Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/265

Rh over the prairie on all sides, that I resolved to remain here for a couple of days, in order that I might, in peace and solitude, become acquainted with the prairie and the sunflowers.

The house possessed but one guest chamber, and that a little garret within a large garret, in which were lodged half-a-dozen labouring men. But I was assured that they were very silent and well-behaved, and I was furnished with a piece of wood, with which to fasten the hasp of my door inside, as there was no lock. The room was clean and light, although very low and badly arranged; and I was glad to take up my abode in it, spite of the break-neck steps by which it was reached.

I spent nearly the whole of yesterday out in the prairie, now wandering over it, and gazing out over its infinite extent, which seemed, as it were, to expand and give wings to body and soul; and now sitting among sunflowers and asters, beside a little hillock covered with bushes, reading Emerson, that extraordinary Ariel, refreshing, but evanescent, and evanescent in his philosophic flights as the fugitive wind which sweeps across the prairie, and brings forth from the strings of the electric telegraph melodious tones, which sound and die away at the same moment. His philosophy is like that wind; he himself is something much beyond it, and much better. It is his own individuality which gives that wonderfully bewitching expression to these imperfect concords.

How grand is the impression produced by this infinite expanse of plain, with its solitude and its silence! In truth, it enables the soul to expand and grow, to have a freer and deeper respiration. That great West! Yes, indeed, but what solitude! I saw no habitations, except the little house at which I was staying; no human beings, no animals; nothing except heaven and the flower-strewn earth. The day was beautiful and warm, and the sun