Anna Chapin Ray

“ To the east and west of the town, the mountains rose abruptly, their steep sides bare or covered with patches of yellow pine. At the north, the cañon closed in to form a narrow gorge between the mountains; but towards the south it opened out into a broad valley, through which the swiftly rushing creek twisted and turned along its willow-bordered bed. A half mile below the town the creek suddenly broadened into a little lake that was now frozen over, forming a sheet of dazzling ice, upon which a quartette of boys and girls were darting about on skates. ”

“ I've never seen him," said Allie. "Papa saw him when he was east last summer, and we have a picture of him taken ever so long ago."
"Who's that—Charlie MacGregor?" asked Howard, skating up to them at that moment. "He's not much to look at, Marjorie, if his picture's any good. He has a pug nose and wears giglamps, and I've a suspicion that he's a fearful dude. He'll be a tenderfoot, of course, but he'll get over that; but if he's a dude, we boys will make it lively for him."
"Howard, you sha'n't!" remonstrated his sister, loyally coming to the defence of their unknown cousin. ”

“ The life of a locating engineer is much like that of the soldier, in its need for strict obedience to orders, and for eighteen years Mr. Burnam had been stationed, now here, now there,—on the rolling prairies of Iowa, in the Dakota bad lands, in the alkali deserts of Wyoming, and among the cañons and passes of the Colorado Rockies. Six months before this time he had been ordered to western Montana, to lay out a possible railway across the mountains, which should give the Pacific-coast cities a more direct connection with their eastern neighbors. ”