Class 
 
 Book._ilAll3_Fl 
 
 Gopyright]^^. niO 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 
 
FROM NATURE TO MAN 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES CHAMBERS CONNER 
 
 HAMPDEN PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 SPRINGFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 1910 
 

 Copyright, 1909, 
 By Charles C. Conner. 
 
 (g;CU253G30 
 
TO 
 THE DEAR ONE WHO WAS 
 COMPANION AND INSPIRATION, 
 
 AND TO 
 THE PEOPLE WHO WERE KIND 
 WHEN SHE WENT AWAY 
 THROUGH THE SHADOW, LOST 
 TO OUTER SIGHT AND ABODE, 
 BUT NOT TO LIFE AND LOVE. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The title does not mean that man is not 
 natural, or not within the realm of the 
 generous mother. It is chosen for a few 
 studies of nature and life given in a rather 
 informal manner as lectures, some of which 
 are narrative. The mountain, which is 
 the subject of the first, was visited in the 
 summer of 1905, and the lecture delivered 
 that fall on a Sunday evening was orig- 
 inally a letter written just after the moun- 
 tain experience to the wife who was in 
 the "West, the beginning and ending only 
 re-adapted, and is here slightly revised. 
 The three which follow were in the autiunn 
 of 1907; the others, as a short series of 
 general lessons, in 1908, and were among 
 the last words of a pastorate with the 
 people of Barre. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Mount ^Mansfield - - - - 9 
 
 On Moosilauke - - - - 22 
 
 A Sabbath in Boston - - - 35 
 
 The Evangel op a Week in Barre 47 
 
 Lessons of the Sea - - - 60 
 
 Message of the Mountains - - 72 
 
 Parables of the Plants - - 8-i 
 
MOUNT MANSFIELD. 
 
 The rain had fallen steadily for two 
 or three days when on Tuesday morning, 
 August 1, the sun showed his face and 
 summoned me to the high hill of Vermont. 
 Enough experience had been gained bj^ 
 mountain climbing in Massachusetts to 
 assure me that the air should be quite 
 clear after a spent rain; though the wet 
 season was of so long duration that I sus- 
 pected the clouds would return as by a 
 sort of rebound. "What did it matter! 
 They might add to the variety of scenery. 
 
 We take the good with some mixture 
 of evil, and cultivate patience by the delay 
 of expected fortune. There had been a 
 washout south of Montpelier Junction, and 
 the train that should bear me with many 
 others on errands of business or pleasure 
 was forty minutes behind time. But the 
 air was a sieve for sunbeams, v/hich came 
 
10 MOUNT MANSFIELD. 
 
 generously to all who were detained under 
 the hospitable sky. A volume of Emerson 
 I carried was opened; among the lines 
 read was the admonition — 
 
 "See thou bring not to field or stone 
 The fancies found in books ; 
 Leave authors' eyes and fetch your own 
 To brave the landscape's looks." 
 
 The mountain does not surprise us. "VVe 
 
 anticipate by strong suggestions. The 
 
 valley through which we go pays tribute 
 
 to eminent kindred. From Waterbury, 
 
 Camel's Hump is to the left, and Hog 
 
 Back is to the right, and other summits 
 
 with names more classic, but not more 
 
 expressive, are round about us. Mount 
 
 Mansfield might be called the Sleeping 
 
 Giant's Face. Approaching it from Stow'_', 
 
 it appears most nearly like a mammoth 
 
 visage. The upper lip is rather long, but 
 
 indicates firmness all set in stone. As we 
 
 journeyed that day the five miles to the 
 
 base, clouds hung like whiskers about the 
 
 chin. The forehead, nose, and lips were 
 
 clearly defined along the line of sky. 
 
MOUNT MANSFIELD. 11 
 
 The Stowe side is marked by a circuitous 
 road which we trace for five miles more 
 among trees and shrubs, ferns and flowers,, 
 mosses and lichens. Early we notice good 
 sized beech and birch and maple trees. 
 Half way up, the spruce and fir grow great 
 and munificent in numbers, falling and 
 decaying and enriching the declivities that 
 wash toward the valleys. On the summit 
 all vegetation is dwarf. The same species 
 of trees that aspire on the slope become 
 little bushes at the top and cling to the 
 brow of the mountain. They have seen 
 the height and have been shamed into 
 humility, as it were ; and for protection 
 they hide behind rocks, or creep into 
 crevices, and only raise their heads with 
 faint assumption. 
 
 We go not there for what the high rocks 
 offer to the near-reaching hand, but for 
 what they lend to the far-traversing eye. 
 We think of it there as Mansfield the Mag- 
 nificent. It is indescribable. No brush of 
 artist or pen of author can adequately 
 
12 MOUNT MANSFIELD. 
 
 suggest it. We find that Distance is a 
 painter with world-wide fame. Her chief 
 color is blue. She puts it deep in the 
 heavens, and throws it thick on the far- 
 off mountains, and grades it with green 
 and gold, colors she finds ready at hand, 
 the gift of earth and sun, and her touches 
 and blendings are soft and varied infinitely. 
 As soon as I might, I gained the Chin — 
 it is spelled on a state map in capitals,^ — 
 the highest peak. It is a mile and a half 
 from the Summit House. When arriving, 
 there was no cloud on it. The wish was 
 to be vapor-enveloped for awhile there. 
 I waited confidently. The white argosies 
 were sailing in a horizontal line from me, 
 and some below, as if I were looking on 
 a spacious sea from an island whose scant 
 shore slanted into visible deeps. The view 
 here is bounded on the north by Canada, 
 on the east by the mountains of New 
 Hampshire and Maine, on the west by the 
 Adirondacks, and last by the peaks in 
 southern Vermont. 
 
MOUNT MANSFIELD. 13" 
 
 The highest part of Mount Mansfield is 
 really in two spurs. Their definition is 
 to the north. Going over and down a 
 short way, one sees the Lake of the Clouds ; 
 a beautiful little lake nestling three thou- 
 sand feet above the sea level; a baby body 
 of water, pure and sweet, fed by the mes- 
 sengers that fly above the running and 
 working streams of the world, yet akin to 
 them in its high home, and even pleading 
 to get down and romp with stream chil- 
 dren that go singing toward the sea. 
 
 The first cloud came between the two 
 spurs. It was slight, but a herald of what 
 was coming after in larger measure. The 
 water-carts that wheel overhead and spray 
 the earth ran on me and befogged me. 
 Huge rakes with teeth of feathers were 
 drawn or driven by invisible forces, taking 
 impurities of the air, and leaving rock 
 and flesh, grass and flower, the cleaner and 
 the fresher. The wind was from the north ; 
 the cloud vapors hurried along with it; 
 they seemed to be trying to catch up with 
 
14 MOUNT MANSFIELD. 
 
 what had gone before, and there was more 
 behind making the same effort. The vapors 
 passed, but the cloud lingered. Shut in as 
 by thick walls, I sat down and began read- 
 ing Emerson's " Adirondacks. " AVhen the 
 €nd of the poem had been reached, I looked 
 to the north. The wind was parting the 
 cloud, cleaving it to get the frame for a 
 landscape. He was a deft workman, and 
 in a moment put before my eyes a picture, 
 four-square and oblong and large, such as 
 I had never seen framed. Not satisfied 
 seemingly with the workmanship by which 
 he had delighted me, he opened many 
 vistas to the valleys. 
 
 Having gone below the cloud-line to the 
 main ridge, the sun was seen in his western 
 roadway slowly moving toward the earth's 
 horizon. He called to vespers. The hour 
 became sacred; the stillness was awesome. 
 The noble mountains, near and far, stood 
 ready to join in the litany of the heart. 
 All seemed to form one great congregation. 
 All were children of one God, and the 
 
MOUNT MANSFIELD. 15 
 
 mountains the most faithful and steadfast. 
 They made no change of creed nor of de- 
 nomination. God touched each by his sun- 
 shine and surrounded it by his goodness ; 
 and each took the ill, the storm which He 
 sent, and did not flinch. They were stead- 
 fast through every viccissitude. The years 
 had come and gone over them, even the 
 centuries, and there they still stood, glori- 
 fied to the clear vision of an hour, and 
 gathering in that span of time the lights 
 and the shades which told the human heart 
 of relations to realities beyond it. 
 
 The lower peak was climbed to get from 
 that the sunset view; but a cloud soon 
 drove me down. The west was partly cur- 
 tained, and the sun shone through once. 
 Mists, flying near, tlien veiled the distance, 
 but were so thin and rare at just that 
 altitude the eye pierced them toward the 
 fields below; the golden light could be 
 observed resting on these, until the Master 
 withdrew and it, too, was gone. Then, 
 again, the air was "cleared of the rack" 
 
16 MOUNT MANSFIELD. 
 
 to the far horizon. The sun had left a 
 stain of red Avhere he had passed as with 
 bleeding feet. It was in a strip of sky- 
 between the ridge of clouds and the range 
 of mountains, and looked like a red lake 
 lying beyond Lake Champlain. So kindred 
 did sky and earth appear at eventide! 
 
 Darkness began to come over the land 
 from the east; on the uncovered piazza of 
 the hotel, I watched it. Softly it entered 
 where the light had withdrawn; it was 
 reverent. Night knelt down beside the 
 mountains and worshiped, too, and acknowl- 
 edged the one God and Father of all, com- 
 mending his care for summit and slope 
 and valley and plain alike, and for the 
 children who widely dwell on the uneven 
 surface of the earth. 
 
 Within the office sat the Roman Catholic 
 bishop of Burlington, the only other guest 
 for the night. He was smoking his "pipe 
 of peace," and reading. He visits Mount 
 Mansfield and spends a week each year. I 
 had met him on my Avay to the stone pin- 
 
MOUNT MANSFIELD. 17 
 
 nacles, the chief points of observation. He 
 had been to neither that day, but was 
 wandering where the strolls were easy. He 
 was on familiar ground. Those latter 
 hours of the day may have been dim with 
 what had been impressed when he and 
 others first viewed the scenes. We wear 
 away the grass where we walk often. 
 Objects are blunted and the senses dulled 
 by much contact. God forbid that all his 
 blessings should become commonplace ! 
 Let him reserve forever unvisited heights ; 
 let the feet of his children climb where 
 they have not been before ; let him speak 
 in that space which is untrodden and fresh, 
 and where the ear is held entranced as by 
 a new story. 
 
