Year: 1878

"What a glorious, all-satisfying coun
| try this Nevada desert would be if one
were only all eyes, and had no need of
food, drink and shelter! Wouldn't it..
Miss Dwyer2 Do you know, I've no
doubt that this is the true location of
heaven. You see the lack of water and
vegetation would be no Inconvenience
to spirits, while the magnificent scenery
and the clOudless sky would be Just the
thing to make them thrive.n


''But what can't get Over,n respond
ed the young lady addressed, sis that
these alkali plains, which have been
described us so dreary and uninterest-
ing, should prove to be in reality one
of the most wonderfully impressive and
beautiful regions in the world. What
awful tibbers OF what dull people they
must have been whose descriptions
have so misled the public! 1t is per-
fectly unaccOuntable. Here, expected
to dOze all the way across the desert,
while, in fact, I've grudged my eyes
time enough to wink ever since left
my berth this morning"


1.-The trouble is," replied her COM
panIon, "that persons in search of the
picturesque, or with much eye for it,
are rare travellers along this route. The
people responsible for the descriptions
you complain of are thrifty business
men, with no idea that there can be
any possible attraction in country
where crops can't be raised, timber cut
or ore dug up. For my part, thank
the Lord for the beautiful barrenness
that has consecrated this great region
to Loneliness. Here there will always
be chance to get out of sight and
sound Of the swarming millions who
have already LETT scarcely standing room
for a man in the East. l wouldn't give
much for country where there are no
wildernesses left.n


''But | really think it is rather hard
to say in just what way the beauty of
the desert consists" said Miss Dwyer.
sit is so simple. l scribbled two pages
of description in my note book this
morning, bnt when l read them over,
and then looked out of the window, /
tore them up. l 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
sagebush and the patches of alkali and
brown earth 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 processes
to be sharing the view, but it is only
fair l should tell the reader that under
this pretense he is nefariously delight
ing in the rounded contour of his com
panion's half-averted face as she, in un-
feigned engrossment, scans the pano-
rama unTolled 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 fit 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 en-
hance the beauty of landscape as the
face of a spirituelle girl.


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


''I'm going to make a statue when /
get hOme," she said-''a statue which
will personify Nevada and represent
the tameless, desolate, changeless, mag
nificent beauty and the self-sufficient
loneliness of the desert. l can see it in
my minds eye. 1t will probably be the
finest statue in the world"


''f you'd as lief put your ideal into
a painting will give you suggestion
that will be original if nothing else,n he
observed.


"What's that qn


"Why, having in view these white,
alkali patches that chiefly characterize
Nevada, paint her as leper.n


''That's hOrIid You needn't talk to
me any more," she exclaimed emphatic
ally.


With this sort of chatter they had be-
guiled the time since leaving San Fran
cisco the morning of the day before.
Acquaintances are indeed made as
rapidly on an overland train as on an
ocean steamship, but theirs had dated
from the preceding winter, during which
they had often met in San Francisco.
When Mr.. Lombard heard that Miss
Dwyer and Mrs. Eustis, her invalid sis
ter, were going East in April, he dis
covered that he would have business
to attend to in New York at about that
time; and oddly enough-that is, if
you, choose to take that view OF it
when the ladies came to go it turned