a moving-picture company!  The wholesale milliner called me “Miss Black Eyes,” and was so genial in manner that I joined Charley at the end of the parade and heard stories of his life which may or may not have been true.  Every now and then Jesse James, an especially independent mule, would pause, and with deliberation and vigor kick at an inaccessible fly on the hinder parts of his person, while his rider shrieked loudly for help, and the procession halted till calm was restored.  At last we reached the end of the trail.  Somewhere I have a snap-shot of myself standing on Glacier Point, that rock that juts out over the valley, clinging to Charley’s hand, for I found that standing there with the snow falling, looking down thousands of feet, made me crave a hand to keep the snowflakes from drawing me down.  The wholesale milliner and the rest considered me a reckless soul, and many were the falsetto shrieks they emitted if I went within ten feet of the edge of the precipice.  They did not realize the insurance and assurance of Charley’s hand.

Of course I endured the anguish of a first horseback ride for the next day or two, but it was worth it, and by the time we were ready to start for home I could sit down quite comfortably.  The trip was accomplished without a jolt or jog sufficient to disarrange Grandmother’s curls.  Aunty and I were always so thankful that we defied the family and let her have her last adventure, for soon afterward her mind began to grow dim.  For myself, I treasure the memory both for her sake, and because I can’t climb trails myself any more, and that is something I didn’t miss.  Was it Schopenhauer or George Ade who said, “What you’ve had you’ve got”?

Twenty years later another party of four, consisting of a husband and two boys, were led by a lady Moses into the promised land, and were met by an old friend, the Civil War veteran, with a motor instead of his pair of black horses!  He was too old to drive, but he had come to welcome me back.  Billie and Joedy were thrilled.  They adored the tales of his twelve battles and the hole in his knee, even more than their mother had before them, being younger and boys.  It was as lovely a land as I had remembered it, only, of course, there were changes.  The motor showed that.  I should not say that the tempo of life had been quickened so much as that its radius had been widened, or that the focus was different; the old spell was the same.  To reconcile the past and the present, I have thought of a beautiful compromise.  Why not a motor van?  The family jeered at me when I first suggested that we spend J——­’s next vacation meandering up the coast in one.  Of course, the boys adored the idea at first, but sober second thoughts for mother made them pause.

Billie:  “But, Muvs, you’d hate it, you couldn’t have a box spring!”

Joedy:  “And you don’t like to wash dishes.”

Quite true.  I had thought of all that myself.  I don’t like to wash dishes, but we use far more than we really need to use, and anyway I had rather decided that I wouldn’t wash them.  As to the bed-spring, I could have an air mattress, for while it’s a little like sleeping on a captive balloon, it doesn’t irritate your bones like a camp cot.