 A partial recital of adventures was 
 listened to by the venerable man who took 
 a fatherly interest in his companion. I was 
 sooner to bed than he, desiring to be awak- 
 ened in time to see the sunrise. He lingered 
 with another pipeful ; but placed shortly by 
 his prayer book and the richly embroidered 
 
18 MOUNT MANSFIELD. 
 
 tobacco pouch his pipe in open case, that 
 he might get it more convenientl.y, perhaps, 
 for so were they found. 
 
 There came to me in the early morning 
 a rather striking illustration that our 
 dreams are very closely related to our 
 thoughts and impressions when awake, and 
 that a fool sleeps next to the wise man 
 one may be. It had been noticed that to 
 get the full sunset one must go over some- 
 what toward the west from the hotel, for 
 this stands slightly to the east of the 
 ridge of the mountain, and some shrubby 
 evergreen trees grow there. I had asked 
 if there was a night clerk to call me at 
 the early dawn, and was told that the day 
 clerk would regard my wish. I went to 
 my room thinking that a peep out of the 
 window should not satisfy, since inclosed 
 by the walls I could not see over the whole 
 landscape the fine effects of light running 
 immediately before the oncoming charioteer 
 and chasing away the shadows. Previous 
 to retiring the curtain was drawn to one 
 
MOUNT MANSFIELD. 19 
 
 side and the shade raised to the top, that 
 the lightened face of the east might look 
 fully in. My sleep was imperfect. After 
 daybreak I arose and saw by the timepiece 
 it was not quite four o'clock. The sun 
 would be due about 4.30. I went back to 
 bed, and, weary in the lack of refreshing 
 sleep, fell into a doze and dreamed of seeing 
 the sunrise. I had gotten up uncalled, had 
 dressed and passed to the halhvay, where 
 the clerk met me and bade me -.valk lightly 
 downstairs, which I did — perhaps, that the 
 bishop and the attendants at the house 
 might not be disturbed. In the office was 
 a watchman in companj^ with somebody. 
 Pie seemed drowsy with, the belief that it 
 was midnight. I tried to pereuade him it 
 was not, and made my exit. I turned to the 
 east and saw the sun ; it was up as far as 
 when seen declining the evening before, but 
 now, as before, was soon hidden behind 
 clouds. To see it better when it would 
 emerge, the path was ascended — which was 
 not necessary looking eastward. I turned 
 
20 MOUNT MxVNSFIELD. 
 
 again; a strange light sliown about some 
 trees, which did not appear to be the light 
 of the sun, and it was discovered that the 
 watchman had attached to me a lantern. 
 Provoked at him for giving me a lantern 
 to see the sunrise, I awoke. 
 
 But it was the only sunrise witnessed 
 there that morning. The mountain was 
 covered by a cloud. The liberal rains 
 rendered the earth liberal; freely it had 
 received, and freely gave back to the sky. 
 About half past ten the fog began to lift 
 so that the valley might be seen beneath. 
 By noon the glory of the landscape, as 
 not beheld the day preceding, was spread 
 everywhere. 
 
 The descent was made with a small party 
 which arrived and left the same day. On 
 the road nearing the plain, my dream was 
 related to a gentleman who sat by me. A 
 lady who was back of us, having given ear, 
 remarked, "What our lot lacks in happi- 
 ness, the imagination may supply." AVe 
 shall find it true everywhere and always 
 
MOUNT MANSFIELD. 21 
 
 that ourselves are central to our enjoy- 
 ments. What we attain in taste and fact 
 has power over wood and stone. In a way, 
 we are what we want to be. The pleasure 
 of hope is as real as that of memory, and 
 is larger. We see what is, turn from it, and 
 may forget it. We see Avhat might be, fix 
 it in mind, and may become or enjoy after 
 it. We keep what we transfer by the senses 
 to the soul, when the object world is real. 
 What we imagine, we have. What we 
 enjoy, we know, and none may incline us 
 to doubt it. For "as a man thinketh in 
 his heart, so is he." 
 
ON MOOSILAUKE. 
 
 Your thought may be occupied in the 
 hour with what a week's respite taught. 
 This world is one part solid or fixed, and 
 several parts change. There is very little 
 about it to us fixed. The surface is nearly 
 four-fifths fluid, which is forever ebbing 
 and flowing, and the restless sea has dis- 
 ciples among the inhabitants of the land 
 who are usually moving in some way, and 
 in the atmosphere engirting our globe is 
 perpetual change. Our life is made up of 
 work and rest, of starting and stopping, of 
 action and cessation. 
 
 The pastor was disposed to conform to 
 the general and manifest order, and left 
 the flat lot of daily duty in Vermont for 
 the hills and valleys of recreation in New 
 Hampshire. As shortly after the conven- 
 tion of churches as practicable, he started 
 for Mount Moosilauke, of whose fame he 
 
ON MOOSILAUKE. 23 
 
 had heard as possibly the finest pomt of 
 view in New England. The rainy season 
 had set in, but he knew it would not last 
 ever — he could trust the order of change. 
 The days of sunshine were being followed 
 by the rain, this to be followed again by 
 the sunshine. He went to Warren, and 
 thence to Merrill's Mountain Home, which 
 is on the slope 1700 feet above the sea. 
 
 Many of the dwellers in the cities be- 
 coming, in the summer, visitors at Nature's 
 attractive shrines, here were to be found 
 some of them. We waited three days for 
 the rain to cease ; we tried to be patient, 
 for rain was needed. There was oppor- 
 tunity to cultivate the acquaintance of our 
 fellow-beings and to read. How amiable 
 are people when resigned; when sharing 
 only their essence. We came very close 
 to each other three times, at least, a day 
 in that act which has in association the 
 augmented meaning of friendship and 
 mutual good will. Enemies never eat 
 together. They could not remain enemies 
 
24 ON MOOSILAUKE. 
 
 and do it. About the board of nurture 
 the members of a family are bound by the 
 strongest ties. It could not have been 
 otherwise than that from the most ancient 
 times those who broke bread together con- 
 sidered that they entered into some com- 
 pact of friendship. Across the table from 
 me was a young lawyer of Haverhill, Mass.. 
 with his wife; to my side sat his father, a 
 successful manufacturer of Amesbury, who. 
 at the age of about threescore years and 
 ten, is an enthusiastic mountain climber, 
 and who, in his love of nature that abides 
 fresh and fair amid all its changes, is 
 keeping young in spirit and sympathy. He 
 had come with three sons and their families, 
 or "jyith as many of them as might accom- 
 pany him, some to stay for two or three 
 days, and the remainder of them one week. 
 He had been there just thirty years before, 
 and returned to renew acquaintance with 
 the host, esteemed for his goodness, and 
 to introduce the family which had grown 
 up about him to the quiet beauty of the 
 
ON MOOSILAUKE. 25 
 
 place and to the grandeur of the high senti- 
 nel of that whole region. 
 
 Among readable books was the "History 
 of Warren." It was written by William 
 Little, the second person in the town to 
 graduate from Dartmouth college, and in 
 looking at the long list of Dartmo^^th grad- 
 uates which followed, one is impressed that 
 those w^ho went first were exemplary and 
 influential, or that the college had done 
 well by its sons, or that the people of the 
 town were loyal to an institution of the 
 state, or that these were all happily com- 
 bined. Warren is favored above the ordi- 
 nary in its historian. Dulness does not 
 droop on any of his pages, to which my 
 leisure may have lent a degree of interest. 
 The reader, however, usually gets out of a 
 story what the author puts into it. In 
 annals of a neighborhood something de- 
 pends, of course, upon the array of avail- 
 able facts; but these were so handled and 
 illuminated as to give to the book the charm 
 of literature. 
 
26 ON MOOSILAUKE. 
 
 Inquiry as to the meaning of "Moosi- 
 lauke" had nnshelved the history. No one 
 who was asked knew what the word meant 
 further than that it was an Indian name. 
 It has been written or printed in three 
 different forms. But as found now on the 
 maps, it is derived from two native Indian 
 words, moosi, bald, and auke, place — * ' Bald 
 place." The name still suits the barren 
 summit. It was for a long time called 
 about AVarren " Moosehillock, " and is so 
 referred to throughout the history of the 
 town ; this was doubtless because of the 
 suggestion of the earlier name, which has 
 become the later, and also because numbers 
 of moose were found there. The last moosci 
 was shot in the region years ago, but bears 
 are yet tracked and seen there, not in great 
 numbers, to be sure, but an occasional one 
 nearly every year to the present. On the 
 ample sides of the mountain are Nature's 
 wilds, and they afford welcome in their 
 fastnesses to such of her rude children as 
 seek refuge from the open signs of civiliza- 
 
ON MOOSILAUKE. 27 
 
 tion, with which men and women in most 
 of the months of the year associate and 
 feel at home. 
 
 On Friday morning early I looked out of 
 the window which opened toward the 
 mountain, and saw the Tip Top House, 
 as it had not been seen for several days, 
 standing clearly against the sky. From 
 under the roof which had sheltered us when 
 the storm was spending its substance, we 
 might see the neighboring peaks to the 
 south. Their faces had been thickly veiled 
 by the clouds which had been also down 
 on us. Their positions were learned. No 
 introduction was needed when they once 
 appeared. Circling away from Moosilauke 
 were Waternomee, Cushman, Kineo, and 
 Carr, nearly all of them considerably over 
 three thousand feet above the sea, but not 
 seeming so high from an elevation of almost 
 two thousand feet. Apparent greatiiess is 
 always relative. We judge things and per- 
 sons, as well, from where we are. Yet 
 these must be that we may discern them.. 
 
28 ON MOOSILAUKE. 
 
 The mountains were rock-ribbed realities. 
 The mists and rains had only hidden them 
 for a time. They would stand with their 
 names when the clouds passed off. We 
 knew just where to look for them, as their 
 abiding order had been rehearsed to us. 
 And after I turned toward the higher sum- 
 mit that morning they told me across the 
 space, in their own tongue, as I sat down 
 to become their amanuensis or translator, 
 that I might meet and know in the world 
 the mountain character, that there were 
 Waternomees, and Cushmans, and Kineos, 
 and Carrs, as daily neighbors among men. 
 Their faces might be sometimes out of our 
 sight, even the mists and rains of personal 
 rsorrow might hide them for a time from 
 us, but we should know where we could 
 find them when the mists had rolled away. 
 They were, and are, steadfast as to a per- 
 ceived and acknowledged duty. We are 
 forbidden to doubt them. There are some 
 who, when not at church at the hour we 
 are summoned here, have a reason for not 
 
ON MOOSILAUKE. 29' 
 
 being here. We may know this by our 
 knowledge of them. We know that they 
 are to be thoroughly relied upon to do their 
 part toward the community, and toward 
 the church which gathers in itself and dis- 
 penses a possible good of the community. 
 
