We went down Cataract Mountain the same way as the water, down to flower-spread meads and spacious fir-woods and widening streams. Up above us the water chariots came racing behind white horses four abreast, five abreast, natural fountains played on every hand, and high as heaven itself tiny cataracts tipped over and fell downwards into veils, into smoke, into nothingness. Characteristic of the place were the great volumes of water which plunged under hollow snow-crusts to emerge forty feet lower down after a momentary vigil in the snow. This is the valley of Cataract Creek, bounded by lofty and perhaps impassable rocks, but in itself a garden to the last patch of mould and the last bright flower. * * * * * WE made our way along Haystack Butte toward Mount Grinnell, which, like a mighty fortress, stood facing us in the line of our tramp. Was it the beauty of the garden or was it the limpidity of the streams that set us talking of England? It is a peculiarly happy subject with the poet, who, with all his Americanism, has a true reverence for the fountain of English. This July, just before setting out for the Rockies, he received an invitation from Robert Bridges, the British poet laureate, to become a member of the “Society for Pure English.” To that extent has Oxford at least recognised that Vachel Lindsay is no mere performer or charlatan and not the “jazz-poet.” To some people in England Vachel came as a prophet, and his courtly and, indeed, stately manners, the profound obeisance which he made with his hat before entering a church or a school or a house, revealed him as an American of the Washingtonian cast. Some would-be cynical, smart undergraduate was showing Vachel King’s College Chapel at Cambridge, and said to him: “The last American we showed round when we asked him what he thought of it, said, ‘Some God-box.’” And he seemed to think that very amusing, and could not understand Lindsay’s silence on the point. “He did not know for how many years I had lectured on the Gothic and what it meant to me,” said Vachel. Naturally, I chaffed my companion not a little on his belonging to the S.P.E., and called him to order whenever the arduousness of our campaign prompted him to break across the pure classic of Shakespeare’s tongue, and I made him take note of many expressions, such as “being wished on,” and “handing a man the canned goods,” which I bade him chase from America into the sea. “I should only be too glad, Stephen,” said he, “if I could get rid of ‘motivate’ and a man’s ‘implications’ and ‘the last analysis’ and ‘the twilight zone’ and ‘canned metaphor’ and the dollar adjectives, a ‘ten-million-dollar building’ and a ‘million-dollar bride.’” [Illustration] _Oxford has asked Chicago To lend its purifying aid To the King’s English. O Oxford! O Bridges!_ [Illustration: THE INVISIBLE PLAYMATE JOINS US] XXII. “GO WEST, YOUNG MAN”