the period that I jolted on the straw, I diversified
the intervals between pulmonary spasms with a sick glance at the pages
of Bulwer's "Devereux" and Lever's "Day's Ride." The nature of these
works did not fail to attract the attention of my driver. It aroused in
him serious concern for my spiritual welfare. He addressed me with
gentle firmness,--

"D' ye think it's exackly the way for an immortal creatur' to be
spendin' his time, to read them _novels_?"

"Why is it particularly out of the way for an immortal creature?"

"Because his higher interests don't give him no time for sich follies."

"How can an immortal creature be pressed for time?"

"Wal, you'll find out some day. G' lang, Jennie."

I thought I had left this excellent man in a metaphysical bog. But he
had not discharged his duty, so he scrambled out and took new ground.

"Now say,--d' _you_ think it's exackly a Christian way of spendin' time,
yourself?"

"I know a worse way."

"Eh? What's that?"

"In the house of a Long-Tom settler who charges five dollars a day extra
because his wife feels like a mother."

He did not continue the conversation. I myself did not close it in
anger, but solely to avoid an extra charge, which in the light of
experience seemed imminent, for concern about my spiritual welfare. On
the maternal-tenderness scale of prices, an indulgence in this luxury
would have cleaned out Bierstadt and myself before we effected junction
with our drawers of exchange, and I was discourteous as a matter of
economy.

We had enjoyed, from the summit of a hill twenty miles south of Salem,
one of the most magnificent views in all earthly scenery. Within a
single sweep of vision were seven snow-peaks, the Three Sisters, Mount
Jefferson, Mount Hood, Mount Adams, and Mount St. Helen's, with the dim
suggestion of an eighth colossal mass, which might be Rainier. All these
rose along an arc of not quite half the horizon, measured between ten
and eighteen thousand feet in height, were nearly conical, and
absolutely covered with snow from base to pinnacle. The Three Sisters, a
triplet of sharp, close-set needles, and the grand masses of Hood and
Jefferson, showed mountainesque and earthly; it was at least possible to
imagine them of us and anchored to the ground we trod on. Not so with
the others. They were beautiful, yet awful ghosts,--spirits of dead
mountains buried in old-world cataclysms, returning to make on the
brilliant azure of noonday bl