 A road led upward where the summit 
 invited. It was zigzag by choice and neces- 
 sity. It could be trusted in even its crook- 
 edness. It is thus unlike a human being. 
 We confide in a man who is straight. But 
 we shall discover that a path in the forest, 
 however winding, always leads where others 
 have gone before for what they thought a 
 good. That rather smooth road should not 
 have been made up the rugged mountain 
 side, if the love of our kind for what is 
 noble, or grand, or inspiring to its sight, 
 had not led the way. 'Never doubt a 
 path, ' was a lesson of the slope. 
 
 As I ascended and got glimpses looking 
 back through the openings, a fear was 
 indulged that it had cleared too warm. 
 The mists were rising ; the distant view was 
 
"30 ON MOOSILAUKE. 
 
 becoming hazy. And half way on the road, 
 a strong fear overtook me that a cloud 
 would be bothersome at the top. Starting 
 with my feet on the ground, I walked up 
 into a cloud. It was nearly four miles 
 there. More than a mile must yet be 
 traveled before the Tip Top House would 
 be reached. 
 
 There was a spring ahead, which is 
 specially mentioned in the local history, 
 and of whose clear, refreshful water I 
 should drink. The height is cool while the 
 lowland is warm, and that water is almost 
 ice-cold. The climate changes on the way. 
 To journey the five miles from the haunts 
 of men below is to go from New England 
 to Labrador. Vegetation changes; the 
 birds are different from those in the valley. 
 In the register at the house on the summit 
 was noted the temperature of each day. 
 On August 28, it was 35° or near to 
 freezing ; for some days after in succession, 
 it was 36°. That may be unusually low 
 for summer, but there were the figures 
 
ON MOOSILAUKE. 31 
 
 which the mercury had authorized, and the 
 overcoats and wraps which we wanted for 
 comfort confirmed their story. 
 
 Providence has made a kind of Labrador 
 of the upper air for the benefit of the earth. 
 The aerial mists that rise, almost imper- 
 ceptibly to us, are condensed by the cold 
 into clouds, and by more cold into rain 
 which waters and makes fruitful the 
 ground. Otherwise they should float away 
 into warm and open space with the sweet 
 persuasions of the sun, and might forget 
 altogether to return, leaving the land to 
 become dry and baked. The cool air cages 
 the mists, and the winds open the wickets 
 for them to fly forth visibly on their 
 errands of mercy over all the earth. 
 
 The clouds rose somewhat before noon 
 and disclosed the valley on either side. 
 The effect is inexpressibly beautiful, always 
 offering itself as a surprise, with the con- 
 trasts of the fleeting vapors above and the 
 sun-illumined land below, studded with 
 farm houses and towns and cities on staid 
 
32 ON MOOSILAUKE. 
 
 foundations : an interesting and fascinat- 
 ing survey. In the early afternoon the few 
 of us were shown still more. Many moun- 
 tains on every side within a radius of thirty 
 or forty miles lifted their heads proudly 
 in the air. They were defying change, and 
 yet change had been creeping over them, 
 not to destroy, but to beautify them. 
 Strength and beauty are in the spacious 
 sanctuary of the Infinite. 
 
 The vision of what was so vast and 
 grand, bounded only by the hazy distance, 
 lasted but for forty-tive or fifty minutes. 
 The cloud came about ^^s. Our eyes were 
 held as prisoners behind dense barriers. 
 The darkness fell and told us the day was 
 done. With the dawn of another, sight 
 might be free and have range to meet and 
 greet fellow peaks in the new glory of the 
 sun. The wind was blowing from the west 
 at the rate of eighty miles an hour, we 
 supposed, by the roaring, and the whistling, 
 and the sweeping of it which we had to 
 resist outside the solid walls of the build- 
 
ON MOOSILAUKE. 33 
 
 ing. But the dawn discovered the cloud 
 which had not passed oft' at night. The 
 factory was running twenty-four hours to 
 the day — full time. As fast as made, the 
 wind would unwind cloud from the huge 
 staff and dispense it ; but as fast as the 
 wind could take it the cool air was making 
 it. How far it came we might not know. 
 The supply was doubtless near at hand. 
 
 Disappointed to an extent, I began to 
 descend, having a limited time for the 
 height with a thought of something else- 
 where ahead to gain by the paved street 
 of man's concurrence in the hours with 
 man. Others had been disappointed before 
 and should be after. We share in the good 
 and the evil apportioned to all. I walked 
 exceeding a mile down, as I had come up, 
 in a cloud, and am thankful that there 
 is more of sunshine over the low places 
 where our daily work is to be done than 
 on the far-away heights which we visit 
 rarely. Providence "tempers the wind to 
 the shorn lamb. ' ' He sets our work in the 
 
34 ON MOOSILAUKE. 
 
 midst of his mercies, and a special blessing 
 may be upon it, if we bring spirit and fit- 
 ness to it by the ways wherein generations 
 before ns, with schools and churches as 
 guide posts, lead and direct us. 
 
A SABBATH IN BOSTON. 
 
 I had said to my neighbor across the 
 dining table Thursday, that I expected to 
 attend church three times Sunday. He 
 remarked inquiringly, "For the fun of 
 it?" He was answered, "For the good of 
 it." His wife questioned at once, "For 
 information?" And she was told, "For 
 inspiration." I believe that church going 
 is less and less for information or instruc- 
 tion, and more and more for inspiration and 
 help, for abundant and better life. 
 
 It is patent that one has awakened in 
 the age of the electric car and automobile 
 when he goes upon the street at nine 
 o'clock or after, Sunday morning, in the 
 neighborhood of Copley Square where I 
 stayed during the night; for that locality 
 is doubtless not different from many others. 
 The horse which was first bridled by man 
 is now used for the drudgery and drive 
 
36 A SABBATH IN BOSTON. 
 
 of the short distance, and comparatively 
 little for the drive, since the ambition of 
 man runs far and fast, and he wants that 
 his body should keep pace and not be a 
 laggard where his kind has set a fashion. 
 While the street cars were following the 
 tracks laid for them, the automobiles were 
 darting in almost every direction. Early 
 there was seldom more than one person in 
 even a touring car ; the chauffeur, in nearly 
 every case, seemed to be loosening up the 
 machine for the demands of a family or 
 party, and later one alone was rare. That 
 disposition of man to share with the social 
 impulse was in the open air, and had only 
 slept and breakfasted within walls. Far- 
 ther in the city, numbers in the convey- 
 ances meant for sight-seeing, and crowds 
 on the corners, many provided with lunch 
 baskets, awaiting the electrics, were much 
 in evidence. 
 
 The facilities for transit tempt the peo- 
 ple strongly on the Sabbath. One of the 
 Ten Commandments may need fortifying 
 
A SABBATH IN BOSTON. 37 
 
 in our time, as there is continued need of 
 rest or quiet. A simple prohibition of 
 labor does not reach the general case today. 
 Men must find and furnish their spiritual 
 selves. The integrity of body and soul to- 
 gether must be domesticated and nurtured. 
 Each of us ought to sit down, at least, 
 on one day in the week, and listen for the 
 voice of- God who has a throne among us. 
 It will not be heard on a run, nor in a 
 whizz. And we should fear that the next- 
 to-incessant going of the people will have 
 a sorry effect in character: in a lack of 
 stability, and of reliability, and of devo- 
 tion to interests that are supreme over 
 those of any individual. The divine in us 
 takes counsel of the divine above us, which 
 relates all by a love and consideration 
 both comprehensive and advisory. By law 
 and care of God man learns to live in him- 
 self and to act toward fellowmen. 
 
 The historic Park Street church was 
 attended in the morning. Dr. Conrad, 
 
38 A SABBATH IN BOSTON. 
 
 lately called as pastor, I had not heard. 
 The kindest treatment was received there 
 by the woman who has made, in plain 
 dress, a tour of the churches of some of 
 the principal cities. At the inner door 
 one is met by a cordiality in the person of 
 more than one, which thus outnumbers 
 him, and which again hands him on to a 
 graciousness leading well forward. It was 
 the minister's first Sunday after vacation. 
 All the people were not yet back ; transient 
 worshipers took to an extent their seats 
 if not their places. There was a special 
 order for the communion, and the short 
 sermon was a sacramental meditation on 
 ' ' Love Measured in Terms of Life. ' ' While 
 the service proceeded, the hoarse horn of 
 the horseless carriage was heard once and 
 again from the street. But a voice called 
 U.S away and up a spiritual elevation where 
 the discordant noises of the world no longer 
 disturbed ; we were shown the plains of 
 daily living where we should go for the 
 love of those who are neighbors and who 
 
- A SABBATH IN BOSTON. 39 
 
 need us; and duty was inviting along the 
 Christian ways which lead to the blessing 
 of all men. 
 
 After the communion, to which about all 
 stayed, I passed out to the Common, a 
 corner of which adjoins, and a little ahead 
 pigeons and sparrows were flying forward 
 in happy flocks. As they ate up a be- 
 stowment of food, they flew on to over- 
 take the kind gentleman who was dropping 
 crumbs for them while he walked along. 
 His supply was limited, but such as he had 
 he gave. Coming to his side, he told me 
 he fed the birds because they sometimes 
 fed him, and I more than half suspected 
 that the bread he had was left from a 
 communion table, and am sure that the 
 Lord who spoke on earth so tenderly of 
 the birds would sanction the use that was 
 thus made of the leavings of a memorial 
 sacred to him. 
 
 In the Public Gardens, separated from 
 the Common by only a street, two men were 
 met arguing some point. One seemed to 
 
40 A SABBATH IN BOSTON. 
 
 be trying to make himself understood by 
 the other who seemed equally anxious to 
 set himself right in the opinion of his com- 
 panion. It came to me that he who had 
 been feeding the birds was doing more 
 good than they both. And I sat awhile 
 after in the Art Museum before the picture 
 of Elihu Vedder, wherein the artist has 
 put a pilgrim with his ear to the lips of 
 the sphinx, which is so sand-embedded by 
 the centuries that he must stoop to bring 
 the ear to the mouth of the mammoth and 
 once-towering image, while a little below, 
 or to the side of him, by a stone that serves 
 as a step for the living, is the skull of 
 another who had died in the desert place, 
 and which marks the fate of each and 
 everyone who would linger there for the 
 delivery to him of an opinion. No grass 
 grows at the foot of an opinion; no trees 
 send up their branches like fresh sprays 
 in the air; no birds come with their min- 
 strelsy to sing, or to charm the hearts of 
 those who should feed them ; no youths and 
 
A S^VBBATH IN BOSTON. 41 
 
 maidens are drawn to each other to dream 
 together of a future roseate with promise 
 and hope ; no sweet sounds of life fill the 
 souls which are made to receive and to give 
 love and good : only rock and dry sand 
 and barrenness stretching therefrom every- 
 where. 
 
