.

'We fancied that it might amuse you,' said all those merry people, and
between laughter and digressions they talked over projects for building,
first their own, and next other cities, in brick of all sorts; giving
figures of output and expenses of plant that made one gasp. To the eye
the affair was no more than a novel or delicious picnic. What it
actually meant was a committee to change the material of civilisation
for a hundred miles around. I felt as though I were assisting at the
planning of Nineveh; and whatever of good comes to the little town that
was born lucky I shall always claim a share.

But there is no space to tell how we fed, with a prairie appetite, in
the men's quarters, on a meal prepared by an artist; how we raced home
at speeds no child could ever hear of, and no grown-up should attempt;
how the motors squattered at the ford, and took pot-shots at the pontoon
till even Charon smiled; how great horses hauled the motors up the
gravelly bank into the town; how there we met people in their Sunday
best, walking and driving, and pulled ourselves together, and looked
virtuous; and how the merry company suddenly and quietly evanished
because they thought that their guests might be tired. I can give you no
notion of the pure, irresponsible frolic of it--of the almost
affectionate kindness, the gay and inventive hospitality that so
delicately controlled the whole affair--any more than I can describe a
certain quiet half-hour in the dusk just before we left, when the
company gathered to say good-bye, while young couples walked in the
street, and the glare of the never-extinguished natural-gas lamps
coloured the leaves of the trees a stage green.

It was a woman, speaking out of the shadow, who said, what we all felt,
'You see, we just love our town,'

'So do we,' I said, and it slid behind us.

MOUNTAINS AND THE PACIFIC

The Prairie proper ends at Calgary, among the cattle-ranches, mills,
breweries, and three million acre irrigation works. The river that
floats timber to the town from the mountains does not slide nor rustle
like Prairie rivers, but brawls across bars of blue pebbles, and a
greenish tinge in its water hints of the snows.

What I saw of Calgary was crowded into one lively half-hour (motors were
invented to run about new cities). What I heard I picked up, oddly
enough, weeks later, from a young Dane in the North Sea. He was
qualmish, but his Saga of triumph upheld him.

'Three