rthest corner of my memory, behind closed and locked doors, all
the anxieties, all the perplexities and problems, all the concerns, in
fact, of my home life. I was like a newly created soul, fresh and eager
to see and enjoy everything. I refused the morning papers; I wished to
forget the world of strife and crime, and to get so into harmony with
the trees and flowers, the brooks and the breezes, that I would realize
myself

"Kith and kin to every wild-born thing that thrills and blows."

In one word, I wished as nearly as possible to walk abroad out of my
hindering body of clay.

I looked out of the windows to see what the Cyclone State had to give
me. It offered flowers and singing birds, broad fields of growing grain,
and acres of rich black soil newly turned up to the sun. Everything was
fresh and perfect, as if just from the hands of its maker; it seemed the
paradise of the farmer.

From the fertile fields and miles of flowers the train passed to bare,
blossomless earth; from rich soil to rocks; from Kansas to Colorado.
That part of the State which appeared in the morning looked like a vast
body of hardly dry mud, with nothing worth mentioning growing upon it.
Each little gutter had worn for itself a deep channel with precipitous
sides, and here and there a great section had sunken, as though there
was no solid foundation. Soon, however, the land showed inclination to
draw itself up into hills, tiny ones with sharp peaks, as though
preparing for mountains. Before long they retreated to a distance and
grew bigger, and at last, far off, appeared the mountains, overtopping
all one great white peak, the

"Giver of gold, king of eternal hills."

A welcome awaited me in the summer home of a friend at Colorado Springs,
in the presence of the great Cheyenne Range, with the snow-cap of Pike's
Peak ever before me. Four delightful days I gave to friendship, and then
I sought and found a perfect nook for rest and study, in a cottonwood
grove on the banks of the Minnelowan (or Shining Water). This is a mad
Colorado stream which is formed by the junction of the North and South
Cheyenne Canyon brooks, and comes tumbling down from the Cheyenne,
rushing and roaring as if it had the business of the world on its
shoulders, and must do it man-fashion, with confusion and noise enough
to drown all other sounds.

Imagine a pretty, one-story cottage, set down in a grove of
cottonwood-trees, with a gnarly oak and a tall pine here