this modern world, anyway!" complained the Poet. "Five hundred years ago, we'd have evolved a cycle of legends out of those occurrences!"
"The tales are just as astonishing without legends," insisted the Bride, "as anything in the world, no matter how deep in fable."
Faring on southward, they passed toward Norris Basin in unastonished quietude. A flock of pelicans on Swan Lake created no sensation. A trio of elk in Willow Park crossed the road ahead of the surrey with no further effect than to arouse the Artist to some remarks on their anatomical perfection, and to bring to the surface the buried note-book of Professor Boggs. They stopped at Apollinaris Spring for refreshment, where the Groom held forth on the commercial possibilities of the waters, if the government would get off the lid, and let the country be developed.
"Nix on this conservation game," said he; and nobody argued with him.
At Obsidian Cliff, Mr. Driscoll whoaed up his cayuses to call the attention of his fares to the fact that here is the only glass road in the world.
"Glass?" queried the Professor, alighting, microscope in hand. "Really?"
"Shore," assured Aconite. "They cracked the road out of the cliff by building fires to heat the glass and splashin' cold water to make the chunks pop out – jelluk breakin' a tumbler washin' up the dishes."
"Oh, I see," said Professor Boggs. "Merely obsidian."
"Merely!" repeated Aconite. "Some folks always reminds me of the folks that branded old Jim Bridger as a liar becuz o' what he told of this here region eighty or ninety years ago. He built Fort Bridger, and Bridger's Peak was named after him, and he discovered Great Salt Lake, and I guess he wouldn't lie. He found this glass cliff and told about it then – and everybody said he was a liar. An' he found lots o' things that ain't on the map. We see a little thread o' country along this road, but the reel wonders of this Park hain't been seen sence Jim Bridger's time – an' not then. W'y, once back in this glass belt, he saw an elk feedin' in plain sight. Blazed away an' missed him. Elk kep' on feedin'. Blazed away ag'in. Elk unmoved. Bridger made a rush at the elk with his knife, and run smack into a mountain of this glass so clear that he couldn't see it, and shaped like a telescope glass that brought things close. That elk was twenty-five miles off."
"Giddap!" said Colonel Baggs to the horses. "Time to be on our way."
"After all," said the Poet, "we may not have lost the power to create a mythology."
"Bridger for my money," said the Artist, with conviction.
"Jim Bridger said that," asserted Aconite, "an' I believe him. They found Great Salt Lake where he said it was, all right, an' Bridger's Peak, an' the few things we've run across here. You wouldn't believe a mountain would whistle like a steam engine, would yeh? Well, I'll show you one – Roarin' Mountain – in less'n four miles ahead – in the actual act of tootin'."
"I believe all you said, Mr. Driscoll," said the Bride as they sat about the fire that night. "The glass mountain, the elk and all. After those indescribable Twin Lakes, the Roaring Mountain, and the Devil's Frying Pan, stewing, stewing, century after century – that's what makes it so inconceivable – the thought of time and eternity. The mountains are here for ever – that's plain; but these things in action – to think that they were sizzling and spouting just the same when Mr. Bridger was here ninety years ago, and a million years before that, maybe – it flabbergasts me!"
"Yes'm," said Aconite. "It shore do."
"You're it, Bride!" said the Hired Man, handing her a slip with "Bride" written upon it.
"I'm what?" asked the Bride.
"They've sawed the story off on you," returned the Hired Man. "I hope you'll give a better one than that there Poet told. I couldn't make head nor tail to that."
"It was rotten," said the Poet, looking at the Bride, "wasn't it?"
"I'm still living in a glass house," said the Bride. "Don't you know there's only one story a bride can tell?"
"Tell it, tell it!" was the cry – from all but the Poet and the Groom.
"I think I'll retire," said the Groom.
"Off with you into the shadows," said the Poet. "I'll contribute my last cigar – and we'll smoke the calumet on the other side of the tree where we can hear unseen."
About them the earth boiled and quivered and spouted. Little wisps of steam floated through the treetops. There were rushings and spoutings in the air – for they were in the Norris Geyser Basin. And here the Bride, sitting in the circle of men, her feet curled under her on a cushion of the surrey laid on the geyser-heated ground, fixed her eyes on the climbing moon and told her story.
THE TRIUMPH OF BILLY HELL
Now that so many of the girls are writing, the desire to express myself in that way comes upon me awfully strongly, sometimes.
She looked at the Poet, who nodded encouragement and understanding.
And yet a novel seems so complex and poky in the writing, as compared with a play, which brings one ever so much more exciting success. Louise Amerland says that all literature is autobiographical. If this is so, why can't I use my own romance in making a play? I think I could, if I could once get the scenario to – to discharge, as Billy says. He calls me a million M. F. condenser of dramatic electricity, but says that it's all statical, when it ought to flow. But the scenario must be possible, if I could only get the figures and events juggled about into place. There's Billy for the hero, and Pa, and the Pruntys, and me for the heroine, and comic figures like the butler and Miss Crowley and Atkins, and the crowds in Lincoln Park. I want the statue of Lincoln in it for one scene.
"That would be great," said the Artist.
After I was "finished" at St. Cecilia's I went into Pa's office as his secretary. He wasn't very enthusiastic, but I insisted on account of the sacredness of labor and its necessity in the plan of woman's life having revealed themselves to me as I read one of Mrs. Stetson's books. Pa fumed, and said I bothered him; but I insisted, and after a while I became proficient as a stenographer, and spelled such terms as "kilowatt," and "microfarad," and "electrolyte," in a way that forced encomiums from even Pa. Upon this experience I based many deductions as to the character of our captains of industry, one of which is that they are the most illogical set in the world, and the more illogical they are the more industry they are likely to captain.
Take Pa, for instance. He began with a pair of pliers, a pair of climbers, a lineman's belt, and a vast store of obstinacy; and he has built up the Mid-Continent Electric Company – for we are an electric family, though Billy says magnetic is the term.
"Spare me!" prayed the Groom.
But how does Pa order his life? He sends me to St. Cecilia's, which has no function but to prepare girls for the social swim, and is so exclusive that he had to lobby shamefully to get me in: and all the time he gloats – simply gloats– over the memory of the pliers, the climbers, the lineman's belt, and the obstinacy – no, not over the obstinacy, of course: that is merely what makes him gloat. And he hates Armour Institute graduates and Tech men poisonously, and wants his force made up of electricians who have come up, as he says, by hard knocks, and know the practical side. As if Billy Helmerston – but let me begin at the beginning.
I was in the office one day superintending Miss Crowley, the chief stenographer, in getting together the correspondence about an electric light and power installation in Oklahoma, when, just at
