and its
beauty were created; it is his idea which endows it with expression,
whether savage or kindly. Rocks and mountains suggest the force
required to conquer difficulties, and the power with which the lord of
creation is endowed to subdue them; and the chief charm and interest
of such regions is derived, consciously or unconsciously, from this
suggestion. Prairie images are more domestic, quiet, leisurely. No
severe, wasting labor is demanded before corn and milk for wife and
little ones are wrung from reluctant clods. No danger is there of sons
or daughters being obliged to quit their homes and roam over foreign
lands for a precarious and beggarly subsistence. No prairie-boy will
ever carry about a hand-organ and a monkey, or see his sister yoked to
the plough, by the side of horse or ox. Blessed be God that there are
still places where grinding poverty is unfelt and unfeared! "Riches
fineless" belong to these deep, soft fields, and they become
picturesque by the thought, as the sea becomes so by the passing of a
ship, and the burning desert by the foot-print of a traveller or the
ashes of his fire.

It was in spring weather, neither cold nor warm, now and then shiny,
and again spattering with a heavy shower, or misty under a warm, slow
rain,--the snow still lying in little streaks under shady
ridges,--that I first saw the prairies of Illinois. Everybody--kind
everybody!--said, "Why didn't you come in June?" But I, not being a
bird of the air, who alone travels at full liberty, the world before
him where to choose and Providence his guide, cared not to answer this
friendly query, but promised to be interested in the spring aspect of
the prairies, after my fashion, as sincerely as more fastidious
travellers can be in the summer one. It is very well to be prepared
when company is expected, but friends may come at any time. "Brown
fields and pastures bare" have no terrors for me. Green is gayer, but
brown softer. Blue skies are not alone lovely; gray ones set them
off--Rain enhances shine. Mud, to be sure;--but then railroads are the
Napoleons of mud. Planks and platforms quench it completely. One may
travel through tenacious seas of it without smirching one's boot-heel.
There is even a feeling of triumph as we see it lying sulky and
impotent on either side, while we bowl along dry-shod. When Noah and
his family came out of the Ark, and found all "soft with the Deluge,"
it was very different. The prospect must have b