nd
continually we implore. On the eminences of our lives the solitary
still keep vigil. In the air about us there still are Voices as of
old, there still are visions wistfully besought. Now, as then,
dwarfed, blighted, wandering humanity prays, lifting up its hands to
something above its narrow, circumscribing world. Now, as then, the
answer is sometimes given to a few for all. Now, as then, the solemn
front of the Hill of Dreams still rises, dominating calmly the wide
land, keeping watch always out over the plains for those who are to
come, for that which is to be. Warden of destiny, it well might smile
at any temples we may build, at any fetiches that we may offer up!

Toward the Hill of Dreams Franklin journeyed, because it had been
written. As he travelled over the long miles he scarcely noted the
fields, the fences, the flocks and herds now clinging along the path of
the iron rails. He crossed the trails of the departed buffalo and of
the vanishing cattle, but his mind looked only forward, and he saw
these records of the past but dimly. There, on the Hill of Dreams, he
knew, there was answer for him if he sufficiently besought; that answer
not yet learned in all the varying days. It seemed sure to him that he
should have a sign.[*]

Franklin looked out over a deserted and solitary land as he rode up to
the foot of the hill. There were no longer banners of dust where the
wild game swept by, nor did the eye catch any line of distant horsemen.
It was another day. Yet, as did the candidate of old, he left his
horse at the foot of the hill and went up quite alone.

It was afternoon as he sat down. The silence and solitude folded him
about, and the sun sank so fitly slow that he hardly knew, and the
solemn night swept softly on. . . . Then he built a little fire. . . .
In the night, after many hours, he arose and lifted up his hands. . . .
At the foot of the hill the pony stopped cropping grass, tossed his
head, and looked up intently at the summit.

It was morning. The sun rose calm and strong. The solitary figure
upon the hill sat motionless, looking out. There might have passed
before him a perspective of the past, the Plains peopled with their
former life; the oncoming of the white men from below; the remnant of
the passing Latin race, typified in the unguided giant who, savage with
savage, fought here near by, one brutal force meeting another and both
passing before one higher and yet more str