In many ways I had drawn near to this belief before, and I
have since many times confirmed it. One occasion, however, stands out in
my memory even more intensely than those I have made bold to
mention,--one experience that brought me near to my mother earth, as
that out of which I was formed and to which I shall return, and made
these things seem as natural as to draw my breath from the sister
element of air. I had returned to the West; and while there, wandering
in various places, I went to a small town, hardly more than a hamlet,
some few hundred miles beyond the Missouri, where the mighty railroad,
putting out a long feeler for the future, had halted its great steel
branch--sinking like a thunderbolt into the ground for no imaginable
reason, and affecting me vaguely with a sense of utmost limits. There a
younger friend, five years my junior, in his lonely struggle with life
bore to live, in such a camp of pioneer civilization as made my heart
fail at first sight, though not unused to the meagreness, crudity, and
hardness of such a place; but there I had come to take the warm welcome
of his hands and look once more into his face before time should part
us.
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