The party in the director’s car proved a merry one.  Mrs. Wade, a jolly, motherly woman, fond of the good things of life, and delighting in making people comfortable, had spared no pains of preparation.  There were quantities of easy-chairs and fans and eau-de-cologne; the larder was stocked with all imaginable dainties,—­iced tea, lemonade, and champagne cup flowed on the least provocation for all the hot moments, and each table was a bank of flowers.  Each lady had a superb bouquet; and on the second day a great tin box of freshly-cut roses met them at Pueblo, so that they came back as gayly furnished forth as they went.  Having the privilege of the road, the car was attached or detached to suit their convenience, and this enabled them to command daylight for all the finest points of the excursion.

First of these was the Royal Gorge, where the Arkansas River pours through a magnificent canyon, between precipices so steep and with curves so sharp that only engineering genius of the most daring order could, it would seem, have devised a way through.  Then, after a pause at the pretty town of Salida, with the magnificent range of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in full sight, they began to mount the pass over long loops of rail, which doubled and re-doubled on themselves again and again on their way to the summit.  The train had been divided; and the first half with its two engines was seen at times puffing and snorting directly overhead of the second half on the lower curve.

With each hundred feet of elevation, the view changed and widened.  Now it was of over-lapping hills set with little mesas, like folds of green velvet flung over the rocks; now of dim-seen valley depths with winding links of silver rivers; and again of countless mountain peaks sharp-cut against the sunset sky,—­some rosy pink, some shining with snow.

The flowers were a continual marvel.  At the top of the pass, eleven thousand feet and more above the sea, their colors and their abundance were more profuse and splendid than on the lower levels.  There were whole fields of pentstemons, pink, blue, royal purple, or the rare scarlet variety, like stems of asparagus strung with rubies.  There were masses of gillias, and of wonderful coreopsis, enormous cream-colored stars with deep-orange centres, and deep yellow ones with scarlet centres; thickets of snowy-cupped mentzelia and of wild rose; while here and there a tall red lily burned like a little lonely flame in the green, or regiments of convolvuli waved their stately heads.

From below came now and again the tinkle of distant cow-bells.  These, and the plaintive coo of mourning-doves in the branches, and the rush of the wind, which was like cool flower-scented wine, was all that broke the stillness of the high places.

    “To think I’m so much nearer heaven
     Than when I was a boy,”

misquoted Clover, as she sat on the rear platform of the car, with Poppy, and Thurber Wade.