192 With Feet to the Earth 



and around the corners of the Carolina 

 mountains. Curtains of gray wool rise 

 heavily from the Catskills and rank on 

 rank of painted trees come into view, 

 dramatic, Octobrean, magnificent On 

 Pike's Peak you shall see, on summer after- 

 noons, how clouds are spun out of the 

 lurking moisture of brooks and bogs, and 

 come flying up the eastern face, the slight 

 skein gathering weight and speed until it 

 whirls past you, a black, inverted cataract, 

 charged, mayhap, with lightning. Yester- 

 day the snows melted from the summit to 

 make those waters, and to-day they are 

 tossed back on the winds. And that eight- 

 mile tramp, high in air, that you took 

 alone, over the crests of the Presidential 

 range in the White Mountains, you will 

 always remember that, because the clouds 

 were carried in such bulks, so near your 

 head, and thickened into thunder-storms 

 at so many points, and you remembered, 

 as Mount Washington went under, how 

 many had lost their lives in that tall, cold, 

 stony wilderness. 



And when you climbed the Wengern 



