gs full
length on the mail-sacks, and gazed out through the windows across
the wide wastes of greensward clad in cool, powdery mist to where
there was an expectant look in the Eastern horizon, our perfect
enjoyment took the form of a tranquil and contented ecstasy. The
stage whirled along at a spanking gait, the breeze flapping the
curtains and suspended coats in a most exhilarating way; the cradle
swayed and swung luxuriously, the pattering of the horses' hoofs,
the cracking of the driver's whip, and his "Hi-yi! g'lang!" were
music; the spinning ground and the waltzing trees appeared to give
us a mute hurrah as we went by, and then slack up and look after us
with interest and envy, or something; and as we lay and smoked the
pipe of peace, and compared all this luxury with the years of
tiresome city life that had gone before it, we felt that there was
only one complete and satisfying happiness in the world, and we had
found it.

Also, there is that lofty presentation of South Pass, and a picture of
the alkali desert, so parching, so withering in its choking realism,
that it makes the throat ache and the tongue dry to read it. Just a bit
of the desert in passing:

The sun beats down with a dead, blistering, relentless malignity;
the perspiration is welling from every pore in man and beast, but
scarcely a sign of it finds its way to the surface--it is absorbed
before it gets there; there is not the faintest breath of air
stirring; there is not a merciful shred of cloud in all the
brilliant firmament; there is not a living creature visible in any
direction whither one searches the blank level that stretches its
monotonous miles on every hand; there is not a sound, not a sigh,
not a whisper, not a buzz, or a whir of wings, or distant pipe of
bird; not even a sob from the lost souls that doubtless people that
dead air.

As for the humor of the book, it has been chiefly famous for that.
"Buck Fanshaw's Funeral" has become a classic, and the purchase of
the "Mexican Plug." But it is to no purpose to review the book here in
detail. We have already reviewed the life and environment out of which
it grew.

Without doubt the story would have contained more of the poetic and
contemplative, in which he was always at his best, if the subject
itself, as in the Innocents, had lent itself oftener to this form of
writing. It was t