All day long Mr. Emerson's party was on the alert, dashing from
one side to the other of the car to see some beautiful vista or to look
down on a brook brawling a hundred feet below the trestle that supported
them or waving their hands to groups of children staring open-mouthed at
the passing train.
"Pennsylvania is a beautiful state," decided Ethel Brown as they
penetrated the splendid hills of the Allegheny range.
"Nature made it one of the most lovely states of the Union," returned
her grandfather. "Man has played havoc with it in spots. Some of the
villages among the coal mines are hideous from the waste that has been
thrown out for years upon a pile never taken away, always increasing. No
grass grows on it, no children play on it, the hens won't scratch on it.
The houses of the miners turn one face to this ugliness and it is only
because they turn toward the mountains on another side that the people
are preserved from the death of the spirit that comes to those who look
forever on the unlovely."
"Is there any early history about here?" asked Helen, whose interest
was unfailing in the story of her country.
"The French and Indian Wars were fought in part through this land,"
answered Mr. Emerson. "You remember the chief struggle for the continent
lay between the English and the French. There were many reasons why the
Indians sided with the French in Canada, and the result of the
friendship was that; the natives were supplied with arms by the
Europeans and the struggle was prolonged for about seventy-five years.
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