 The dome of a temple-like structure can 
 be seen looking southwest from the bridge 
 on Huntington avenue above the railway 
 tracks. I walked out to it in the early 
 morning to assure me that it is the 
 Christian Science church, and to go there 
 later without doubt or delay. It is a won- 
 derful pile of stones and inscriptions, testi- 
 fying to the devotion of a people to their 
 leader. The order of the afternoon is a 
 repetition of the forenoon in the same great 
 room. If any of the devotees cannot be 
 present at their shrine in the morning, they 
 may come at 3 o'clock, and strangers, who 
 would go first elsewhere, may come like- 
 wise at that open hour in an open day. 
 The morning had been fair, but the after- 
 
42 A SABBATH IN BOSTON. 
 
 noon became somewhat foul. We could 
 have gone without umbrellas and not been 
 inconvenienced, but, having one, I raised 
 it for the last part of the walk. The 
 congregation was accommodated by about 
 one-seventh of the seating capacity; that 
 is, this w^as about six-sevenths empty. 
 However, it was a large audience for an 
 ordinary sized room. After the service, I 
 questioned if that number might gather 
 on a much fairer day at the same place 
 and hour a few years later. But we notice, 
 as we enter at intervals the room in the 
 Boston Public Library, which has around 
 its walls the pictures of Abbey illustrating 
 Sir Galahad's venture for the Holy Grail, 
 that visitors are constantly there scanning 
 the illuminated spaces with the printed 
 helps in hand. The great church is some- 
 thing to go to see. Some arrived that day 
 just after 4 o'clock to see it. 
 
 The service is both unique and uninter- 
 esting in its main features. The first 
 reader is merely a repeater for an elderly 
 
' A SABBATH IN BOSTON. 43 
 
 woman. As the reading begins and ad- 
 vances, it is felt that the building is too 
 large for one man or woman. The voice 
 does not well fill it, and there is an echo 
 in a coarser tone which may have a signifi- 
 cance. It obtrudes that the object is to get 
 an opinion from a book into the minds of 
 men and women. The letter of the book 
 is followed. No original thought or impulse 
 rises there ; no living spirit may crave 
 fresh forms and have its prayer answered 
 at the Sabbath appointments. It is all as 
 dictated by the head, and predetermined in 
 print for a quarter of a year, or, in exact 
 phrase, "cut and dried." The whole 
 should have been very dreary without the 
 hymns which were richly intoned by the 
 grand organ and finely led by a trained 
 singer. The attention to the readings from 
 "Science and Health" was generally list- 
 less. An usher on the first floor went fully 
 to sleep, and was aroused by another in 
 time to join in the taking of the offering 
 near the close, when thirty men in Prince 
 
44 A SABBATH IN BOSTON. 
 
 Albert coats with white chrysanthemums 
 at the lapels, and with drab gloves, get 
 busy in the main aisles and among the 
 seats of the galleries, or such as are sparsely 
 occupied. When Mrs. Eddy's interpreta- 
 tions of the Scriptures were being set forth, 
 the usher that had shown me to a seat with 
 a scant dozen in a gallery, took comforting 
 siestas, alternating sleeping and waking, 
 which my very recent experience on Mt. 
 Moosilauke enabled me to appreciate. I 
 did not want to miss there the sunrise, and 
 had charged myself with the responsibility 
 of getting up for it, and I frequently awoke 
 through the night after short slumber. 
 This man alone as an usher had charged 
 himself with the responsibility of that 
 collection at the close, and so refrained 
 from other than short naps. On the field 
 of battle, he might be a hero to duty, and 
 with the interests of the business of the 
 days, I believe, he keeps alert from dawn 
 to dark. 
 
A SABBATH IN BOSTON. 45 
 
 At night, I went to the near-by Old 
 South church, that in which Dr. Gordon 
 ministers, and from which I had departed 
 on a New Year's night, some time ago, 
 resolved more earnestly through the influ- 
 ence of the treatment of the preacher's 
 theme to be consecrated to worthy ideals, 
 so far as God gave me power, and to make 
 life a better service to man. The assistant 
 pastor was here last to conduct the devo- 
 tions and to preach. The congregation 
 came in the comparatively small chapel, 
 and fairly filled it. The evening rites were 
 marred to me, and to others, I think, by 
 the choir, which, in the corner to the side 
 of the lectern, sang sweetly, but, when at 
 rest, behaved irreverently. 
 
 A stranger lingered a little while among 
 the pews that evening as the people with- 
 drew. After nearly all had gone, he saw 
 an elderly gentleman standing in the vesti- 
 bule, who seemed to belong in the church, 
 and might be one of the spiritual pillars 
 of it. When about to leave, he paused 
 
46 A SABBATH IN BOSTON. 
 
 and said to him, ' ' The sermon to which we 
 have listened had for us helpful thoughts. 
 But the choir perform in two manners, 
 and ought to sit where they could not be 
 seen." The curt speech was w^ell received 
 by the audience of one, and the stranger 
 within the gates went away bearing a bene- 
 diction given after that of the preacher, 
 and pondered familiar words which applied 
 to him and others besides — "Whosoever 
 thou art that enterest this church, leave it 
 not without one prayer for thyself, for 
 those who minister, and those who worship 
 here. ' ' 
 
 Reverence is due unto the Lord. It is 
 the standard coin of his kingdom, and 
 should be the offering of everyone in his 
 house. 
 
THE EVANGEL OF A WEEK IN 
 BARRE. 
 
 What message has a week in our cir- 
 cumscribed lot? The city which was here 
 seven days ago is to the on-looker here 
 today virtually the same. Some moved 
 out, but others moved in ; some died, but 
 others were born. Barre is founded upon 
 rock — upon the granite in the hills, and 
 is exalted above them, or made superior 
 to them by the willingness and ability to 
 utilize natural favors. 
 
 A primary thing we are taught is de- 
 pendence upon the providence of God. 
 Every day mankind is dependent upon the 
 common blessings of earth, air, food, water ; 
 every individual is dependent upon some 
 gift within and favor without for his suc- 
 cessful life career; and so every town or 
 city is dependent upon what God has given, 
 in the development and achievements by 
 
48 THE EVANGEL OF A WEEK IN BARRE. 
 
 which it may be distinguished. I have been 
 reminded of two villages on opposite sides 
 of the Mississippi river, which, something 
 more than fifty years ago, were rivals. La 
 Crescent in Minnesota had ample bottom 
 land over which to spread; but it was 
 opportunity without favor. La Crosse in 
 Wisconsin was built on a barren plain 
 running back about three miles to high 
 bluffs, and in the sandy desert at its feet 
 not much but sand-burs grew, while the 
 few citizens despaired of getting other than 
 Cottonwood trees to flourish as street orna- 
 ments. But the Black river flowed into 
 the Mississippi just above; down its cur- 
 rent could be brought immense rafts of 
 logs from the wide timber areas through 
 which it came; great sawmills were set 
 on its banks and along the Mississippi be- 
 low, about which a city with its many and 
 varied interests grew up ; and when there 
 was celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of 
 the founding of the place, a city of thirty 
 thousand, the second in size in the state, 
 
THE EVANGEL OP A WEEK IN BARRE. 49 
 
 La Crescent was a little village still of 
 hardly two hundred inhabitants. He that 
 went about the streets and spaces last week 
 could observe long stone sheds which had 
 been newly reared, and were being occupied 
 with the scores of others stretching up and 
 down this branch of the "VVinooski ; large 
 blocks of business rising mostly in brick; 
 commodious and pleasant homes climbing 
 over the hills ; and the central library build- 
 ing approaching completion, which will 
 stand with the public edifices as an index 
 and promise of culture and attainments 
 more covetable than material thrift and 
 comforts. And it is all because the handi- 
 work of God reposed in the hills here 
 awaiting discoveiy and utilization. So let 
 no one boast of what he achieves ; let him 
 be grateful that he has been favored, and 
 modest since without favor he might have 
 been as the least. Beyond this city 's streets 
 lie the cemeteries of the broad land, into 
 about all of which go monuments from 
 these quarries, made by skillful workmen, 
 
50 THE EVANGEL OF A WEEK IN BARRE. ' 
 
 and demanded by that sentiment of the 
 living which would honor the dead. 
 
 Another primary thing taught is that 
 man must work if he would happily live; 
 and he must work that any may be honored 
 in death. "Work is not only for bread or 
 body, but for character which is fed and 
 strengthened and safeguarded by it. Two 
 pastors stood on a sidewalk one evening 
 conversing ere they parted for their re- 
 spective homes ; he who was the later comer 
 remarked that Barre compares well in 
 morals with cities generally, and is better 
 than many, because the people are nearly 
 all busy. They are doing something sub- 
 stantially for themselves, and at the same 
 time are serving the whole. The idle classes 
 are to be feared anywhere. To the extent 
 that they are drawn to a place by any 
 means whatsoever, they are dangerous, 
 while worthless. 
 
 The pleasures of a community, we are 
 admonished, should be found not far from 
 the homes, and there should be no intem- 
 
THE EVANGEL OF A WEEK IN BARRE. 51 
 
 perance. Recreation will be on the play- 
 ground where the return to work may be 
 direct and easy. That which will nurture, 
 that which will render work more welcome 
 and efficient, we are to take every day. 
 There is pleasure in nurture ; it is prophetic 
 of pleasure in work, and of pleasure in 
 life. Be not a slave to thy throat. The 
 master is he who chooses what may serve 
 him, and his joy is ascendant in a soul that 
 rises among the things the hands create or 
 do. I was for some moments one day at the 
 door of a tool-maker's shop talking with 
 the proprietor, and the conversation turned 
 toward a sad case, a victim of the drink 
 habit; he said that after a boy, the gift 
 of God, came into his home seventeen years 
 past, he had drunk not a drop of anything 
 intoxicating, that he resolved it should not 
 be said the father of that boy is a drunkard. 
 His home is on one of the upward slopes, 
 and his business and home together help to 
 make the pleasing picture of a city's pros- 
 perity and happiness. 
 
