And then he painted for them with hard, broad strokes a marvellous
lingual panorama of the West. He stacked snow-topped mountains on the
table, freezing the hot dishes of the waiting diners. With a wave of
his hand he swept the clubhouse into a pine-crowned gorge, turning
the waiters into a grim posse, and each listener into a blood-stained
fugitive, climbing with torn fingers upon the ensanguined rocks. He
touched the table and spake, and the five panted as they gazed on
barren lava beds, and each man took his tongue between his teeth and
felt his mouth bake at the tale of a land empty of water and food. As
simply as Homer sang, while he dug a tine of his fork leisurely into
the tablecloth, he opened a new world to their view, as does one who
tells a child of the Looking-Glass Country.
As one of his listeners might have spoken of tea too strong at a
Madison Square "afternoon," so he depicted the ravages of "redeye"
in a border town when the caballeros of the lariat and "forty-five"
reduced ennui to a minimum.
And then, with a sweep of his white, unringed hands, he dismissed
Melpomene, and forthwith Diana and Amaryllis footed it before the
mind's eyes of the clubmen.
The savannas of the continent spread before them. The wind, humming
through a hundred leagues of sage brush and mesquite, closed their
ears to the city's staccato noises. He told them of camps, of ranches
marooned in a sea of fragrant prairie blossoms, of gallops in the
stilly night that Apollo would have forsaken his daytime steeds to
enjoy; he read them the great, rough epic of the cattle and the
hills that have not been spoiled by the hand of man, the mason.
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