It was a curious cut, a rough glade, an alley through the tall pines. We walked along it a short way; we discerned where it stretched far over a mountain-side, a mere marking in the uniform green of the forest-roof. We came down to where the lake water was lapping on the shore, and the great mountains in their fastnesses stood about us. We found frontier-post No. 276, and then I stood on the Canada side and Vachel Lindsay stood on the America side, and we put our wrists on the top of the post. As we two had become friends and learned to live together without quarrelling, so might our nations! It was a happy moment in our tramping. Then, as it was four in the afternoon, I proposed having tea, much to the mirth of the poet. For had we not finished the last of our coffee at our last American resting-place? Fittingly we began on tea when we entered the Empire. There was a change of scenery; fresher air, aspen groves, red hips on many briars. A beautiful mountain lifted its citadelled peak into a grey unearthly radiance. We climbed Mount Bertha, and the hillsides were massed with young slender pines that never grow hoary or old, but die whilst they are young, and are supplanted by the ever-new--forests of everlasting youth. The grandeur of the mountains increased upon us till all was in the sublimity of the Book of Job and of the Chaldean stars. There was nothing petty anywhere--but an eternal witness and an eternal silence. [Illustration] _A Yank and a Britisher walked to the line, One was a citizen, the other an alien. “You alien!” said the Yank._ _The Yank and the Britisher crossed o’er the line, One was a subject, the other an alien. “You alien!” said the Britisher._ _But when Yank and Briton elapsed hands on the line, Then neither the Yank nor the Briton was alien._ _Hail, Uncle Sam! Hail, John Bull!_ _We’ve found your line of difference And viewed it with indifference._ _You don’t need to guard it, Nor yet to regard it With doubt or with fret. Six weeks we’ve tramped together In every sort of weather, And haven’t quarrelled yet._ _We toe the line, we toe it, The old tramp and the poet. If we can do it. And not rue it, All can--says the poet._ [Illustration: WASHINGTONIA WELLINGTONIA HINDENBURGER] XXXV. THE DIFFERENCE