52 THE EVANGEL OF A WEEK EST BARRE. 
 
 How much is comprehended in a week ! 
 All the joys and all the sorrows of our 
 kind have place together there. It is full 
 of what we find, or bring to it. We sym- 
 pathize most with sorrow, with those ia 
 sickness and pain. However, men and 
 women on the same streets may receive the 
 visitation of Providence in dissimilar ways. 
 Two pigeons were seen from a window 
 sitting on the eaves trough of a neighbor- 
 ing building when it rained. They were 
 side by side. One was slender and appar- 
 ently weak; the other was full of life and 
 strong. The numerously descending drops 
 beat upon one as a misfortune: it shrank 
 with downcast head, and seemed to reduce 
 itself that there might be little for the 
 storm to batter; the other rounded out its 
 breast and disposed with the beak its 
 feathers, while the rain fell over it as a 
 grace, and when the beak was sheathed 
 with the resting wing there was an air of 
 content touching every feather's point 
 
THE EVANGEL OF A WEEK IN BARRE 53 
 
 which softly penciled its body. So two 
 persons may be differently affected by ex- 
 ternal circumstances. If there is lack of 
 faith, one will cringe by adversity ; if there 
 is fulness of faith, the good of life shall 
 be realized in even the rainy day. And a 
 scripture saith, "All things work together 
 for good to them that love God." But 
 there was another bird with resignation 
 under the storm which had shelter from 
 the worst. There was again one disquieted 
 by hard exposure. It is sometimes a differ- 
 ence in position, and not alone in behavior. 
 The body of one seems all exposed to the 
 shafts of ill ; there is no hope left for earth, 
 except that of surcease of pain. Yet, ''dust 
 to dust" being not written of the soul, 
 the good that God would give may be put 
 in larger measure when the body dissolves. 
 More than once have I repeated for myself 
 and others those words of Whittier — in 
 what poem they are to be found, I have 
 forgotten — 
 
54 THE EVANGEL OP A WEEK IN BARRE, 
 
 "That suffering is not his revenge 
 Upon his creatures weak and frail, 
 Sent on a pathway new and strange, 
 With feet that wander and with eyes that fail ; 
 
 "That, o'er the crucible of pain, 
 
 Watches the tender eye of Love 
 ■ The slow transmuting of the chain 
 
 Whose links are iron below to gold above." 
 
 Almost or quite in the presence of those 
 who suffer and depart, finding the peace 
 and the rest they crave, are those who 
 come in childhood to enjoy and to count 
 the days and years of life, on the whole, 
 blessed. On five days of the week they 
 hasten toward the school houses which 
 adorn the city's highways. One afternoon, 
 I watched the boys and girls go to the 
 near-by school. The lawns of the churches 
 and the park gave them range in which to 
 play. The majority came early and had a 
 lot of time for the things they much en- 
 joyed — very like ourselves. The spirit of 
 play ran everywhere, because it was every- 
 where: it was over the shoe-tops; it burst 
 out of the sleeves ; there was enough to rise 
 to the collars and to the hats, and took 
 
THE EVANGEL OF A WEEK IN BARRE. OD 
 
 these at times as by a gust of wind. Many 
 things were enacted in a quarter of an 
 hour, from children at play, pure and 
 simple, to the arrest of an assumedly guilty 
 one by mimic officers of the law. The 
 imagination of the children was equal to 
 a whole community in mature life and 
 action, and the beholder might see in his 
 fancy the peopling of, at least, a small 
 town. The surplus energy, the time it took 
 for its ends full in view, especially im- 
 pressed him who reflected that men and 
 women, followers of boys and girls in the 
 years, should aim to keep reserves of 
 energy. They should not tire themselves 
 out on any day or week. They should have 
 their work ahead of them, as children their 
 play. While thinking of it, a boy appeared 
 who was tardy. The masses had moved 
 forward to school, and were out of sight. 
 The boy ran alone and hurried. Something 
 had detained him; maybe, he had loitered, 
 lie was not happy as he passed ; he was not 
 free in the mood natural to childhood. His 
 
56 THE EVANGEL OF A WEEK IN BARRE. 
 
 was an ungraceful procedure. He had 
 gotten behind with himself, and was on a 
 strain to catch up with his race. 
 
 About 4 o'clock, I happened to be in 
 the neighborhood of the stone sheds to the 
 north, and before the whistles blew for 
 quitting men were beginning to file along in 
 the roadways hastening off. Their watches 
 may have been fast, or, peradventure, their 
 thought of quitting was fast. At a little 
 shed near the car tracks two or three 
 worked on. It was unlikely that love for 
 their tasks was the cause of their continu- 
 ance. Inquiry of one brought answer, 
 which was hardly information, that he was 
 expected to work until 5 o'clock. Perhaps, 
 the men were following, in heart, the boys. 
 They liked a respite. 
 
 So he that worked and early ran away 
 Might come to work his best another day 
 
 — in practical parody of an old couplet. 
 They were justified in leaving the grind 
 and the dust for the balance of the after- 
 noon ; for the lawn-keeping, or the garden- 
 
THE EVANGEL OF A WEEK EST BARRE. 57 
 
 gathering, or to join awhile in the play at 
 home. 
 
 When the men stopped, the toil of as 
 many continued. In a Cambridge com- 
 mencement poem, the early part of the 
 eighteenth century, Mr. Eusden wrote, 
 
 "A woman's work, grave sirs, is never done." 
 Some men may consider themselves as in 
 the category of woman, having work always 
 to do. I think, however, that men quite 
 generally must confess to a superior faith- 
 fulness and devotion to the fine interests o£ 
 life in the home. Such a confession should 
 be good for their souls in relation to home 
 itself, to church, and to business. We can 
 learn devotion in a right wide way from 
 woman, and practice at her side. As the 
 pastor went among his people in the week, 
 every day but two, desiring to see all to 
 whom a word of greeting or of cheer from 
 him might be welcome, but, in limitations 
 against which each man beats as with a 
 broken bar of time, could only go where 
 he felt duty was urgent, he remembered 
 
58 THE EVANGEL OP A WEEK IN BARRE. 
 
 that one in yonder home was ill, one down 
 there was detained by a little babe, another 
 by the care of a number of children, and 
 so on, and accepted unexpressed excuses for 
 some not being at church in the hours 
 appointed. Rarely was there an excuse for 
 the man of a household. And yet the con- 
 gregations of the churches have women in 
 majorities. 
 
 The function of Friday evening in the 
 vestry reminds us of the kinship of church 
 and school — the reception to the teachers 
 and students of the seminary by the people 
 of the parish. Rev. Franklin S. Bliss, of 
 sainted memory, was the pastor here when 
 Goddard seminary was founded. He felt 
 that the coming of the school increased the 
 responsibility of the church, and said that, 
 as for himself, he should accept upon his 
 knees the added responsibility. It was 
 denominational, in part. It is more in 
 the interest that should cross to and fro 
 the space between. The church puts the 
 emphasis on moral character; the school 
 
THE EVANGEL OF A WEEK IN BARRE. 59 
 
 on the intellectual. Yet they might meet 
 in both. The class room teaches and fosters 
 faithfulness to duty; the pulpit addresses 
 the intellect, and promotes character by 
 truth. In all good ways above the inter- 
 vening streets the two should be brought 
 and kept close together. "We may kneel 
 with a sense of obligation. We can stand 
 upon our feet and move likewise. We may 
 rest in the church for returns of strength ; 
 but we should not recline where duty bids 
 us act with a memory of noble examples ; 
 and a recessional whose lines would run 
 nearer to our robing rooms than Kipling's, 
 even across the thresholds, might be com- 
 mitted to heart, 
 
 "Lest we forget, lest we forget." 
 
LESSONS OF THE SEA. 
 
 Nature is the eldest and latest book of 
 God. It is so popular, or of such exceeding 
 use, that new and fresh editions of it are 
 being continually issued. All minds have 
 learned from it, especially prophet and poet 
 and religious teacher. Jesus drew parables 
 from the living, growing things around 
 him, and enforced the lessons. 
 
 The facts of the world have a certain 
 sovereignty over us. Our thoughts and 
 convictions and plans of life take shape 
 from them. We must wait upon them and 
 get counsel; we must sometimes wait for 
 them, when without them we may do noth- 
 ing. If our sloop is on a rock in the-harbor 
 which the tide at flood hides, and it hangs 
 there at the beginning of the ebb, the 
 stranded condition shall be relieved by the 
 next flow of the sea. "We may calculate to 
 get off in twelve hours, as the law of the 
 
LESSONS OP THE SEA. 61 
 
 tides is infallible. A steam or motor launch 
 may hitch on and draw us off in a few 
 moments, if it come our way, but that Is 
 chance and not law. On land, we know, 
 too, that the farmer who faces the sun 
 which brings the day and ripens the har- 
 vests, cannot ignore the seasons, four stout 
 facts of God, and prosper in his fields, but 
 must work in reference to them. Darwin, 
 who counted his abilities as moderate, ought 
 not to have been surprised that he had 
 influenced so much the opinions of scien- 
 tists, for in his researches he dealt with 
 first-hand facts that had to be accepted at 
 the face value. Facts appeal to the mind 
 before words to the eye or ear, and the force 
 of words is largely in their setting of facts. 
 Men may shut the outer senses, refusing 
 for the time to admit knowledge of aught; 
 but they miss what is, and are poorer for 
 it. Also, men observe in a world part of 
 which they are. Each forms the center of 
 a limited horizon. Vision of a kind ends 
 where the sky begins. There is another 
 
62 LESSONS OF THE SEA. 
 
 which comprehends much in ideal relations, 
 and asks for that plus what has been re- 
 ported by others. 
 
 The poet Wordsworth deemed nature so 
 essential to our spiritual sustenance, that 
 he doubted whether people who lived and 
 stayed in town had souls. There is, how- 
 ever, an invasion of people's dwelling 
 places. The lines which God writes run 
 over fences and into hearts. Holmes re- 
 marked that he knew of nothing sweeter 
 than the leaking in of nature through all 
 the cracks in the walls and floors of cities. 
 The taste that men get usually makes them 
 want more, and they go to the sea, to the 
 mountains, to the fields and woods, for the 
 spirit and life of it, for the beauty and 
 truth. 
 
