90 HELEN ABBOTT MICHAEL 



About a month later, she was at Cortena in Austria, and here 

 again the scenery leads her thoughts to religious expression: 

 "The view from the Hotel Faloria is wide and grand. The 

 evening lights give architectural reality to the summits. I 

 thought I was looking upon an Indian rock city with mosques, 

 minarets, and palaces. The red and purple coloring with 

 tawny yellow shades gives already a superb background for 

 the play of direct and reflected light. The groves of larch trees 

 remind me of delicate, fringed ferns; the sunlight effects on 

 these limbs, and the vistas through the pendant branches, give 

 food for long meditation; the scene is one of great beauty. 

 The rocky, huge amphitheatre surrounding this plateau vies 

 with the clouds in taking fantastic forms. The air is dry and 

 invigorating. 



" A feeling of absolute peace and calm pervades me. This 

 scene is a fitting cathedral for the services of the real religion 

 of humanity. This calm completes existence. Nothing more 

 is needed. Perhaps nowhere else could such absolutely restful 

 elements be found. Sweet pine air almost silence, no tur- 

 bulent streams, a long way off a pale Nile-green stream mur- 

 murs just enough sound to give movement to the scene. 

 The mountains do not oppress all gayly colored, not over 

 9,000 or 10,000 feet in height. They seem simply to exclude 

 too much of the world." 



After her return to America she contributed to a paper 

 published in Portland, Oregon, a letter descriptive of her 

 experiences in the Austrian Alps. It was signed Alfred Kar- 

 son, the initials of which pseudonym she was accustomed, 

 during that year and the next, to affix to the poems which 

 she liked to send to her niece and one or two friends. This 

 letter is sufficiently interesting and characteristic to cite in 

 extenso. 



A PAGE FROM A SUMMER DIARY 



If I were asked to give of all the impressions of the past 

 few months spent abroad those which were then and still are 

 in memory the most vivid, they would not be of the streets 

 and sights of a gay capital, nor of a much-talked-of artiste 



