Here I must say a word about a little follower, present even now before
my eyes. I have been accompanied on my whole journey from Barnegat to
Pike's peak by a pleasant floricultural friend, or rather millions of
friends--nothing more or less than a hardy little yellow five-petal'd
September and October wild-flower, growing I think everywhere in the
middle and northern United States. I had seen it on the Hudson and over
Long Island, and along the banks of the Delaware and through New Jersey,
(as years ago up the Connecticut, and one fall by Lake Champlain.) This
trip it follow'd me regularly, with its slender stem and eyes of gold,
from Cape May to the Kaw valley, and so through the cañons and to these
plains. In Missouri I saw immense fields all bright with it. Toward
western Illinois I woke up one morning in the sleeper and the first
thing when I drew the curtain of my berth and look'd out was its pretty
countenance and bending neck.
_Sept. 25th_.--Early morning--still going east after we leave Sterling,
Kansas, where I stopp'd a day and night. The sun up about half an hour;
nothing can be fresher or more beautiful than this time, this region. I
see quite a field of my yellow flower in full bloom. At intervals dots
of nice two-story houses, as we ride swiftly by. Over the immense area,
flat as a floor, visible for twenty miles in every direction in the
clear air, a prevalence of autumn-drab and reddish-tawny herbage--sparse
stacks of hay and enclosures, breaking the landscape--as we rumble by,
flocks of prairie-hens starting up. Between Sterling and Florence a
fine country. (Remembrances to E. L., my old-young soldier friend of war
times, and his wife and boy at S.)