 The Psalmist of Israel, singing unto the 
 Lord of his manifold works, which were 
 made in wisdom, and of the earth as full 
 of his riches, included in the praiseful 
 melody "the great and wide sea." We 
 
LESSONS OF THE SEA. 63 
 
 were taught in our earliest school days that 
 it comprises three-fourths or more of the 
 earth's surface. Virgil, in the "^neid," 
 has spoken of "the roomy sea;" Homer 
 before him, in the "Iliad" and "Odyssey," 
 of "the broad back of the sea." If these 
 waters were only wide wastes, they might 
 accuse Providence. But they are not 
 wastes. They bear argosies of witnesses 
 to the divine and impartial goodness. They 
 have in them life, yea, the good of being, 
 and minister forever to being above them. 
 The sea is salt for a natural reason which 
 serves purposes of utility. It is water in 
 the ultimate. All streams, small and large, 
 flow into it, and none runs out. But the 
 sun with golden ladles dips up a share of 
 the water and throws it into reservoirs of 
 the sky, and it is let down as needed to 
 refresh the land, which could not alone 
 furnish sufficient moisture to the clouds for 
 itself in return, and the sea with an abund- 
 ance must befriend it. The saline sub- 
 stances which are carried into this stay 
 
64 LESSONS OF THE SEA. 
 
 since they are not evaporated. In the wide 
 basins that lie between continents the salt 
 water is of use to the world. At the 
 equator, where the sun shines hottest, the 
 sea makes its greatest contribution to 
 the clouds; near the poles, where coldest, 
 the surface water by density sinks. These 
 phenomena at the mean and extremes of 
 the globe put the waters of the oceans into 
 circulation, or act as Titan pulleys around 
 which an immense belt moves slowly, slug- 
 gishly, irregularly. The warm surface 
 water tends to the north in our zones, the 
 cold bottom water in the Arctic region to 
 the south; thus making the climate north 
 and south more tolerable if not equable. 
 It is partly the explanation of the Gulf 
 Stream which encircles the Gulf of Mexico, 
 and passes out and along the southeastern 
 coast of North America, and is thence 
 started across the Atlantic to the British 
 Isles and northern Europe, softening the 
 frigid climate of those countries; then, de- 
 flected by the land, passing southward to 
 
LESSONS OF THE SEA. 65 
 
 the northwestern coast of Africa until in 
 the tropic of the gulf ; and then again over 
 the ocean for another round. The configu- 
 ration of the land determines much the 
 course of currents, and the continents are 
 helped and promoted by their co-operation 
 with the laws of the deep. 
 
 Over ocean waters man earliest traveled 
 long distances. He built a boat before he 
 constructed an ox cart. Before a railroad 
 crossed a country, or a car steamed on a 
 mile of ground, ships had sailed the seas 
 and discovered other lands far away with 
 the same heaven bending above them and 
 tlie same providence of good on every hand. 
 It was fitting that by that which is so 
 prevalent on the face of the earth man 
 should begin to learn of a globe which, too, 
 travels through space, and of his own cos- 
 mopolitan nature and power. The waves 
 first invited him abroad, and the winds 
 thereon first favored him. True, he has 
 not had here all smooth sailing. Providence 
 did not intend that he should have. There 
 
66 LESSONS OF THE SEA. 
 
 Avas much to overcome. Ill winds would 
 blow. This monster whose wide back was 
 so easy to mount, whose waves M^ere so 
 pliable and ready to serve, might be lashed 
 by the storm into a fury corresponding to 
 the bulk of her body, and the weak crafts 
 which man in his artlessness placed upon 
 her might be rudely shaken off and crushed 
 as eggshells against engirting rocks. Here 
 was opportunity and incentive for man 
 to build strong and to become himself 
 stronger; here was something to battle 
 against and to conquer; and today there 
 are fewer disasters at sea than on land firm 
 beneath us. Even plants along the coast, 
 absorbing the salt sea air and resisting the 
 furious winds that sweep over the floor- 
 like surface, grow stout and hardy. Provi- 
 dence puts men upon their own metal, their 
 own fiber oft, and lets them work out their 
 salvation as He wills. 
 
 Nearly or quite every section of the sea 
 has life and power. Nutritive gases sink 
 Avith the cooling and condensing waters, 
 
LESSONS OF THE SEA. 67 
 
 and circulate in the farthest depths. AVe 
 are told that these depths correspond to the 
 mountain heights; that there is watery 
 space the reverse of dust and rocky bulk. 
 Ocean meadows are in the comparatively 
 level bottoms. Evidences of marine life 
 have been hooked up from a distance of a 
 few miles below. And there, where the 
 light of the sun and moon does not pene- 
 trate, have been found phosphorescent 
 plants and animals by means of which the 
 deep places are rendered, in a degree, light. 
 Of course, the more abundant life of the 
 sea is near the coasts where more nourish- 
 ment is available for it, and where, too, is 
 the greater utility in the return of values. 
 All material values near the homes of men 
 assume a commercial aspect. It has been 
 declared than an acre of good fishing will 
 furnish more food in a week than an acre 
 of rich ground will yield in a year. The 
 coasts also indulge what is neither useful 
 nor beautiful, as man judges. On the 
 rocks and sunken posts washed by the 
 
68 LESSONS OF THE SEA. 
 
 flood-tide are barnacles innumerable. They 
 are living creatures, little marine animals, 
 opening their tiny mouths and putting out 
 their filmy feelers for the dainty morsels 
 that come their way, and shutting them- 
 selves up in their warty shells, when the 
 waters have receded, and looking as much 
 like rock or post as they can, with the 
 permission of Providence to every living 
 thing to be, and to protect itself against 
 approaching foes. 
 
 There is a human interest in the sea and 
 a wonderful fascination about it since 
 man's vessels have ploughed it and have 
 left no track behind. Nature is conquered, 
 and yet forever unconquered. We can cut 
 a path across our neighbor's lawn to his 
 discomfort; the sea closes all our wounds 
 as quickly as we make them. She is the 
 ever youthful bride to our art. The ships 
 sail and steam on the generous expanse 
 with a grace that they borrow from it. 
 Their size hath majesty here. Rufus 
 Choate, in his last days, watched the ships 
 
LESSONS OF THE SEA. 69 
 
 which sailed in sight of his windows at 
 Halifax. Awhile before death, he said to 
 the attendant, as he was about to go to 
 sleep, "If a schooner or sloop goes by, 
 don 't disturb me ; but if there is a square- 
 rigged vessel, wake me." 
 
 The beauty is apparitional rather than 
 real. "We may draw delights here from 
 semblances. The waves wear jewels to 
 sight at times. I have seen the water 
 purple under a fair sky, and have beheld 
 in it a great, greenish blue spot, like a 
 rich and rare turquoise set in the sea. In a 
 return sail from Plymouth to Boston, on 
 a cloudy day several summers ago, we saw 
 dropped upon the ocean a bar of gold 
 through a rift in the clouds. The sun was 
 not visible, but we knew whence came the 
 huge bright bar athwart the waves. 
 Quickly were sent rays of light as smiths to 
 hammer out and spread the gold into a 
 vast plate; and then, as if to assure us of 
 his munificence, the sun let fall a large 
 column, and tempted us by ranging it 
 
70 LESSONS OP THE SEA. 
 
 toward us. A broader radiance Keats 
 pictured with his camera-like pen — 
 
 "From the horizon's vaulted side, 
 There shot a golden splendor far and wide. 
 Spangling those million poutings of the brine 
 With quivering ore." 
 
 In all its moods, there is a permanence 
 or changelessness of the sea. The land 
 where man sets his home wears away, and 
 the face of it is altered sometimes beyond 
 recognition, while that on which man can- 
 not build, that which hath no solidity of 
 substance, remains the same through all 
 the centuries of the earth, and is the deep 
 mirror of the Eternal. That rim, where 
 water and sky meet, appears forever sta- 
 tionary. Boats glide over it, and clouds 
 dissolve above. The tides only raise and 
 lower it by a mathematical rule, giving 
 further ' ' a hint of that which changes not. ' ' 
 The free, fluent billows are on an unvarying 
 plane of law, and keep the decree of the 
 Eternal. 
 
 The sea is finally to our faith a perfect 
 symbol of the beyond of death. Past its 
 
LESSONS OF THE SEA. 71 
 
 horizon, that marks the farthest bounds of 
 our sight unhindered, there is an extension 
 of it not seen, yet of which we are sure. 
 In one of Dickens's books Florence and 
 Paul, you may remember, are by the sea. 
 Their mother had died. The health of the 
 boy was uncertain, and his sister had come 
 with him to the beach for possible benefits 
 to him. But there was to the child a 
 mysterious something in the waves whose 
 incessant voices broke upon his ear, and he 
 inquired as to what place might be beyond 
 them. "She told him that there was an- 
 other country opposite, but he said he 
 didn't mean that; he meant farther away 
 — farther away ! ' ' After the death of Paul, 
 "the voices in the waves were always 
 whispering to Florence, in their ceaseless 
 murmuring, of love — of love, eternal and 
 illimitable, not bounded by the confines of 
 this world, or by the end of time, but rang- 
 ing still, beyond the sea, beyond the sky, 
 to the invisible country far away. ' ' 
 
MESSAGE OF THE MOUNTAINS. 
 
 A mountain height communicates with 
 many kindred. Yonder on it we may be- 
 hold the horizon billowy with summits, as 
 if a mighty wind had moved over a chaos 
 of mud and rocks, and rolled up those 
 gigantic waves; each swelling summit 
 would seem to mark an opposition to the 
 power that pushed them into being, as 
 the waves of the sea are a temporary record 
 of the sea's resistance to the wind which 
 blows and ceases. But the mountains are 
 really made from beneath. They are not 
 evidences of whimsical stubbornness, but 
 of power manifested through them and 
 represented in them. There we are re- 
 minded of God in the earth and under 
 the ground, and not only above the world 
 or in the sky; of the divine in men, since 
 we are here ensphered, and, after Paul, 
 live and move and have our being in God. 
 
MESSAGE OF THE MOUNTAINS. 73 
 
 We had been told that the mountain ranges 
 are as "cicatrized wounds in the earth's 
 solid crust," that they appear where there 
 were lines of weakness and the volcanic 
 forces beneath might make most I'eadily 
 fissures in the surface, while the materials 
 were ages accumulating and forming and 
 solidifjdng. That is, each strong and mas- 
 sive brow marks a spot where the earth was 
 once weak. Listening closest to the ground, 
 we hear a message of the strength of 
 humility. Every elevation which stands 
 now in a majesty or dignity its own, yet 
 derived, is the greater because of its early 
 susceptibility to embody and express what 
 is superior. 
 
