How much he had meant to me in all the days of my boyhood! As the master of the threshing machine forty years agone, he had filled my childish heart with worship. As the swift-footed deer trailer, the patient bee-hunter, the silent lover of the forest, he had held my regard and though he had never quite risen to the high place which my Uncle David occupied in my boyhood's worship, he had always been to me a picturesque and kindly figure. Year by year I had watched his giant form stoop, and his black beard wax thin and white, and now, here he sat almost at the end of his trail, unable to move, yet expressing a kind of elemental bravery, a philosophic patience which moved me as no words of lamentation could have done. Strange malady! He who had never met his match in stark strength could not now by the exercise of all his will, lift that limp arm from his side and as I sat beside him I recalled my last sad meeting with Major Powell, the man who first guided a canoe through the Grand Canon of the Colorado, and in my mind arose a conception of what these two men, each in his kind represented in the story of American pioneering. One the far-famed explorer, the other the unknown rifleman behind the plow. With William McClintock--with my father, with Major Powell, a whole world, a splendid and heroic world was passing never to return, and when I took my uncle's hand in parting I was almost certain that I should never see him again. Once he was king of forest men. To him a snow-capped mountain range Was but a line, a place of mark, A view-point on the trail. Then He had no dread of dark, No fear of change. Now an uprolled rug upon the floor Appalls his feet. His withered arm Shakes at the menace of a door, And every wind-waft does him harm. God! 'Tis a piteous thing to see This ranger of the hills confined To the small compass of his room Like a chained eagle on a tree, Lax-winged and gray and blind. Only in dreams he sees the bloom On far hills where the red deer run. Only in memory guides the light canoe Or stalks the bear with dog and polished gun. In him behold the story of the West, The chronicle of rifleman behind the plow, Typing the life of those who knew No barrier but the sunset in their quest. On his bent head and grizzled hair Is set the crown of those who shew New cunning to the wolf, new courage to the bear. Another evidence of melancholy change came to me in the failing powers of Ladrone, my mountain horse, who had come through the winter very badly. I found him standing in the pasture, weak and inactive, taking no interest in the rich grasses under his feet. In the belief that exercise would do him good, I saddled him and started to ride about the square, but soon drew rein. He had not the strength to carry me!