Chapter 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."

"Eh?" I say.

What is the matter with the Madame? Is she making fun of somebody whom she ought to hold in a respect almost amounting to awe? Feeling that I ought to assert myself I gently hint that this is my affair, and her help is uncalled for in the matter of book-making; that her own department is wide enough for all her energies; and that--

But here Chum interrupts in that strix-like way of his which always so commands attention that one must listen whether or no.

This young man is possessed of a family heirloom in the shape of several hundred traditions of a more or less mythical grandfather. Some of these tales are distinctly poetical, while none of them are prosy. It is one of the traditions coined in the ingenious brain of this talented old gentleman with which we are now regaled, _apropos_ of the matter in hand.

The old gentleman, it appears, was once--but let his heir-apparent--

"Who," the Madame interrupts maliciously, "has very little hair apparent."

"Let him," I say, ignoring the insinuation, "tell his own story."

"Why it was this way, as you very justly remark. The old gentleman was once captured by the Indians, who, instead of scalping him, decided to make him a beast of burden. They, therefore, loaded him down with cooking utensils, the most prominent article of which was the useful, but heavy frying-pan known in the vernacular as 'skillet.' Each Indian deposited upon my grandfather's venerable and enduring back, his skillet. The old gentleman dare not protest, but meekly submitted and trudged off under his Atlas-like burden. After two hours hard marching, however, he resolved to argue the question, so he shouted imperatively,

"'Halt!'

"The Indians paused in wonder. The venerable victim climbed upon a fallen tree and delivered his famous forensic effort, as follows:

"'Mr. Injuns! I have a proposition to make. _I move that every Injun carry his own skillet._'

"The modesty and yet fairness of this proposition met with an enthusiastic reception and every Indian after that 'carried his own skillet,' which commendable example it would be well for all to follow."

"That's a good story!" I remarked. "A good moral story! This expedition, my dear Madame, was for fun, not for geographical pedantry; and my book shall make no pretense to be a cyclopædia, a guide, or a useful companion of any sort, but just a jolly story of a care-forgetting vacation. If it jogs the curiosity, whets the appetite, nerves the fingers, weak through long toil in tying, and untying purse strings, to come and see what _we_ have seen, that is all the effect that can be expected; and this much done, the traveller who follows our uncertain trail will find out far more for himself than we ever could hope to tell him. Seeing Colorado, no matter how briefly,

'Of her bright face, one glance will trace
A picture on the brain,
And of her voice in echoing hearts
A sound must long remain.'

"But here we are at Salt Lake, and home again, for one more gay dinner in the red-walled car; one more gay evening under the cool stars; one more night's rest in the queer little stateroom. To-morrow, Chum, old 'friend and fellow-student,' in lonely grandeur you will be taking the long-to-be-remembered 'special' swiftly back to Denver; while the Madame and I are rolling away to the Golden Gate. Fill your glasses. And what shall the toast be? The God-wrought landscape we have seen? The wide-awake people we have known? The splendid railroad whose achievements we know and of whose hospitality we have partaken? The glorious 'good times' we've had? The stores of health we have laid away? Ay, all these and more. Let us toast each other; and then--

GOOD NIGHT!"

* * * * *

Transcriber's note:

The approximate position of each illustration, including any caption text, is shown as . Those which occur in the middle of paragraphs are positioned at the nearest paragraph break.

Punctuation is sometimes missing from the images used to create this text, and has been restored. Normally, there is space where the punctuation was intended. Commas are sometimes vestigial, appearing as full stops, and have also been restored, without further comment. On occasion the punctuation is simply incorrect, and has been changed to follow the conventions elsewhere.

For example, from p. 81:

"... or deep blue, or washed with an amethystine tint[,/.] Arching over
all bends the cloudless azure of the canopy."

or, from p. 237:

so here it is, or at least so much of it as relates to the boy[:]

The few instances of the 'oe' ligature have been rendered as separate characters.

Spelling is not entirely consistent and is left as printed, with the exceptions noted below. Hyphenation of compound words varies. Where the sole instance appears on a line break, the hyphen is generally retained.

The word 'height' was spelled twice as 'hight' (p. 225 & 316), and both instances were retained. The caption of the image on p. 21 is spelled 'PHEBE', but appears as 'PHOEBE' in the list of illustrations. It is also retained.

The following table summarizes any other obvious printer's errors that have been corrected. It also includes a number of dubious spellings or questionable usage. Misspellings in quoted text are retained.

p. 15 mig[r]atory Added.

p. 175 I've hooked him Added.

p. 237 as it relates to the boy[:] Added.

p. 238 [(]until my husband bought him a cap) Added.

p. 281 the easter[n]most buttress Added.

p. 285 reconnoisance _sic_

p. 303 and beh[e/o]ld the mountains of Utah. Corrected.

p. 309 a strange, [wierd], grand region _sic_

p. 314 catatrophe/catastrophe Corrected.

p. 315 Wel[c]hmen _sic_

p. 315 chara[c]teristic Corrected.

p. 319 eq[u]ally Added.

p. 320 a[t/s] they called the redskins Corrected.

p. 320 su[r]burban Removed.

p. 321 Brewer's [grakle] _sic_

p. 336 the Mediterranean is considerably [salter] _sic_
than the open Atlantic

p. 339 and our occasional emergenc[i]es into it Corrected.