as though I had never heard of them before, and the
idea came to me like an original thought: How per-
fectly enormous they are! And how like the sea!

I had discovered for myself the truth of another plati-
tude.

For a long time I lay comfortably in my berth, gazing
out at the appalling spread of land and sky. Even at
sea the great bowl of the sky had never looked so vast
to me. The land was nothing to it. In the foreground
there was nothing; in the middle distance, nothing; in
the distance, nothing--nothing, nothing, nothing, met
the eye in all that treeless waste of brown and gray
which lay between the railroad line and the horizon, on
which was discernible the faint outlines of several ships
--ships which were in reality a house, a windmill and a
barn.

Presently our craft--for I had the feeling that I was
on a ship at anchor--got under way. On we sailed over
the ocean of land for mile upon mile, each mile like the
one before it and the one that followed, save only when
we passed a little fleet of houses, like fishing boats at
sea, or crossed an inconsequential wagon road, resem-
bling the faintly discernible wake of some ship, long
since out of sight.

Presently I arose and joining my companion, went to
the dining car for breakfast. He too had fallen under
the spell of the prairies. We sat over our meal and
stared out of the window like a pair of images. After
breakfast it was the same: we returned to our car and

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