Letters to a Friend 



which was wedged tight in the wall, and I no 

 longer feared being washed off, and steady 

 moonbeams slanting past the arching meteors 

 gave me confidence to escape to this snug place 

 where McChesney and I slept one night, where 

 I had a fire to dry my socks. This rock shelf 

 extending behind the falls is about five hundred 

 feet above the base of the fall on the perpendic 

 ular rock-face. 



How little do we know of ourselves, of our 

 profoundest attractions and repulsions, of our 

 spiritual affinities! How interesting does man 

 become, considered in his relations to the spirit 

 of this rock and water! How significant does 

 every atom of our world become amid the influ 

 ences of those beings unseen, spiritual, angelic 

 mountaineers that so throng these pure man 

 sions of crystal foam and purple granite! 



I cannot refrain from speaking to this little 

 bush at my side and to the spray-drops that 

 come to my paper and to the individual sands of 

 the slope I am sitting upon. Ruskin says that 

 the idea of foulness is essentially connected with 



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