Tall cottonwood bluffs, unmistakably planted
trees, betrayed more farms. There were three of them, and, strange to
say, here on the very fringe of civilization I found that "moneyed"
type--a house, so new and up-to-date, that it verily seemed to turn up
its nose to the traveller. I am sure it had a bathroom without a
bathtub and various similar modern inconveniences. The barn was of the
Agricultural-College type--it may be good, scientific, and all that, but
it seems to crush everything else around out of existence; and it surely
is not picturesque--unless it has wings and silos to relieve its rigid
contours. Here it had not.

The other two farms to which I presently came--buildings set back from
the road, but not so far as to give them the air of aloofness--had again
that friendly, old-country expression that I have already mentioned:
here it was somewhat marred, though, by an over-rigidity of the lines.
It is unfortunate that our farmers, when they plant at all, will nearly
always plant in straight lines. The straight line is a flaw where we try
to blend the work of our hands with Nature. They also as a rule neglect
shrubs that would help to furnish a foreground for their trees; and,
worst of all, they are given to importing, instead of utilising our
native forest growth. Not often have I seen, for instance, our high-bush
cranberry planted, although it certainly is one of the most beautiful
shrubs to grow in copses.

These two farms proved to be pretty much the last sign of comfort that I
was to meet on my drives to the north. Though later I learned the names
of their owners and even made their acquaintance, for me they remained
the "halfway farms," for, after I had passed them, at the very next
corner, I was seventeen miles from my starting point, seventeen miles
from "home."

Beyond, stretches of the real wilderness began, the pioneer country,
where farms, except along occasional highroads, were still three,
four miles apart, where the breaking on few homesteads had reached the
thirty-acre mark, and where a real, "honest-to-goodness" cash dollar
bill was often as scarce as a well-to-do teacher in the prairie country.

The sun went down, a ball of molten gold--two hours from "town," as I
called it. It was past six o'clock. There were no rosy-fingered clouds;
just a paling of the blue into white; then a greying of the western
sky; and lastly the blue again, only this time dark. A friendly crescent
still showed tra