The Mountaineer 



MOUNTAINEERS' OUTING TO MOUNT RAINIER. 



AsAHEL Curtis. 



The third annual outing of the Mountaineers, with 

 all its pleasures, its temporary discomforts and its 

 final triumph in the ascent of the highest mountain in 

 the United States has passed into history. Time only 

 leaves a memory of the happy days spent in the flower- 

 strewn parks or on the higher ice-clad slopes; of the 

 equally happy nights around the great campfires ; of 

 the well-earned, well-enjoyed rest, and of the life-long 

 friendships that here found birth. 



The discomforts of the long marches are forgotten ; 

 the days when, storm bound, we lay inactive; even the 

 bugle boy, who always sounded reveilee long before we 

 thought he should, is forgiven. Almost we might for- 

 give those who insisted upon that fearful line, which 

 one from the far Atlantic Coast in sport called the 

 human centipede, but which we in our own rebellious 

 spirit derided as the ''chain gang." 



Yet he is a poor mountaineer, indeed, who has not 

 returned to his home the better for the many lessons 

 learned in the solitudes. The trivial things of life, 

 the petty cares that to us seem so great, slink back in 

 the presence of this majestic mountain. It is as if one 

 heard from out the solitudes a voice: "Why all this 

 haste? Why all this fret and care? A thousand years 

 ere your impatient feet first trod the earth this same 

 beauty smiled, unknown to man. The same fiowers 

 bloomed content to bloom and die, adding their mite 

 to Nature's hoard of mold. The same streams of ice 

 coursed their way down mountain slopes in awful 

 majesty. A thousand years after you slumber in that 

 last great sleep, your petty deeds and purposes un- 



