56 



NATURE FOB ITS OWN SAKE 



ness of color and the varied hues in the 

 sky are unseen by the average person. I have 

 never met anyone, other than a scientist or a 

 landscape-painter, who could conscientiously 

 say that he had spent five consecutive minutes 

 of his life looking at the blue above him. Its 

 colors are not violent enough, nor its changes 

 swift enough to attract attention. A scarlet 

 cloud draws the eye at once, but the clear sky, 

 with the sun burning a great hole in the 

 blue, and throwing off a ring of pale yellow 

 light that radiates outward, decreasing in the 

 most delicate gradations until lost in the pre- 

 vailing azure, is scarcely ever remarked. From 

 dawn to dusk pale tints of silver, lilac, and ashes 

 of roses lie all around the horizon - circle, 

 reaching up toward the zenith as though aspir- 

 ing to be rid of earthly taint ; hour after hour 

 the sky overhead is passing from dark blue to 

 pale yellow, from pale yellow to amethyst, from 

 amethyst to opal; evening after evening the 

 cloudless sun goes down, leaving pale bands of 

 spectrum colors on the twilight sky, but all this 

 is waste splendor so far as the average person is 

 concerned. People have an unhappy fashion 

 of seeing with their ears. Someone tells them 

 of the Alpine glow upon the snow-cap of the 



