A WALK ALONG A RAILROAD 

 IN JUNE 



SHE season was mid-June. The region was a 

 I prairie. The place was a five-mile stretch of 

 railroad running eastward, undeviatingly as the 

 flight of an arrow. Landing at a village in the 

 early morning, with three hours to wait for my 

 train, the out-of-doors challenged me to walk to 

 the next hamlet ; and, my custom being never 

 to take a dare from nature if my employment 

 will allow me leisure, I swung out right gayly 

 to answer the challenge. The day was dustless, 

 rains having sprinkled field and road and gardens 

 quite recently; the skies were dimmed with a 

 veil of cloud not dense enough to obscure the 

 sun nor to dim the blue completely, but enough to calm the sunlight into 

 entire pleasantness for a walk like mine. A pleasant wind blew from 

 the east and kept the track unhesitatingly as a locomotive, while I, with 

 the butterflies and wild bees, drifted from side to side as flowers and 

 grasses and tangle of vines invited me. 



Now, a railroad is what our friend Ruskin railed at with his delight- 

 ful spleen ; and the logic of his complaint was that the railroad stood 

 for utility and John Ruskin stood for nature, and what John Ruskin 

 stood for was what should be. Ruskin had all the sweet dogmatism 

 and self-confidence of a little child. I like his love of field and flood ; 

 more still, I love it, but scarcely enjoy his vituperation, though put into 

 English sweet enough to make even scolding charming, nor enjoy it at 

 all when he raves against those modern appliances which have changed 

 the economic world and us, from provincials into cosmopolites. And 



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