FAR ALTARS 



come from making the forest sentimental. 

 Sentient beyond all doubt its lovers 

 know it is. Even as water visibly rebels, 

 warring with headlands and leaping after 

 the wind, and as it slumbers dimpling and 

 caresses the swimmer, so the woodlands 

 are solemn and aloof, or breathe to give 

 the open-hearted their vast serenity. The 

 nymph or fairy rises at the bidding of 

 imagination, but the everlasting deities of 

 the elements, past our reckoning elder 

 than they, need no fiction. They are 

 presences, and accord communion. They 

 can be gentle as the twilight call of quail. 

 They can be indifferent and gigantic as the 

 prairie fire and typhoon. But they brood 

 to-day as yesterday over cities that they 

 will not enter, but which sometimes they 

 destroy. They march above mountain 

 ridges and loiter among flowered laurel, 

 impartial as nothing else is, and in their 

 dispassionate companionship supremely 

 consoling, offering for playthings the ripple 

 and the gleam. 



THE END 



