16 THE MOUNTAINS 



fayette! How many times I have eagerly 

 watched a storm gather and at last strike 

 him in mad fury the wind now more 

 than a gale; the trees bending and break- 

 ing; the rain slanting into interminable 

 sheets of pelting lead; the lightning plow- 

 ing zigzag furrows of fire; the thunder 

 crashing and booming with crag-tossed 

 echoes like heavy gun-fire; the entire 

 mountain-surface in titanic conflict. But 

 not by an infinitesimal fraction of a point 

 did old Lafayette move out of place. 

 "The underbasing does not tremble" 

 His massive fundament, his real moun- 

 tain selfhood (so to speak), was as undis- 

 turbed as the soul of an apostle in hours 

 of trouble. Had he been a person, with 

 gift of rational speech, doubtless he would 

 have said something like this: "We are 

 annoyed on every side, yet not distressed." 

 This basal quiet of the mountains in 

 large measure it is which makes them such 

 agents of human healing. As one of 

 large experience has said: "Every great 



