NATURE FOR ITS OWN SAKE 
Non- 
observance 
of the sky. 
Sky tints. 
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 le 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 
