2SO THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 



boys and girls with lumbering and hunting 

 stories, and reminiscent personal experiences. 

 They linger yet in memory. 



Early in my teens I read Headley's "Sacred 

 Mountains," to me then a wonderful book be- 

 cause so poetic and devout in spirit and so vivid 

 in description; afterwards Ruskin's "Modern 

 Painters," books for the ages! Then came a 

 tramping trip in the northern part of these 

 Green Mountains, later in the Alps and up 

 Mont Blanc, then over the Alleghanies and out 

 to the Rockies. 



There is something about the grandeur and 

 solemnity of mountains, so lifted above and 

 apart from the world social and commercial, 

 so in touch with the very heavens, they ever 

 command my admiration and reverence, and 

 unconsciously I uncover in their presence. Their 

 clear, bracing air, rugged and dizzy heights, 

 grewsome gorges, densest shadows, awful si- 

 lences, conspire to inspire. If we worshipped 

 any visible thing, as a god, it would surely be 

 the sun, and we would make the mountains his 

 earth-thrones, their deep recesses his hiding 

 places, their dense forests his altars and for in- 

 cense the low trailing clouds. Legendary lore 

 clings to the world's great mountain peaks, for 

 religion has peopled them with deities and 



