working order, but its yield has been wonderful; and draining of superfluous water will doubtless restore it to its former pre-eminence of value akin to its pre-eminence of position.
All around us rise these peaks of brown and gray, tall, even though their base is far above the snow-line of the Alps, and of every variety of shape, sharp, round, crater-like, cleft and gashed by the creative knife (as proper a figure as the "creative chisel," which has long been a stock-tool of the paragraphists). They are all probably full of silver, as the vast subterranean chambers of the chief mine of Guanajuato clearly illustrate. But the expense of digging is costly. Mining is no luxurious idling, but steady and slow, with small sains. So these mountains await the men that are rot to be put off by any coyness or resistance, but will compel them to yield up their treasures. It is not the kingdom of heaven only that suffereth violence, and which the violent take by force; it is every valuable kingdom, whether of wealth or wisdom, of place or power, of reform or religion.
The sun comes up as we go down into the first of the valleys beyond this ridge, so many of which we must descend into and ascend out of ere the long looked-for hacienda appears. Over to our left, perched on the side hill, high up among the clouds, is a pretty bit of a village, whose name I have forgotten, that is the home of the charcoal venders and wood-cutters, as pretty an eagle's nest as one often sees; at least, at the distance of the mile or so which we are from it. Perhaps, like other eagle's nests, it would hardly bear examination.
We take our last glimpse of the city beneath us, the hills hugging it and bending over it, like a mother, or a dozen of mothers, fondling a childling. The plains of Queretaro and Leon glisten in the morning slantings, and Luz, like that of eld, sits at the top of the land, glowing like the silver at its bottom, responsive to the coming day.
When I was a lad, I remember hearing a good brother of limited variety of tones and themes engage in prayer. He almost always had in his petitions this verse, expressed in a peculiar rising
