Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/337

Rh to be regretted; because it does not become the Great West to exclude any form of the divine life. And what indeed, are all the various Christian communities other than various pews in the same church, dividing the whole into groups of families or relations?

The old pilgrim-church seems to me now to be the one which exhibits most indwelling life, which grows and expands itself to embrace the whole of human life, and to baptise it to the kingdom of God.

Oct. 29th.—I have established myself excellently at the American hotel, and I do not intend, during the few days that I shall remain here, to accept the kind invitation which I have received to a beautiful, private home. I have here my nice little Irish maid, Margaret, and have everything exactly as I wish—among the rest potatoes, morning, noon, and night, quite as good as our Årsta potatoes. I enjoy my freedom and my solitary rambles over the hills round the town during these fine days. Yesterday, the agreeable, liberal-minded young minister, Mr. Magoan, drove me and a lady, a friend of his, to a height—Pilot Knob, I think, it is called—by the Mississippi, from which we were to see the sun set. Arrived there we clambered up among bushes, and long grass, and stones,—difficult enough; and obtained, when we had gained the summit, one of those ocean-like land views which the Great West only presents. And through that infinite billowy plain rolled the Mississippi, like a vein of silver, far, far away into the immeasurable distance; and over land and river reposed the misty veil of the Indian summer and its inexpressible, gentle peace. The sun had just set; but a roseate glow lay like a joyful benediction over that vast fertile region. It was indescribably grand and pleasant.

I thought how a year ago, at this season, my spirit had been depressed at New York; how, later, it darkened still more for me at Boston, and how I then thought “Shall I