Colorado Springs.--Ascent of Pike's Peak.--The View from the Summit.--The Descent.--The Springs at Manitou.--Treasury of Indian Myth and Legend.--The Collection of Minerals.--Glen Eyrie.--The Garden of the Gods.--Victor Hugo on Sandstone 158 XXI Denver.--The Union Station.--The Departing Trains.--The Beauty of Denver.--Dean Hart and the Cathedral.--The Funeral Service.--Seeing Denver 166 XXII Through Kansas.--Kansas City.--The Cattle Yards.--The Bluffs.--The Fight between the Merrimac and the Monitor 172 XXIII St. Louis.--Beautiful Residences.--Forest Park.--The Levee.-- Alton.--Old Friends.--Legend of the Piasa.--The Confluence of the Rivers.--The Union Depot.--The Car of the International Correspondence Schools.--Crossing the Bridge 184 XXIV Through Illinois, Indiana, Ohio.--Columbus.--The Beautiful Station.--Church Service.--Nearing Home.--Parting Thoughts.--Our Amusements.--To Ethel Asleep.--A Parting Wish.--Pilgrimages of Patriotism 194 A FLIGHT IN SPRING I The Circumstances of the Flight.--The Start.--The Car "Lucania."--The Kitchen.--The Cook.--The Poetic Dinner.--Our Accommodations.--Visitors at Newark.--Improvised Theatricals.--Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore, Washington.--The Approaching War Crisis. It seemed like a dream to be invited to join a party on a private Pullman car for an extended tour of close on eight thousand miles, all in these our United States! Yet such was the opportunity which was generously offered us in this springtime of 1898. It was to be "A Flight in Spring" of most intense interest. The journey was to embrace in its continued circuit, from New York back to New York, points as widely separated as New Orleans and San Francisco. It was to traverse many States and Territories, and was to be accomplished with every adjunct of unstinted comfort and refinement. The expected morning when we were to start on our journey came at last, with that subdued wonder in it that the dream, so unlooked for, was really to be a fact. Bags and satchels were all packed, and with that happy feeling which always comes to the tourist when, all ready, he is safely ensconced in his cab, we sped to the Twenty-third Street ferry for the Pennsylvania depot in Jersey City. Never did the great Hudson River look so beautiful or New York so magnificent in our eyes as on that early morning of April 13th, when, through and beyond it all, we could see in imagination the great journey before us, all made more radiant by a munificent hospitality which had made it for us a fact--"A Flight in Spring"--which we had often thought of, but never hoped to see.