get away from that. That boomster fellow was an
Easterner, anyway."

Which of these three really found the playground each was seeking? Not
the duet that went round the cities in a sightseeing car and judged the
West from hotel rotundas. Not the New Yorker, who saw the prairie towns
fly past the car windows. Not the Texans who were guided round a real
estate project by an Eastern land boomster. And each wanted to find the
real thing--had paid money to find a holiday playground, to forget care
and stab apathy and enlarge life. And each complained of the
extortionate charges on every side in the city life. And two out of
three went back a little disappointed that they had not seen the fabled
wonders of the West--the big trees, the peaks at close range, the famous
canyons, the mountain lakes, the natural bridges. When I tried to explain
to the New Yorker that at a cost of one-tenth what the big hotels
charge, you could go straight into the heart of the mountain western
wilds, whether you are a man, woman, child, or group of all three--could
go straight out to the fabled wonders of big trees and mountain lakes
and snowy peaks--I was greeted with that peculiarly New Yorky look
suggestive of Ananias and De Rougement.

[Illustration: One way of entering the desert is with wagons and tents,
but unless it is the rainy season the tents are unnecessary]

Sadder is the case of the invalid migrating West. He has come with high
hopes looking for the national health resort. Does he find it? Not once
in a thousand cases. If health seekers have money, they take a private
house _in the city_, where the best of air is at its worst; but many
invalids are scarce of money, and come seeking the health resort at
great pecuniary sacrifice. Do they find it? Certainly not knocking from
boarding house to boarding house and hotel to hotel, re-infecting
themselves with their own germs till the very telephone booths have to
be guarded. At one famous "lung" city where I stayed, I heard three
invalids coughing life away along the corridor where my room happened to
be. The charge for those stuffy rooms was $2 and $3 and $5 a day without
meals. At a cost of $10 for train fare, I went out to one of the
National Forests--the pass over the Divide 11,000 feet, the village
center of the Forest 8,000 feet above sea level, the charge with meals
at the hotel $10 a week. Better still, $10 for a roomy tent, $1.50 for a
camp stove and as much or as little as you