My First Summer 



ago every tree was excited, bowing to the 

 roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their 

 branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. 

 But though to the outer ear these trees are 

 now silent, their songs never cease. Every 

 hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, 

 every fibre thrilling like harp strings, while 

 incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells 

 and leaves. No wonder the hills and groves 

 were God's first temples, and the more they 

 are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and 

 churches, the farther off and dimmer seems 

 the Lord himself. The same may be said of 

 stone temples. Yonder, to the eastward of 

 our camp grove, stands one of Nature's cathe- 

 drals, hewn from the living rock, almost 

 conventional in form, about tw r o thousand 

 feet high, nobly adorned with spires and pin- 

 nacles, thrilling under floods of sunshine as 

 if alive like a grove-temple, and well named 

 "Cathedral Peak." Even Shepherd Billy 

 turns at times to this wonderful mountain 

 building, though apparently deaf to all stone 



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