le plant. It is gathered in the following manner:
Two immense T-rails of railroad iron are laid side by side, one
inverted, and securely fastened together; to the ends of these are
hitched two teams of horses or mules, which pulling parallel to each
other, are driven into the standing fairy forests and the swaths of
fallen timber show the track of this unnatural storm. Its roots have
such slight hold on the soil that it easily falls. Wagons and
pitchforks follow, and the whole of the felling is hauled untrimmed to
the home for hand-axing if too large; and it is all burned, top and
root. There is so much vegetable oil in this queer plant that it makes
a fine and very quick fire, green or dry.

After a summer rain there is no aromatic perfume surpassing that of
the odor of sagebrush filling the newly washed air. The mountaineer
who has had to make a trip East gladly opens his window, as his train
pushes back into the habitat of these aromatic shrubs, to get an
early whiff of the health-laden, sage-sweetened atmosphere of the
beloved Westland and homeland.

THE IRON TRAIL

There are hermit souls that live withdrawn
In their houses of self-content;
There are souls like stars that dwell apart
In their fellowless firmament.
There are pioneer souls that blaze their paths
Where highways never ran.
But, let me live by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.
--Sam Walter Foss.

A RAILROAD SAINT IN IDAHO

The "railroad saint" was a locomotive engineer. His life was ever an
open book, yet while careful and almost severe in his personal
religious habits, he did not criticize the manners of his associates.
He simply let his well kept searchlight shine.

Though born in Ohio, his boy life was spent mainly in Nebraska, when
it was just emerging from the ragged swaddlings of rough frontierdom;
and during his young manhood he lived in Wyoming, at the time when men
"carried the law in their hip-pockets," as he graphically expressed
it.

Early becoming an employee of the Union Pacific, he was a permanent
portion of its westward intermountain extension, and he did his life's
work among the scenic cliffs and clefts of the picturesque crags and
corrugated canyons of the wrinkled ridges in the Rocky and the Wahsatch
ranges. Opportunities for literary education were very lim