ALONG THE ROAD II. 21 



such terms as great and equal sovereigns proffer 

 and accept. She gave muck, but she asked even 

 more than she offered, and il the first moment of 

 intercourse she struck in men that lofty note of 

 sovereignty which has never ceased to thrill the race 

 with mysterious tones of power and prophecy. 

 Men have stood erect and fearless in the presence 

 of the most awful revelations of the forces of 

 Nature, affirming by their very attitude a supremacy 

 of spirit which no preponderance of power can 

 overshadow. Face to face through all his history 

 man has stood with Nature, and to each generation 

 she has opened some new page of her inexhaustible 

 story. Beginning in the hardest toil for the most 

 material rewards, this fellowship has steadily added 

 one province of knowledge and intimacy after 

 another, until it has become inclusive of the most 

 delicate and hidden recesses of character as well as 

 those which are obvious and primary. In response 

 to spirits which have continually come into a closer 

 contact with her life, Nature has added to her gifts 

 of food and wine, poetry and art, far-reaching 

 sciences, occult wisdoms and skills ; she has invited 

 the greatest to become her ministers, and has 

 rewarded their unselfish service by sharing with 

 them the mighty forces that sleep and awake at her 

 bidding ; one after another the poets of truest gift 

 have forsaken the beaten paths of cities and men, 

 and found along her untrodden ways the vision that 

 never fades ; her voice, now that men begin to 



