in to a vision of
sufficient spiritual keenness? Perhaps some one will some day write a
book _On the Physio-Psychological Aspect of Houses_: and there will be
an advance sale of at least one copy on that book.

At noon on the fourth day from the Pen and Key Ranch, we pulled up at
the Mondak landing two miles above the mouth of the Yellowstone. We were
thoroughly soaked, having dragged the boat the last two or three miles
through the shallows and intermittent deeps of an inside channel. The
outer channel was rolling viciously in that eternal thing, the head
wind. We had covered the first six hundred miles with a power boat
(called so, doubtless, because it required so much power to shove it
along!) in a little less than four weeks. During that time we had
received no mail, and I was making a break for the post-office, oozing
and feeling like an animated sponge, when a great wind-like voice roared
above me: "_Hey there!_"

I looked up to the hurricane deck of a steamer that lay at the bank
taking on freight. A large elderly man, dressed like a farmer, with an
exaggerated straw hat shading a face that gripped my attention at once,
was looking down at me. It was the face of a born commander; it struck
me that I should like to have it cast in bronze to look at whenever a
vacillating mood might seize me.

"_Come aboard!_" bawled the man under the ample hat. There was nothing
in the world just then that I wished for more than my mail; but somehow
I felt the will to obey--even the necessity of obeying.

"You came from Benton?" he asked, when I had clambered up the forward
companionway and stood dripping before the captain of the steamer
_Expansion_. At this closer range, the strength of the face was even
more impressive, with its eagle beak and its lines of firmness; but a
light of kindness was shed through it, and the eyes took on a gentle
expression.

"How did you find the water?"

"Very low, sir; we cordelled much of the way."

"I tried to get this boat to Benton," he said, "and got hung up on the
rocks above Lismus Ferry."

"And we drifted over them helter-skelter at midnight!"

He smiled, and we were friends. Thus I met Captain Grant Marsh, the
Grand Old Man of the Missouri River. He was freighting supplies up the
Yellowstone for the great Crane Creek irrigation dam, sixty miles above
the mouth. The _Expansion_ was to sail on the following day, and I was
invited to go along. Seeing that the Captain was short of