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Sierra Club Bulletin 



will shake their heads over the practical difficulties of such a scheme, 

 but who knows? The dreams of today are often the deeds of tomorrow. 



Florence E. Atkinson 



"Lights at One evening during the outing of 1912, at a Sierra Club 

 Dawn"* campfire near the foot of Mount Whitney, a young Greek 

 student stood up and described his experiences of the pre- 

 ceding night, spent at the summit of the loftiest mountain in the coun- 

 try. Those who heard Aristides Phoutrides that evening will remember 

 his enthusiasm and his glowing words as he described the colors of the 

 sunset. They will also recall that he told of singing "America," inspired 

 by the grandeur of the scene before him. The experiences of that night 

 on the mountain top made a deep impression on Phoutrides, for they 

 stirred the two dominant emotions of his life — a passionate love of the 

 harmonies of nature, and an ardent patriotism. 



Anyone knowing Phoutrides would expect poems from him. His joy 

 in the splendors of natural scenery is very real, impelling him to ex- 

 pression in song. His patriotism is of that fine type that looks for its 

 inspiration not to any particular place or people, but to the spirit of free- 

 dom and liberty. Thus it is quite natural to find in his "Lights at 

 Dawn" verses reflecting now the brightness of the California Sierra, 

 now the soft color of the mountains of Greece, poems inspired by the 

 triumph of liberty in the new Greece and the promise of America. 



The poems cannot be rightly understood without some idea of the 

 writer's experience. It is hard to believe that they were written by one 

 who came to America only ten or twelve years ago, a stranger from an 

 old-world country, with but a few words of English at his command. 

 Born in the island of Icaria, near Samos, in the ^gean Sea, under Turk- 

 ish sovereignty, Aristides Evangelus Phoutrides was Greek by race and 

 spirit. His mother and sister did much for his early education before he 

 attended the gymnasium and university at Athens. Later he studied in 

 Cairo, and about 1906 came to America to continue his studies. After a 

 year learning the English language and American ways, he entered 

 Harvard College, and in 191 1 was graduated "summa cum laude." He 

 continued at the university, receiving the degree of Master of Arts 

 and teaching in the department of the classics. In 1913 he was made a 

 Travelling Fellow of Harvard University, going to Berlin and other 

 German cities for research work and later to Italy and Greece. He re- 

 turned to Cambridge after the outbreak of the European war and re- 

 ceived the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1915. It was during the 

 period of his graduate studies at Harvard that he spent a summer vaca- 

 tion in California and joined the Sierra Qub outing in the Kern. 



Last summer Phoutrides gave up his studies and his teaching and en- 



* Lights at Dawn. Poems. By Aristides E. Phoutrides. The Stratford Co., 

 Boston, 1917. Price, $1.25. 