 Likewise the frailty of man is opportun- 
 ity for the wisdom and goodness and great- 
 ness of God. In the divine order he that 
 esteems himself sufficient, should take heed 
 lest he fall; he that accounts himself wise, 
 should beware lest those he despises ascend 
 several degrees higher in the scale' of real 
 knowledge and merit. No man is strong 
 
74 MESSAGE OF THE MOUNTAINS. 
 
 and great in himself alone. There is only 
 one strong, or great, or good, in all the 
 universe, and that is God. JMen attain by 
 humility, by obedience to the divine laws. 
 The apostle said, let him that would be 
 wise become a fool. Jesus chose lowly 
 fishermen for his first disciples, rather 
 than the scribes and priests, and made 
 sturdy and unwavering witnesses by filling 
 those that were empty of their own esteem 
 with the inspiration of his truth and the 
 power of his character. Shakespeare 
 learned of the tiniest creature or thing. 
 He could not have become, without that 
 docility, Shakespeare, gathering up into 
 the richness of a master mind about all that 
 the world had to impart to any. Man's 
 pride is his ultimate weakne«ss ; his humility, 
 his ultimate strength. And as the hills 
 were long in forming, so a character is 
 long in the making; and humility, with 
 patience, should be a persistent quality. 
 St. Paul in his manhood saying, ''Not as 
 though I had already attained, but I follow 
 
MESSAGE OF THE MOUNTAINS. 75 
 
 after, if I may apprehend that for which 
 also I am apprehended of Jesus Christ," 
 was ascending to where "the crown of 
 righteousness ' ' should encircle his head and 
 heart alike. 
 
 It is not by chance that the ranges and 
 peaks are lifted over the land. The place 
 of each is divinely predetermined, and it 
 serves there. What should men do without 
 them where they are ! The ' ' nursery of 
 rills, ' ' they give both impulse and direction 
 to the water courses which serve m disciple- 
 ship, and about whose banks companies of 
 men build factories and cities. Storms are 
 tamed, and play down the slanting sides 
 with a reverberant voice of joy, bringing 
 gifts to the lowlands which are clothed with 
 more verdure and helped to ampler fruit- 
 age. Traveling by a river in the West some 
 years ago, I observed on the other side a 
 fair sized stream emptying into the larger. 
 The bottoms were quite extensive ; the hills 
 which always overlook them were standing 
 far back. I questioned why a creek should 
 
76 MESSAGE OF THE MOUNTALNS. 
 
 flow there into the waters of the Ohio, and 
 the answer came in reflection, 'Because of 
 farther sturdy hills that dwelt together and 
 had born unto them a child, the valley; 
 whence the way of the little stream, to purl 
 with its tumblings, to gain breadth and 
 depth by the befriending of rain and rill, 
 and to offer at length refreshment and 
 benefit to fields and farms, ere it passed 
 into the major tributary of the unseen 
 deeps, advised and directed through the 
 plain by those guides which were finally 
 so potent.' And I thought of home and 
 its formative influences upon youth taking 
 forward a deepening life and a strengthen- 
 ing arm for work of some sort; of the 
 church which stands and asks that the 
 homes may send the children well toward 
 it, and that parents should come in sight 
 of it, and to it, before and with them as 
 sentinels or exemplars. In those abiding 
 places the world is furnished; by those 
 highlands hearts are nurtured in love and 
 faith and hope. 
 
MESSAGE OF THE MOUNTAINS. 77 
 
 The mountain that came in legend to the 
 prophet held a truth for the generations of 
 the eminent ones which are ever coming in 
 substance to men, while men are going to 
 them for what they give in verity and to 
 view; and far from the dwellings of men, 
 they are not rich toward their Maker nor 
 his creatures. Some are bald observatories, 
 commanding only the grandeur of the 
 landscape. Their heights are inaccessible 
 to purposes of commerce. The soil on them 
 does not turn into the delicious juices and 
 flavors of fruits and vegetables. I w^ent 
 to a near mountain in a midsummer, find- 
 ing blueberries and huckleberries abundant 
 by the road where many others had passed 
 and in previous years had gathered the ripe 
 fruit. That year's yield was more because 
 of it, and those berries waiting for me 
 seemed SAveeter. At the top of the high 
 ridge unfrequented, the bushes were barren 
 of about everything excepting leaves. They 
 lived and breathed there through these, but 
 bore nothing for others, maybe, because 
 
78 MESSAGE OP THE MOUNTAINS. 
 
 they had not been asked to do so. The 
 apple trees which grow wild in the pastures 
 and on the hillsides, and cast off what is 
 worthless, might produce good fruit if they 
 were ploughed about and picked in season. 
 So man is taught sufficiency largely by 
 doing, with a heart close to his fellows. 
 Demand determines productivity, and the 
 generous worker may find a wealth of 
 natural forces proceeding with him for use. 
 Again, remote from the habitations 
 of men, there is an almost deathlike still- 
 ness without the sounds that come, now 
 and then, from the valley. Chanticleer 
 sends up his boasting tones from a barn- 
 yard, and fancies in his little lot that he is 
 the greatest creature on earth. But the 
 birds do not sing for you. Down several 
 rods, amid the thick branches of the trees, 
 you may catch some short notes of com- 
 plaining; there is a brief quarrel in the 
 forest aviary. The cheerful and sweet 
 songs that greet our ears in the fields near 
 men's homes, you shall not likely hear. I 
 
MESSAGE OF THE MOUNTAINS. 79 
 
 had read after Burroughs that birds would 
 not sing much where they might not be 
 heard and appreciated; that far from 
 human haunts the feathery songsters are 
 comparatively silent. The naturalist had 
 written truly. Appreciation among men, 
 too, invites and encourages the espressional 
 nature, and may signal merit. This we 
 learn from the mountain with an ear 
 toward the land that lies broadly beyond 
 its base. 
 
 But up the rugged slopes grow the 
 grasses and the ferns ; over the rocks climb 
 and rest the lichens and the mosses ; around 
 the trees ' shadows, drawn by the sun 's rays, 
 run the flowers in many curves of beauty; 
 from stem to stem of bushes the spider 
 spins its delicate web, and nestles fat and 
 flne at the center of its hangmg palace, 
 which the wind, blowing fairly against it, 
 might waft away, but is there secure, until 
 beast or man, in passing, by chance strikes 
 and destroys. The gentleness of strong 
 natures is suggested. There are numbers 
 
80 MESSAGE OP THE MOUNTAINS. 
 
 who hold it at the heart from which the 
 body gets a poise. Sweetness proceeds from 
 strength rather than from debility. Supe- 
 rior power of body can be the truest servant 
 of the will for the heroic deed that must 
 be gently done. The story of Scott brings 
 Ivanhoe, at a point, to a castle where, shut 
 in wounded and ill, he was tended by a 
 Jewess. Fire broke in the building. The 
 weak woman could not have removed the 
 helpless invalid, and by her endeavor 
 should have caused him to suffer much. 
 The knight with a sinewy arm entered, 
 and easefully, without a jerk or a twinge, 
 bore him to the postern and to the care 
 of yeomen. We know that Christ who was 
 the strongest in the principles and sense of 
 righteousness, and hurled deserved invec- 
 tives against the arrogant Pharisees, was 
 the tenderest toward the harshly judged 
 and penitent sinner. The thick, stout oak 
 assures the slender, feeble vine cf welcome 
 in its aspiration for the boughs above, and 
 
MESSAGE OF THE MOUNTAINS. 81 
 
 stalwart men should be supports to frail 
 and needy ones. 
 
 The mountains do not advise us to ba 
 positive in our opinions, but integral and 
 strenuous in our realizations and convic- 
 tions of truth. The realm of opinion is 
 something like that of the simoom in the 
 desert; it is, at best, airy, speculative, un- 
 substantial. We may misapprehend many 
 things that lie outside of us. Be moderate 
 about those and open to correction. The 
 air may be clearer tomorrow than it is 
 today, and we may see better. The crouch- 
 ing of prejudice, or of ill hamor, will 
 prevent a fair view of w^liat has in it the 
 grace of consistency and the virtue of mag- 
 nanimity. There are matters of experience 
 and life. We need not guess at them; we 
 may know them ; and with their enactments 
 character is empowered for deed of good. 
 As among neighborly slopes, we may be 
 happily conscious of their firm foundations. 
 Our thought rests on the stability of the 
 hills "from whence cometh our help." 
 
82 MESSAGE OF THE MOUNTAINS. 
 
 They shall not fail us. Earthquakes re- 
 spect their massiveness, and are not wont 
 to break rudely through them. The bulky 
 monitors usually say to such tremors, 
 "Thus far, and no farther." They shall 
 always attend the lowland and minister 
 to it. Far away, they are mantled with a 
 mist of blue, and they seem kindred to the 
 sky that changes not back of cloud and 
 storm, but looks ever and again in serenity 
 upon the rolling earth. They retain their 
 shape before us, and if the earth struggles 
 in space, revolving upon its axis and trav- 
 ersing yearly its orbit around the sun, these 
 are not tramps on its surface, sleeping 
 yonder for a night, and moving hence at 
 the morning, and leaving not a name nor a 
 memory. No; they are stable. The Al- 
 mighty and Everlasting has marked them 
 His. They stand forever in their places in 
 staid relation to every tract about them. 
 
 Mankind lacks mountain characters. 
 That is, we have not enough of them. The 
 level is too much beside the level, society 
 
MESSAGE OF THE MOUNTAINS. 83 
 
 with society of its rank; the winds of 
 
 sensation sweep easily over us, and we are 
 
 swayed to and fro. AVhile the mountain 
 
 does not bend to the breeze, the comparable 
 
 character is to be relied upon in his or 
 
 her place. 
 
 "Lift me, Oh Lord, above the level plain, 
 
 Beyond the cities where life throbs and thrills. 
 And in the cool airs let my spirit gain 
 
 The stable strength and courage of thy hills. 
 
 "They are thy secret dwelling places. Lord ! 
 Like thy majestic prophets, old and hoar. 
 They stand assembled in divine accord. 
 Thy sign of 'stablished power forevermore. 
 
 "Here peace finds refuge from ignoble wars, 
 And faith, triumphant, builds in snow and rime, 
 Near the broad highways of the greater stars, 
 Above the tide-line of the seas of time. 
 
 "Lead me yet further, Lord, to peaks more clear, 
 
 Until the clouds like shiny meadows lie. 
 Where through the deeps of silence I may hear 
 The thunder of thy legions marching bv." 
 
PARABLES OF THE PLANTS. 
 
