The First Day II 



every day. Some day she will stop right there. He will be there 

 to see it. It will be a great day. At one bound, from a mere 

 pin point on the map, that little fellow's domicile will leap to an 

 honored place among the great metropoli of the world. The 

 Overland Limited stopped there. And he is no longer an obscure 

 country dweller in momma-patched overalls — he is a cosmopolite — 

 a citizen of the world — a man who has seen things, b'gosh." The 

 jesting kindliness of Wroe's voice as he makes this little comment 

 is pleasant to hear. 



We got breakfast west of Omaha. The cottonwoods are the 

 glory of Nebraska — the banks and kindly protecting belts of 

 them — their marching files along the distant water courses — their 

 methodical ascent of the rises — over the hills and far away. There 

 is a level gray ceiling of cloud, with a hint of broken ochreous white 

 and pale violet near the horizon, which seems to promise a clearing 

 of the weather before long. 



The corn is almost universally ready for shocking, but a couple 

 of quarter sections are passed yet green, evidently planted late. 

 We see crows over the corn shocks, darkly flapping, with wing 

 feathers momentarily separated against the sky, and over a little 

 creek — the Wroe bookplate. The cottonwoods are becoming 

 fewer, and the countryside bare. It is now more like the far 

 northwest, and suggests a chilly bleakness in late fall and winter. 

 Near a watertank an old fashioned surrey, quite a relic of mediae- 

 valism in these automobile-owning days, is passed, and a few 

 minutes later is seen the first automobile since leaving Chicago. 



The North Platte River shows stray channels bound with 

 gravel bars; silt bars and flats; islets bound within the flats, and 

 bordered all about with cottonwoods and dog-willows; a flash 

 of bulrushes here and there; a random patterning of russets, 

 dutch pinks, sunny yellows, pale violets, broken purple pinks 

 upon an undertone of gray green. Presently we leave the Platte, 

 and the cottonwoods vanish into the shelter of distant coulees. 



A few flocks of sheep are seen. What corn is observed seems 

 to be full-eared and fairly ripened, but it is noticeably stunted 

 as compared with that on the lower levels east of the Platte. The 

 only birds visible are hawks, of which the sparrow hawk, hen 

 harrier, and sharp-shinned hawk are identified, besides one kingly 

 fellow on a fence stake — a peregrine falcon, who, as he rises. 



