and there
sprung up at the call of patient husbandry; myriads of wild-fowl
wheeled over the fragrant and boundless fields; every flower in the
floral calendar seemed at home in those meadow-lands of the world: the
sunset was not more glorious than the gentle slopes that swept to our
feet like a long wave of the sea, and then broke in a foam of flowers.
Not only was the delicious day promise-crammed, but the night, loud
with the chirp of the cricket and the cry of the sentinel owl, seemed
the realization of some splendid dream.

Out of the redundant and prophetic life of that land I heard a
prophecy, and the prophecy was the burden of the prairies. It is the
chant of the future, full of life and hope. I see now rows of men and
women, the toilers of the earth; they have planted forests and the
strong wind is stayed; they have broken the soil and the grain is
breast-high; they are merry, for they are free, and their stores
increase with the years. Wine and oil are their portion, and fat kine
and all manner of cunning workmanship; their cities are greater and
better than the old cities, for they are builded on virgin soil; and
the day shall come when the jubilee of the prairies will assemble the
hosts from the borders of the two seas, and they will hear their
praises sung and receive tribute, for the strength of the land is
theirs.

And we came into other countries that were full of people, and of
cities great and small. A thousand strange faces were turned upon us
as we shot past the open doors of houses wherein the table was spread
for the domestic meal. We hailed the field-laborers and the
town-artisans at their toil, and every hour plunged deeper and deeper
into the old civilization of the East, which in some respects differs
greatly from that of our breezy West. It was time to be thinking on my
journey's end and its probable results. I seemed to read it all
beforehand: Ellen would greet me at the gate of the parsonage on the
edge of Heartsease, looking just as she looked when I parted with her
long, long years before. Ellen had not changed with time: she had
written me the same sweet, placid, sympathetic letters from the
beginning, and the beginning was when, a mere child, I had worn out my
heart with longing for home, and had at last been welcomed back over
the two seas and across the slender chain of flowers that binds the
two Americas together--back to the land I love, California. Ellen
would lead me in all the