ealing to her for
help, but broke down after several attempts to walk into the car
jauntily as befitted a sister in the profession. Then the conductor
reappeared,--the five-dollar bill honestly changed,--and she wept by
reason of beer and gratitude together, and then fell asleep waveringly,
alone in the car, and became almost beautiful and quite kissable; while
the Man with the Sorrow stood at the door between actress and actress
and preached grim sermons on the certain end of each if they did not
mend their ways and find regeneration through the miracle of the Baptist
creed. Yes, we were a queer company going up to the Rockies together. I
was the luckiest, because when a breakdown occurred, and we were delayed
for twelve hours, I ate all the Baptist's sample-biscuits. They were
various in composition, but nourishing. Always travel with a "drummer."

No. XXXIV

ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE; AND HOW THE MAN GRING SHOWED ME THE GARMENTS OF
THE ELLEWOMEN.

After much dallying and more climbing we came to a pass like all the
Bolan Passes in the world, and the Black Canyon of the Gunnison called
they it. We had been climbing for very many hours, and attained a modest
elevation of some seven or eight thousand feet above the sea, when we
entered a gorge, remote from the sun, where the rocks were two thousand
feet sheer, and where a rock-splintered river roared and howled ten feet
below a track which seemed to have been built on the simple principle of
dropping miscellaneous dirt into the river and pinning a few rails
a-top. There was a glory and a wonder and a mystery about that mad ride
which I felt keenly (you will find it properly dressed up in the
guide-books), until I had to offer prayers for the safety of the train.
There was no hope of seeing the track two hundred yards ahead. We seemed
to be running into the bowels of the earth at the invitation of an
irresponsible stream. Then the solid rock would open and disclose a
curve of awful twistfulness. Then the driver put on all steam, and we
would go round that curve on one wheel chiefly, the Gunnison River
gnashing its teeth below. The cars overhung the edge of the water, and
if a single one of the rails had chosen to spread, nothing in the wide
world could have saved us from drowning. I knew we should damage
something in the end--the sombre horrors of the gorge, the rush of the
jade-green water below, and the cheerful tales told by the conductor
made me certain of t