Those mellow hours by the inland sea, where sits the Garden City, with its wide grass-grown streets and its vine-veiled cottages basking in summer sunshine, were precious indeed!  We had ample opportunity for developing philosophy, sentiment and politics at one sitting.  Coming out of the fair and foul refuge of the fleshly saints, I thought of the wisdom of the French poet who once said to me, “Oui, monsieur:  life is an oasis in which there is many a desert.”  In the unfruitful shoots of those thorn-bearing vines and withered fig trees I learned the burden of the desert:  Though it blossom as the rose, if it yield not honey it shall be laid waste; though it deck itself with beauty, though it sing with the voice of the charmer, its fairness is a mock and its song is the song of the harlot.  Harbor it not in your hearts.  Let it be purged of uncleanness, let the stain be washed from it.  Though the builders build cunningly, they have builded in vain.  There is blood on their lintels, and their hearts are full of lust.  He that sits in the seat of the scornful and is girded about with pride, let him fall as the tree falls, even the king of the forest, for there is rottenness at the core.

Like pilgrims in the earthly paradise we ploughed the long grass of the prairies; like a fiery snake our train trailed over the flowering land; its long undulations were no impediment; the grassy billows parted before us; we cleft the young forests that have here and there sprung up at the call of patient husbandry; myriads of wild-fowl wheeled over the fragrant and boundless fields; every flower in the floral calendar seemed at home in those meadow-lands of the world:  the sunset was not more glorious than the gentle slopes that swept to our feet like a long wave of the sea, and then broke in a foam of flowers.  Not only was the delicious day promise-crammed, but the night, loud with the chirp of the cricket and the cry of the sentinel owl, seemed the realization of some splendid dream.

Out of the redundant and prophetic life of that land I heard a prophecy, and the prophecy was the burden of the prairies.  It is the chant of the future, full of life and hope.  I see now rows of men and women, the toilers of the earth; they have planted forests and the strong wind is stayed; they have broken the soil and the grain is breast-high; they are merry, for they are free, and their stores increase with the years.  Wine and oil are their portion, and fat kine and all manner of cunning workmanship; their cities are greater and better than the old cities, for they are builded on virgin soil; and the day shall come when the jubilee of the prairies will assemble the hosts from the borders of the two seas, and they will hear their praises sung and receive tribute, for the strength of the land is theirs.