FIELD-DAYS IN CALIFORNIA 



this time the bird-gazer could only nod a despair- 

 ing assent. 



How the place otight to affect beholders he 

 does not assume to decide ; some in one way, 

 perhaps, and some in another. For his own part, 

 if now and then, when he might have been ad- 

 miring the painted walls and the yawning abyss, 

 he found his eyes resting of their own accord 

 upon the snow-covered San Francisco peaks on 

 the southern horizon, who shall say that he was 

 necessarily in the wrong ? A mountain two miles 

 high is a commoner sight than a ravine a mile 

 deep; but since when has commonness or un- 

 commonness been taken as a test of beauty or 

 grandeur ? Let every man be pleased with that 

 which pleases him ; and as far as possible, — 

 which probably will not be very far, — unless he 

 has the difficult grace of silence, let him tell the 

 truth. 



As for the bird-gazer himself, it must be ac- 

 knowledged, since he calls for truth-telling, that 

 even to the last there remained with him a 

 question whether it lay within the power of this 

 barbaric display of shape and color ever to evoke 

 those deeper, tenderer, more serene and blissful 

 moods of rapturous contemplation, such as, ever 

 and anon, when the time is right, descend upon 

 the waiting soul, responsive to the still, small 

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