx of Astlan."')

"Gigantic shadows, dancing in the twilight
Fade with the sun's last golden ray.
On quivering bat-wings, sad and silent,
Flits darkness--night pursuing day.
Hark! as the twelfth hour sounds its knell
At midnight, tolls a whimpering bell
When yawning graves profane their secrecy.
Ghosts stalk in dreamland haunting memory
And spectral visions of departed friends arise
Who freed of sin, that fetter of mortality,
With Angels in their kingdom of Eternal Life
Grace Heaven's choir of harmony."

The third day of July A. D. 1907 was a gala-day for the citizens of
Prescott, a historic date for Arizona, as then our governor, in behalf
of the territory, formally accepted an equestrian statue from its
sculptor.

This monument which commemorates our war with Spain had been erected on
the public plaza of Prescott in honor of "Roosevelt's Rough Riders,"
the first regiment of United States Volunteer cavalry.

A master-piece of modern art the statue breathes life and action in the
perfection of its every detail, representing a Rough Rider who is about
to draw his weapon while reining his terrified horse as it rears in a
last lunge. This is indicated by the steed's gaping mouth, distended
nostrils, the bent knees, knotted chords and veins of its neck and body.

The expression of a noble beast's agony is rendered in so life-like a
manner that its protruding eyes seem to glaze into the awful stare of
death, and instinctively the spectator listens for the stifled whimper
and whinnying screams of a wounded creature.

Borglum's splendid statuary, this heroic cast of bronze which so
faithfully portrays the destiny of a dumb animal, man's most useful and
willing slave, always ready to share its master's fate, even unto
death--to my mind is a most eloquent, if silent, argument against all
warfare.

But the glory of the monument is its pedestal.

A solid stone, a bed-rock from the cradle of the idol-mountain it was
contributed by nature to the memory of one of its n