But now as he glided smoothly over the solid roadbed that ran straight westward into the remote distance with the salt waves almost lapping the tracks and leaving a white crust from their spume, with lofty mountains looming to south and to north,—as he stood on the rear platform of the heavy steel train observing this marvelous panorama,—a totally new conception of the renowned financier came to him. This was not done by watching the tape! It demanded will and force and imagination and faith—spiritual qualities in a man—to do this. The young traveler mentally did homage to the character that had created the wonderful highway over which for a day and a half he had been comfortably borne in luxurious ease. As he watched the blue mountains about Ogden fade into the haze, it seemed that New York, his life there, and all his conventional conceptions of the little world in which he had vainly struggled for existence also receded and grew smaller, less real. The train in its westward flight was bearing him forward into a new world, within as well as without! As the track began to wind up again to higher levels before taking its next great leap over the Sierras, Brainard went forward to the smoking room, his usual post of observation, where he sat through long, meditative hours, listening to the talk about him and gazing at the fleeting landscape. Whatever else it might mean,—this jaunt across the continent on a stranger’s errand,—it was bringing him a rich cargo of new ideas.