where prayers were answered?

During that summer when the West was overrun with tourists who
grumbled about everything from the crowded trains to the way in
which sea-foods were served, this little girl sat in one of the hot
office buildings of Chicago and across the stretch of miles drew to
herself the spirit of that country of coming days. Thousands rode in
Pullman cars along the banks of the Columbia--saw, and felt not; she
sat before her typewriter in a close, noisy room and heard the
cooling rush of waters and got the freeing message of the pines. In
some rare moments when she rose from the things about her to the
things of which she dreamed she possessed the whole great land, and
as the sultry days sapped of her meagre strength, and the bending
over the typewriter cramped an already too cramped chest she clung
with a more and more passionate tenacity to the bigness and the
beauty and rightness of things Out There. And it was so kind to
her--that land of deep breaths and restoring breezes. It never shut
her out. It always kept itself bigger and more wonderful than one
could ever hope to fancy it.

And the night she found the picture she knew that it was all really
so. That was why it was so momentous a night. The picture was a
dream visualised--a dreamer vindicated. They had pictures in the
office, of course--some pictures trying to tell of that very kind of
a place. But those were just pictures; this _proved_ it, told
what it meant. It told that she had been right, and there was joy in
knowing that she had known. She clung to the picture as one would to
that which proves as real all one has long held dear, loved it as
the dreamer loves that which secures him in his dreaming.