ore
dug up. For my part, I thank the Lord for the beautiful barrenness that
has consecrated this great region to loneliness. Here there will always
be a chance to get out of sight and sound of the swarming millions who
have already left scarcely standing-room for a man in the East. I
wouldn't give much for a country where there are no wildernesses left."

"But I really think it is rather hard to say in just what the beauty of
the desert consists," said Miss Dwyer. "It is so simple. I scribbled two
pages of description in my note-book this morning, but when I read them
over, and then looked out of the window, I tore them up. I think the
wonderfully fine, clear, brilliant air transfigures the landscape and
makes it something that must be seen and can't be told. After seeing how
this air makes the ugly sagebrush and the patches of alkali and brown
earth a feast to the eye, one can understand how the light of heaven may
make the ugliest faces beautiful."

The pretty talker is sitting next the window of palace-car No. 30 of the
Central Pacific line, which has already been her flying home for two
days. The gentleman who sits beside her professes to be sharing the
view, but it is only fair I should tell the reader that under this
pretence he is nefariously delighting in the rounded contour of his
companion's half-averted face as she, in unfeigned engrossment, scans
the panorama unrolled before them by the swift motion of the car. How
sweet and fresh is the bright tint of her cheek against the ghastly
white background of the alkali-patches as they flit by! Still, it can't
be said that he isn't enjoying the scenery too, for surely there is no
such Claude-Lorraine glass to reflect and enhance the beauty of a
landscape as the face of a spirituel girl.

With a profound sigh, summing up both her admiration and that despair of
attaining the perfect insight and sympathy imagined and longed for which
is always a part of intense appreciation of natural beauty, Miss Dwyer
threw herself back in her seat and fixed her eyes on the car-ceiling
with an expression as if she were looking at something at least as far
away as the moon.

"I'm going to make a statue when I get home," she said--"a statue which
will personify Nevada and represent the tameless, desolate, changeless,
magnificent beauty and the self-sufficient loneliness of the desert. I
can see it in my mind's eye now. It will probably be the finest statue
in the world."

"If you