out her,
for she was of the gentler sex. When she came to a particularly scary
spot, which was every minute or so, she would stop dead still. I
concurred in that part of it heartily. But then she would face outward
and crane her neck over the fathomless void of that bottomless pit, and
for a space of moments would gaze steadily downward, with a despondent
droop of her fiddle-shaped head and a suicidal gleam in her mournful
eyes. It worried me no little; and if I had known, at the time, that she
had a German name it would have worried me even more, I guess. But
either the time was not ripe for the rash act or else she abhorred the
thought of being found dead in the company of a mere tourist, so she did
not leap off into space, but restrained herself; and I was very grateful
to her for it. It made a bond of sympathy between us.

On you go, winding on down past the red limestone and the yellow
limestone and the blue sandstone, which is green generally; past huge
bat caves and the big nests of pack-rats, tucked under shelves of
Nature's making; past stratified millions of crumbling seashells that
tell to geologists the tale of the salt-water ocean that once on a time,
when the world was young and callow, filled this hole brim full; and
presently, when you have begun to piece together the tattered fringes of
your nerves, you realize that the canyon is even more wonderful when
viewed from within than it is when viewed from without. Also, you begin
to notice now that it is most extensively autographed.

Apparently about every other person who came this way remarked to
himself that this canyon was practically completed and only needed his
signature as collaborator to round it out--so he signed it and after
that it was a finished job. Some of them brought down colored chalk and
stencils, and marking pots, and paints and brushes, and cold chisels to
work with, which must have been a lot of trouble, but was worth it--it
does add so greatly to the beauty of the Grand Canon to find it spangled
over with such names as you could hear paged in almost any dollar-a-day
American-plan hotel. The guide pointed out a spot where one of these
inspired authors climbed high up the face of a white cliff and, clinging
there, carved out in letters a foot long his name; and it was one of
those names that, inscribed upon a register, would instinctively cause
any room clerk to reach for the key to an inside one, without bath. I
regret to state that n