opportunity offered; to Jim it was a good country for staging, except a
few "blamed sloughs where the bottom had fell out." But the enthusiastic
eyes of young Albert Charlton despised all sordid and "culinary uses" of
the earth; to him this limitless vista of waving wild grass, these green
meadows and treeless hills dotted everywhere with purple and yellow
flowers, was a sight of Nature in her noblest mood. Such rolling hills
behind hills! If those _rolls_ could be called hills! After an hour the
coach had gradually ascended to the summit of the "divide" between Purple
River on the one side and Big Gun River on the other, and the rows of
willows and cotton-woods that hung over the water's edge--the only trees
under the whole sky--marked distinctly the meandering lines of the two
streams. Albert Charlton shouted and laughed; he stood up beside Jim, and
cried out that it was a paradise.

"Mebbe 'tis," sneered Jim, "Anyway, it's got more'n one devil into it.
_Gil_--lang!"

And under the inspiration of the scenery, Albert, with the impulsiveness
of a young man, unfolded to Whisky Jim all the beauties of his own
theories: how a man should live naturally and let other creatures live;
how much better a man was without flesh-eating; how wrong it was to
speculate, and that a speculator gave nothing in return; and that it was
not best to wear flannels, seeing one should harden his body to endure
cold and all that; and how a man should let his beard grow, not use
tobacco nor coffee nor whisky, should get up at four o'clock in the
morning and go to bed early.

"Looky here, mister!" said the Superior Being, after a while. "I wouldn't
naow, ef I was you!"