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Foss, James Henry

"The Gentleman from Everywhere"

The chaff flew in clouds, and quickly, from these machines,
millions of bushels of wheat were soon on their way to the markets of
the world. What wonder that our country now has in Washington over
five hundred millions of gold dollars; the richest treasury ever known
on earth?
Now we catch glimpses of vast mines of coal and salt; then of great
cities which have sprung up as by magic; and soon my eyes were greeted
with a vision of heavenly splendor in Colorado. Three hundred miles
of the Rocky Mountains, Pike's Peak towering 14,000 feet towards the
stars; great clouds of snow blowing from the summit into the valleys;
there cascades of mighty rivers flowing to irrigate lovely valleys;
here the great city of Denver, having 125,000 population, and one mile
higher up in the air than Boston.
In this city I met my former college professor, now the
multi-millionaire United States senator, burdened with many crushing
cares, knowing about as much peace and quietness as a toad under a
two-forty-gait harrow.
Then on went the mighty train; here a glimpse at Manitou of the
"Garden of the Gods," with cathedral spires of old red sandstone
towering hundreds of feet towards the clouds which capped their
summits with halos; on through the grand canyon of the Arkansas River,
in places two miles nearer heaven than Boston; here we see gigantic
natural castles with battlements, bastions and fortresses whose
leveled cannon you almost instinctively dodge to escape their
imaginary bomb-shells.


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