Hope and ambition--love and courage--the man wrestling with the earth--the woman who bears and brings up children--it is as though I had never felt, never seen them before.

They rise out of the dust and mist of our modern life--great shapes warm from the breast of Nature--and I hold my breath.

Behind them, for landscape, all the dumb age-long past of these plains and mountains; and in front, the future on the loom, and the young radiant nation, shuttle in hand, moving to and fro at her unfolding task! "How unfair to Mr.Arthur that this queer intoxication of mine should have altered him so in my foolish eyes--as though one had scrubbed all the golden varnish from an old picture, and left it crude and charmless.

It is not his fault--is mine.

In Europe we loved the same things; his pleasure kindled mine.