38 WITH EARTH AND SKY 
utterly vanished from the earth. A prairie cannot 
be conserved in its wild wealth of beauty save 
where it is defended alike from the share of the 
plow and the cattle herd. There only the wild 
flowers spring and flutter like banners of an 
imaginary pageant and all the wild wonder of 
prairie growth has its way and wakens infinite 
wonder in such as care to see. 
The journey was on the Chicago and Alton 
Railroad running from Saint Louis to Chicago. 
The train was a flyer, and well named. It 
tarried not. I wish it had. But I would have 
trains stopping all the time if I were conductor 
on prairies these days of radiant spring. Trains 
never would arrive on schedule time. They 
might start by schedule, but they would pro- 
ceed by a series of stops. Spring is so brief 
that to lose a minute of its bewildering career 
impresses me as a crime against the eternal 
beauty of the world. Well for the traveling 
public I am no conductor; I am a conducted. 
So we sped along. Things flung past me as in 
high dudgeon. Sometimes what was rushing by 
I could not make out. My eyes were not in- 
stantaneous. I made a rush to the window, as 
it were, but the couple had gotten past before 
I could make out who they were. It was a 
festival of color and shimmer and _ glancing 
lamps of many-colored flame. Used to the en- 
trancement of the spring, yet all was new as 
