XXXVII
AU REVOIR.
End things must, end howsoever things may.
—Browning.
This was our last excursion, and all three of us knew it as we gathered in our own coach again at Bingham Junction.
“At last,” remarks Madame, cheerfully—she is thinking that before many more days an apple-cheeked little damsel in far New England will be back in her arms—”we have come, sir, to the final chapter. The emptiness of your utmost corner-pigeon-hole will reproach you no longer. A few days more and Finis will be written across the completed manuscript, and our glorious cruise will be a thing of the past. Meanwhile, sir, remember your ‘Cochelunk,’—
‘Act, act in the living present,
Heart within and God o’er head.’”
“For instance?” I ask, after this homily.
“Observe, and make a note of, these great meadows of rich grass and the russet areas where hay has been cut. Note how, among the plumey masses left standing scarlet flowers are burning like coals—I wonder if prairie fires ever originate from their igniting the dry and feathery stalks! See how the Jordan flows stately down the center of this wide mountain trough, its banks crowded with farmhouses, each in its little copse of trees. Long lines of Lombardy poplars mark the boundaries of many farms and willows show where the big irrigating ditches pass or rivulets trickle. All these things are of the highest interest, and imply a mass of statistics you ought busily to gather and carefully to record in tables of precise and copious information.”