To Council Grove, and old Pawnee Rock, the Cimarron Crossing of the Arkansas River, the open plain about the site of old Fort Bent—­where only ghosts of walls and the court remain, and on to Santa Fe, dreamy and picturesque—­hoary with age, and sweet with sacred memories, we wandered on our golden-wedding trail.

The name of Narveo in New Mexico still stands for gentleman.  The old church of San Miguel still shelters troubled hearts, and in the San Christobal valley the Pictured Rocks still build up a rude stair for feet that still may need the sanctuary rim of safety set about them.  Along the length of the old trail a marvelous fifty years have enriched a history whose epic days record the deeds of vanguards, who foreran and builded for the softer days of golden-wedding years.

The last lap of all that wondrous journey bore us in ease and comfort beyond the desert—­the Africa, of Aunty Boone’s weird fancy—­to the Grand Canon of the Colorado.  Here, as of old, the riven crust, in its eternal silence, and sublimity, and beauty indescribable, calmly, year by year, reveals its mighty purpose: 

    To quarry the heart of earth,
        Till, in the rock’s red rise,
      Its age and birth, through an awful girth
      Of strata, should show the wonder-worth
        Of patience to all eyes.

Amid luxurious surroundings we lived the October days upon the canon’s rim, where, half a century ago, we had gone in hardship and looked on tragedy.  We crept down all the dizzy lengths to the very heart of it, and ate and slept in easy comfort, and gazed upward at the sky-cleaving edges thousands of feet above us; we stood beside the raging Colorado River, which no man had explored when we first looked upon it here.  In the serene hours of our sunset years we went back in memory over the long way our feet had come.  Life is easy for us now, made so by all the splendid, simple forces of those who, in justice, honesty, and broad human sympathy build enduring empire.  Not empire gained by bomb and liquid fire, defended by sharp entanglement and cross-trenched to shut out enemies; but empire builded on the commerce of the land, value for value; empire of bridged rivers, quick transportation on steel-marked trails that girdle harvest fields and fruitful pastures; empire of homes and schools and sacred shrines.

Our fifty golden years have seen such empire rise and grow before our eyes, made great by thrift and business sense, swayed by the Golden Rule.  An empire rich in love and sweet romance and thrilling deeds of courage and self-sacrifice.  Glad am I to have been a vanguard of its trails upon the Kansas prairies and the far Western plains, sure now, as always down the years, that its old law is still a righteous one:  To that which is good—­

“HOLD FAST.”

THE END

BOOKS BY SIR GILBERT PARKER

THE WORLD FOR SALE THE MONEY MASTER THE JUDGMENT HOUSE THE RIGHT OF WAY THE LADDER OF SWORDS THE WEAVERS THE BATTLE OF THE STRONG WHEN VALMOND CAME TO PONTIAC THE LANE THAT HAD NO TURNING NORTHERN LIGHTS PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE AN ADVENTURER OF THE NORTH A ROMANY OF THE SNOWS CUMNER’S SON, AND OTHER SOUTH SEA FOLK