inspiration is fleeting,beauty is vain,and the power of the mind for wonder limited.though the shining hosts themselves had risen choiring from the bottom of the gorge,they would not have prevented her papa and one baser than he from rolling stones down those stupendous rainbow-washed slides.seventeen hundred feet of steep-est pitch and rather more than seventeen hundred colors for log or bowlder to whirl through!
so we heaved things and saw them gather way and bound from white rock to red or yellow,dragging behind them torrents of color,till the noise of their descent ceased and they bounded a hundred yards clear at the last into the yellowstone.
"i've been down there,"said tom,that evening."it's easy to get down if you're careful--just sit an'slide;but getting up is worse.an'i found down below there two stones just marked with a picture of the canyon.i wouldn't sell these rocks not for fifteen dollars."and papa and i crawled down to the yellowstone--just above the first little fall--to wet a line for good luck.the round moon came up and turned the cliffs and pines into silver;and a two-pound trout came up also,and we slew him among the rocks,nearly tumbling into that wild river.
......
then out and away to livingstone once more.the maiden from new hampshire disappeared,papa and mamma with her.disappeared,too,the old lady from chicago,and the others.
vchicago "i know thy cunning and thy greed,thy hard high lust and wilful deed,and all thy glory loves to tell of specious gifts material."i have struck a city--a real city--and they call it chicago.
the other places do not count.san francisco was a pleasure-resort as well as a city,and salt lake was a phenomenon.
this place is the first american city i have encountered.it holds rather more than a million of people with bodies,and stands on the same sort of soil as calcutta.having seen it,iurgently desire never to see it again.it is inhabited by savages.its water is the water of the hooghly,and its air is dirt.also it says that it is the "boss"town of america.