_The Guardsman and the Western Bard_[1] _Went hiking hand in hand. They felt uplifted much to see The prospects wide and grand. “A thousand leagues,” said one, “Oh Steve, From any boardwalk band.”_ _“How fine the air, immense the view! The trees are large and green. See! Here are glades and crystal rills, And every scent and petal fills_ _Our souls with pure ecstatic thrills. Afflatus holds the scene!” The Guardsman pointed to the sun. “It’s supper time, I mean.”_ _And as they munched the cracker thin And quaffed eau naturel, The gates of heaven were oped--and all Its liquid contents fell. They felt the truth that bards have sung: Heaven is a limpid well._ _Then night came on, that covers all Of high and mean degree, The king, the clown, the russet gown, The land, the clouds, the sea. “And yet I scarcely feel,” said one, “It really covers me.”_ _Long time they sought sweet slumber’s balm, Kind antidote to care. “O soft embalmer,” was their psalm That filled the mountain air. Embalmer! Something rough in pine Was as all they wanted there._ _A chilly dawn illumed the East, Most wonderfully wet. And evermore their pangs increased, Nor heaven’s libations ever ceased ... (No further messages released They’re on that mountain yet)._ [1] Contributed by “Rusticus” to the _New York Evening Post_ at this point in our adventures. [Illustration: WHEN HE IS IN PAIN HE CALLETH FOR THE BOTTLE] IX. “WIFE, GIVE ME THE PAIN-KILLER” “I SUFFERED forty-seven separate chills,” said the poet. “And forty-seven separate cramps,” said I. Did we sleep? Six hours passed somehow and it seemed not so long as waiting that time for a train or for a theatre to open. Lindsay lay in a sort of hole. I lay with my head half over the abyss. I watched the stars swim out of the clouds above. I saw the blackness of the bottomless below us become grey as the clouds formed there. Lindsay cried out once: “I’m getting up to light a fire.” “Impossible!” I rejoined. “There’s no wood, and no place to light it.” “I am afraid the clouds are below us; we may have to stay up here all day,” I whispered, an hour before dawn. But it was all the same to the poet, whose thoughts were entirely in the present. Destiny, however, was kind to us. The clouds at last lifted and drifted, and angels at sunrise lifted white curtains and smiled at us.