 Next to God abide the plants. These 
 were before beast or man could subsist. 
 They are not vagabonds on the earth, 
 but are rooted in their country. They 
 are the primal patriots, the pioneer citi- 
 zens, the early and indefatigable busi- 
 ness adventurers which prosper commun- 
 ities. In vegetation are the factories of the 
 Almighty, where are made the life-stuffs 
 for man and animal. The sun's heat moves 
 the machinery. Earth and air and water 
 are the crude supplies which are taken 
 through the mills. Dead, inert matter is 
 turned into things of life, beauty, and use, 
 and the workmen are identified with the 
 wheels and pulleys. Plants have an exclu- 
 sive and enduring patent on protoplasm, 
 the physical basis of all life. For that 
 reason they are the original and perpetual 
 producers ; the animal is the consumer. 
 
PARABLES OF THE PLANTS. 85 
 
 Tliey build; the animal destroys. Man, 
 disciple of the plant, produces and builds; 
 man, follower of the animal, consumes and 
 destroys. 
 
 Trees, shrubs, grasses, and lilies trust 
 Providence and do their duty. We may 
 not see them toil or spin as men, yet are 
 they arrayed after their aspiration and 
 merit. At the call of the sun they wake 
 to realize the possibilities that lie in their 
 hearts and on the friendly verge of soil 
 and air surrounding them. Here is organic 
 life modeled in the sufficiency of each day. 
 What comes by the path of moments is 
 enough. AVhat is used of the near does not 
 leave a doubt as to the kindred blessing 
 which enters every territory of want. 
 There are no tracks needed to guide what 
 is generous in nature. Openness to it wall 
 bring it. Plants simply meet Providence 
 on his ample grounds, and live by a sweet 
 responsiveness, while their life is imparted, 
 and the world teems with it. As organic 
 shapes, they form a stairway up which a 
 
86 PARABLES OP THE PLANTS. 
 
 living potency climbs back toward God, 
 and, resting in his child, may start again 
 to climb, taught and empowered by the 
 living myriads. 
 
 A plant attains by growth, and thus 
 occupies its place and fulfills the demand 
 upon it. God cares for seeds and bushes 
 because He cares for trees and fruits. 
 Little things are ancestors to the great. 
 Growth is the process of generation. 
 'Thou shalt grow unto greatness' is the 
 fiat of Omnipotence. All that a plant 
 would remember should be turned into a 
 hope. A tree retains last year's timber to 
 add that of another year. What corre- 
 sponds to memory merely would take the 
 currents toward the earth, or move inward 
 or backward upon tliat which has been, 
 burdening unto death. Life pulses against 
 thin casements; it pierces through the sur- 
 face, and appears everywhere with the 
 power of change, of expansion. It is not, 
 therefore, reminiscent in its chief instincts 
 or inclination. An autobiography is writ- 
 
PARABLES OF THE PLANTS. 87 
 
 ten with a thought of closing one's career. 
 Plants live to live. The history of a pre- 
 ceding generation is held to emulate and to 
 improve upon. We see within the charmed 
 circle man amid the little with promise ; 
 man facing the large with hope; man not 
 contenting himself with less than the best 
 of which he is capable, and ever looking 
 ahead to better than the good; man re- 
 membering, that he may hope and be more ; 
 man trying not to make a record, but to live 
 a life in itself worth while. 
 
 The coming of the blade, then the ear, 
 and after that the full corn in the ear, 
 is with the strengthening stalk. The stages 
 of development are preparatory one for 
 another, and from fundamentals there is 
 never a departure. The stem stays while 
 the flower blows or the fruit ripens. Incite- 
 ments to growth are felt from the lower to 
 the upper extremities. The plant must be 
 in its place; the soil must feed it; the 
 roots must spread with the enlargement of 
 the stem or trunk, and the lifting of the 
 
88 PARABLES OF THE PLANTS. 
 
 branches to the air. And man can never 
 safely depart from basic principles. He 
 must feel them ever at his feet. Their 
 virtue must rise to his heart and head. The 
 higher he ascends in life and usefulness, 
 the broader must he become in his sympa- 
 thies and loves which lay hold of the world 
 substances. He can't build his life to God 
 except it be grounded on good will to all 
 men. He must found prophecy upon a 
 fact. He may declare what will be done 
 in the Christian rule by what he is dis- 
 posed to do as a Christian disciple. 
 
 While the virtue of the soil comes 
 through the roots, and is sent to all parts 
 by an impartial law, the growth upward is 
 directly from above. That is, a plant grows 
 at the top, and not at the bottom: there 
 is expansion only below: the part rises 
 which is already above. Jesus expressed 
 this of man in that Christian epigram, "To 
 him that hath shall be given." Thus, 
 whereunto any attains becomes, in a way, 
 the basis of future attainment. There are 
 
PARABLES OF THE PLANTS. 89 
 
 no other grounds of progress than those 
 of reality, of steps taken, of power gained, 
 of deeds done. Would a man be wise ? He 
 must get wisdom. Would he be very good ? 
 He must be and do good by the wayside. 
 Would he know heaven or its happiness? 
 He must have the character for whose deeds 
 the plaudit is heard, "Well done." 
 
 Growth, again, is not so much a matter 
 of time as of warmth and nurture. The 
 seasons should not be opportunity without 
 the positive conditions which they bring 
 and grant. The botanist says that a plant 
 will grow as much in a week of high temper- 
 ature as it might in a whole summer 
 wherein simply the sum of that week's 
 temperature were distributed through the 
 entire season. It requires a certain amount 
 of warmth to develop it, and that which 
 would be a spring bloomer in one climate 
 might be an autumn bloomer in another, 
 because it would get the same quantity of 
 sunshine in a month in one locality as in 
 six months in another. Time is a sort of 
 
90 PARABLES OP THE PLANTS. 
 
 measure of the factors essential to the 
 maturing of plant life, which responds to 
 the conditions present in sunshine and rain, 
 soil and air. So the soul of man grows not 
 by years, but by love and truth and expe- 
 rienced good. When we take this nourish- 
 ment, we wax spiritually. AVithout it, we 
 lapse and fail. 
 
 "We must not overlook or forget that the 
 impulse of all growth is within. If the 
 center of the tree be sound, the circumfer- 
 ence shall enlarge, the top shall heighten. 
 And a proverb advises, "Keep thy heart 
 with all diligence; for out of it are the 
 issues of life." Fruit growers have found 
 that a young tree will thrive better when 
 the roots are trimmed as well as the 
 branches for replanting; without surplus 
 roots and limbs, it will develop more below 
 and above in a season than one that has 
 many at the beginning. The reason is, the 
 law of life is effective within. And the 
 parts are superior that come from the in- 
 herent forces. Reform in life, as growth, 
 
PARABLES OF THE PLANTS. 91 
 
 will result from lopping off excresences, 
 and utilizing native energy in approved 
 directions. 
 
 Trees get great strength where there is 
 much stress. One that is supported by wall 
 or any object, will lack what another will 
 have standing alone with exposure to sun 
 and wind. The vine remains weak by the 
 help of the trellis. Denial at one point may 
 quicken a healthy scion of nature to gain 
 more at another. Good is normal, and is 
 the rightful possession of the seeker of its 
 abundance in open fields. Man, too, has 
 a right to it. There is much for him where 
 he will go with the spirit of a pioneer. An 
 impoverishment in the track of others may 
 be a suggestion of plenty not far. Oppor- 
 tunity may be only self-postponed; it is 
 where the majorities may not have arrived 
 in thought or discernment, and the indi- 
 vidual, in the midst of thousands, can set 
 a free foot with broad margins about it. 
 Search the spaces around thee for power ; 
 take not for thy undue use what is any 
 
"92 PARABLES OF THE PLANTS. 
 
 man's; push away the props; depend upon 
 thyself, upon the law God hath writ in thy 
 nature ; decipher it, read it in his light, and 
 carry it as a charter of freedom to act out 
 thy life. 
 
 The plants refuse not to serve, nor to 
 teach service, for in the divine purpose the 
 world is full of this, but of whose spirit 
 man sometimes fails. They render the 
 atmosphere fit for animals and men to 
 breathe by taking from it that which is 
 poisonous to our lungs, and they seem to 
 bear an intention of the sustenance which 
 it! furnished by them for all other creatures. 
 If seeds, or grains, constituting a great 
 bulk of our food supply, were solely for 
 the perpetuating of their generations, they 
 should have been bitter, distasteful; but 
 they are savory; when not thus, they are 
 lodged in luscious fruits. Since only one 
 seed is necessary to produce the stalk that 
 shall bring forth its like, and hundreds and 
 thousands, may be, are borne by it, what are 
 they for, if not to bless others? They are 
 
PARABLES OF THE PLANTS. 93^ 
 
 the substances of love in which plants cul- 
 minate. The flowers which have beauty 
 resulting from what they refrain to absorb 
 of the sun 's colors, and thus reflect or give, 
 are also sweet and agreeable, telling of the 
 forces at work to make fruits and seeds. 
 These are among the upper things which 
 exist to serve. A man after the heart of 
 God revealed in that living world closest 
 to Him, is "like a tree planted by the rivers 
 of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in 
 his season. ' ' 
 
 With our final teachers, we learn that 
 where much is given, not only shall much 
 be required, but much should be in desire 
 to do for dependent or related life. 
 Eeserves of energy in seeds are imparted 
 to sprouting stalks. The expansion and 
 strength of trunks of trees are for holding 
 the many limbs and twigs, and uprightness 
 is preserved that height may be adequate 
 for the amplitude of foliage in the air. 
 On a lawn in northern Kentucky stood a 
 young spruce from which the central shoot 
 
94 PARAJBLES OF THE PLANTS. 
 
 had been broken out by a boy to put in the 
 graceful hollow of the remaining tender 
 and topmost branches a bird's nest which 
 he had found in some out-of-the-way local- 
 ity. I visited the place many times at 
 somewhat distant intervals, and it was 
 interesting to watch the recovering fortune 
 of that particular tree; to see how two 
 branches toward the south rivaled each 
 other in seeking the central point to guide 
 it upward. Thos? that aspired to take the 
 most responsible part of the ascending life 
 of the forest scion had been most favored 
 by the sun, and, what was to be expected, 
 the stronger of the two came to the highest 
 task, the other becoming as any to the side ; 
 and when I last saw the tree several years 
 after, it could not have been perceived that 
 it was ever bereft, so valiantly had the 
 higher boughs done their fitting duty. He 
 who is blessed of God, and is strong, should 
 not shirk, should not flee responsibility, 
 but should go up like a bough, and like a 
 man, to take the leading or other part 
 
PARABLES OF THE PLANTS. 95 
 
 that seems to be rightly assigned to him 
 for the benefit of his kind, that the tree 
 of humanity may be carried up erect to the 
 perfectness for which it was ordained. 
 
DEC 30 1I90S 
 
 One copy del. to Cat. Div. 
 
 DEC 30 1309 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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