THE STREETS OF THE MOUNTAINS 



high places. But the waters, the evidences 

 of their power, that go down the steep and 

 stony ways, the outlets of ice-bordered 

 pools, the young rivers swaying with the 

 force of their running, they sing and shout 

 and trumpet at the falls, and the noise of it 

 far outreaches the forest spires. You see 

 from these conning towers how they call 

 and find each other in the slender gorges ; 

 how they fumble in the meadows, needing 

 the sheer nearing walls to give them coun- 

 tenance and show the way; and how the 

 pine woods are made glad by them. 



Nothing else in the streets of the moun- 

 tains gives such a sense of pageantry as the 

 conifers ; other trees, if there are any, are 

 home dwellers, like the tender fluttered, 

 sisterhood of quaking asp. They grow in 

 clumps by spring borders, and all their 

 stems have a permanent curve toward the 

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