nd out, and doubling again and again upon our track. A railway map
gives one an idea of almost straight lines from place to place. How
different is the reality! It seemed to me a symbol of theory and
practice in real life. A proposition in business or in morals seems as
simple and inevitable as that two and two make four; but many are the
twists and turns that must be taken in all departments of life before
the end in view can be attained.

By these necessary zigzags and retracing curves we made our advance,
higher and higher. The sparse vegetation revealed our increasing
altitude, the trees became few and stunted, and the wild plants more
limited in variety. We descend again as we pass on, until toward
evening we reached El Paso. Here we landed in the midst of a fearful
sand storm. We were met by a dear old friend of former days, the Rev.
Dr. Higgins, whose first impulse was to tell us that it was not always
thus in El Paso. We should hope not; for it was fearful. The wind blew
at a dreadful rate, sweeping along with it dense clouds of sharp sand
which gave one a sense of being lashed with whipcords. In the midst of
this blinding dust and sand, obscuring the light, people moved about
like huge grasshoppers. A contrivance of transparent celluloid, fitted
like glasses to the eyes, extending from above the eyebrows, down well
on the cheeks, gave people this absurd insect-like appearance. It was
gruesome and comical at once. Several of our party invested immediately
in these most necessary appliances, in order to get round a little in
what looked like a forlorn town; but ere an hour or so had passed we
found the storm gone, and all in placid peace, while the stars shone
down through the clear night with true southern brilliancy.

The next morning Dr. Higgins was once more with us, and was delighted
to act as guide to our younger contingent, who did El Paso thoroughly,
and went also across the river, the Rio Grande del Norte, into the
Mexican town of Juarez. Some of the party met with a sad experience on
their return, when they had to pay so much a pound tax, and _ad
valorem_ besides, on a Mexican blanket whose gay stripes had taken
their fancy in a shop at Juarez.

My cicerone was the Rev. M. Cabell Martin, Rector of St. Clement's, El
Paso, who drove me in his buggy over the frontier to Juarez and showed
me all that was to be seen. It is astonishing what a change one sees in
little more than a few yards of distance. Once