252 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 



their bath seasons, the winds are cooling and 

 cleansing, the snows are their wrappings for 

 winter's warmth. What lessons, what books, 

 what portfolios of endless pictures, what ap- 

 peals to mind and heart in beauty and power! 

 For ages on ages they have stood alone in their 

 solemn magnitude looking down on the passage 

 of milleniums and up into the everlasting 

 heavens — stood as hoary sentinels on stern duty 

 and yet old as they are they were once young 

 and giddy and skipped like lambs ; grey as they 

 now are they were once grassy and green. 

 There are small hillocks that were venerable 

 when the Alps and Himalayas lay slumbering 

 under half a mile of superincumbent ocean. 



What have the mountains for me? They 

 have the deep-voiced organ tone of the rolling 

 thunder as it reverberates among their craggy 

 peaks. They speak to me of the higher levels, 

 and beckon me to a grander life. They call 

 me by the golden circles of their sunlit sum- 

 mits to a glorified life. The wind makes of 

 every tree a harp thrummed by unseen fingers. 

 The sun writes on every fluttering leaf the trag- 

 edies and comedies of human life. The birds 

 key my heart to heaven's concert pitch and bid 

 me sing of hope. The rocks relate their tale 

 of catastrophy and cataclysm, and the fires leap 



