Letters to a Friend 



slopes and curves and echoing caves upon which 

 those divine harmonies are played. Only a thin 

 flossy veil sways and bends over Yosemite now, 

 and Pohono is a web of waving mist. New 

 songs are sung, forming parts of the one grand 

 anthem composed and written " in the begin 

 ning." 



Most of the flowers are dead. Only a few are 

 blooming in summer nooks on the north side 

 rocks. You remember that delightful fernery 

 by the ladders. Well, I discovered a garden 

 meeting of adiantum far more delicate and lux 

 uriant than those of the ladders. They are in 

 a cover or coverlet between the upper and lower 

 Yosemite Falls. They are the most delicate and 

 graceful plant creatures I ever beheld, waving 

 themselves in lines of the most refined of heav 

 en's beauty to the music of the water. The mo 

 tion of purple dulses in pools left by the tide on 

 the sea-coast of Scotland was the only memory 

 that was stirred by these spiritual ferns. You 

 speak of dying and going to the woods; I am 

 dead and gone to heaven. 

 [ 72 ] 



