started up again by the
roundabout road to the top. Two hours or more, with gradually stiffening
neck, I spent with the wren, while she worked constantly and silently,
and not once during all that time did the singer appear.

What the scattering parties of tourists, who from time to time passed
me, thought of a silent personage sitting in the canyon alone, staring
intently up at a blank wall of rock, I did not inquire. Perhaps that she
was a verse-writer seeking inspiration; more likely, however, a harmless
lunatic musing over her own fancies.

I know well what I thought of them, from the glimpses that came to me as
I sat there; some climbing over the sharp-edged rocks, in tight boots,
delicate kid gloves, and immaculate traveling costumes, and panting for
breath in the seven thousand feet altitude; others uncomfortably seated
on the backs of the scraggy little burros, one of whom was so interested
in my proceedings that he walked directly up and thrust his long,
inquiring ears into my very face, spite of the resistance of his rider,
forcing me to rise and decline closer acquaintance. One of the
melancholy procession was loaded with a heavy camera, another equipped
with a butterfly net; this one bent under the weight of a big basket of
luncheon, and that one was burdened with satchels and wraps and
umbrellas. All were laboriously trying to enjoy themselves, but not one
lingered to look at the wonder and the beauty of the surroundings. I
pitied them, one and all, feeling obliged, as no doubt they did, to "see
the sights;" tramping the lovely canyon to-day, glancing neither to right
nor left; whirling through the Garden of the Gods to-morrow; painfully
climbing the next day the burro track to the Grave, the sacred point
where

"Upon the wind-blown mountain spot
Chosen and loved as best by her,
Watched over by near sun and star,
Encompassed by wide skies, she sleeps."

Alas that one cannot quote with truth the remaining lines!

"And not one jarring murmur creeps
Up from the plain her rest to mar."

For now, at the end of the toilsome passage, that place which should be
sacred to loving memories and tender thoughts, is desecrated by placards
and picnickers, defaced by advertisements, strewn with the
wrapping-paper, tin cans, and bottles with which the modern
globe-trotter marks his path through the beautiful and sacred scenes in
nature.[1]

In this uncomfortable way the majority of summer tourists spend day