THE TOY BALLOON


"I am the last of my kind. This is the very peak of loneliness."--_The
Murmuring Pine_.


There is a State in the North Mississippi Valley unexcelled for its
quiet beauty. To the casual traveler there may be a certain monotony
in the unending miles of rolling green hills, stretching on and on into
distant, pale skies. But the native of the State knows that the
monotony is only seeming.

He knows that the green hills shelter in their gentle valleys many
placid lakes. Some of them are shallow and bordered with wild rice.
Some are couched deep in the hollow of curving bluffs. Some are
carefully secreted in virgin pine woods. From the train these pines
are little suspected. Fire and the ax have long since destroyed any
trace of their growth along the railway.

Yet if the traveler but knew, those distant purple shadows against the
sky-line are primeval pine woods, strange to find in a State so highly
cultivated, so dotted with thriving towns.

In summer the whole great State is a wonderland of color. Wide wheat
lands of a delicate yellowish green sweep mile on mile till brought to
pause by the black green of the woods. Mighty acres of corn land,
blue-green, march on the heels of the wheat. Great pastures riotous
with early goldenrod are thick dotted with milk herds. White
farmhouses with red barns and little towns with gray roofs and green