282 SIR WILLIAM RAMSAY 



letters as to arrangements for the celebration. As a 

 matter of fact, the invitation proper and other directions 

 had been sent to London in such a superior box that it 

 was never opened, but put aside for their return. It 

 is " a far cry " from Great Falls to Houston and involves 

 a long cross-country journey, first southwards and then 

 through the length of Texas. It was not much out of 

 their way to stop at Denver and at Colorado Springs. 

 Wherever Ramsay and his wife went they found old 

 students, and at the latter place an old student invited 

 them to lunch to meet Dr. Woodrow Wilson, not yet 

 President, but on an election tour, and to hear him 

 address a meeting in the afternoon. Ramsay, however, 

 had arranged to spend the day in an excursion up 

 Pike's Peak, and to see the Garden of the Gods. So 

 he was obliged to decline the invitation. Had he fore- 

 seen the part which would be played by this man in 

 the great European struggle it is likely that the Peak 

 would have remained unvisited and the Garden of the 

 Gods unseen. As it was the day was very wonderfully 

 spent. Oddly enough the last signatures in the book of 

 visitors to the hut were those of one of the Chemical 

 Congress parties, which had made the longest tour and 

 been there only the day before. From the top the view 

 was magnificent. All about the nearer range were snow 

 and cloud effects never to be forgotten, and, far away 

 in the faint distance the peaks of the Sierra Nevada, 

 like mountains in a dream. This was destined to be the 

 nearest approach to the Pacific coast, which Ramsay 



