st
into the Yellowstone.

"I've been down there," said Tom, that evening. "It's easy to get down
if you're careful--just sit an' slide; but getting up is worse. An'
I found down below there two stones just marked with a picture of the
canyon. I wouldn't sell these rocks not for fifteen dollars."

And papa and I crawled down to the Yellowstone--just above the first
little fall--to wet a line for good luck. The round moon came up and
turned the cliffs and pines into silver; and a two-pound trout came up
also, and we slew him among the rocks, nearly tumbling into that wild
river.

. . . . . .

Then out and away to Livingstone once more. The maiden from New
Hampshire disappeared, papa and mamma with her. Disappeared, too, the
old lady from Chicago, and the others.

V. CHICAGO

"I know thy cunning and thy greed,
Thy hard high lust and wilful deed,
And all thy glory loves to tell
Of specious gifts material."

I HAVE struck a city--a real city--and they call it Chicago.

The other places do not count. San Francisco was a pleasure-resort as
well as a city, and Salt Lake was a phenomenon.

This place is the first American city I have encountered. It holds
rather more than a million of people with bodies, and stands on the same
sort of soil as Calcutta. Having seen it, I urgently desire never to
see it again. It is inhabited by savages. Its water is the water of the
Hooghly, and its air is dirt. Also it says that it is the "boss" town of
America.

I do not believe that it has anything to do with this country. They told
me to go to the Palmer House, which is overmuch gilded and mirrored,
and there I found a huge hall of tessellated marble crammed with people
talking about money, and spitting about everywhere. Other barbarians
charged in and out of this inferno with letters and telegrams in their
hands, and yet others shouted at each other. A man who had drunk quite
as much as was good for him told me that this was "the finest hotel in
the finest city on God Almighty's earth." By the way, when an American
wishes to indicate the next country or state, he says, "God A'mighty's
earth." This prevents discussion and flatters his vanity.

Then I went out into the streets, which are long and flat and without
end. And verily it is not a good thing to live in the East for any
length of time. Your ideas grow to clash with those held by every
right-thinking man. I l