90 
HELEN ABBOTT MICHAEL 
About a month later, she was at Cortena in Austria, and here 
again the scenery leads her thoughts to religious expression: 
“The view from the Hotel Faloria is wide and grand. The 
evening lights give architectural reality to the summits. I 
thought I was looking upon an Indian rock city with mosques, 
minarets, and palaces. The red and purple coloring with 
tawny yellow shades gives already a superb background for 
the play of direct and reflected light. The groves of larch trees 
remind me of delicate, fringed ferns; the sunlight effects on 
these limbs, and the vistas through the pendant branches, give 
food for long meditation; the scene is one of great beauty. 
The rocky, huge amphitheatre surrounding this plateau vies 
with the clouds in taking fantastic forms. The air is dry and 
invigorating. 
“ A feeling of absolute peace and calm pervades me. This 
scene is a fitting cathedral for the services of the real religion 
of humanity. This calm completes existence. Nothing more 
is needed. Perhaps nowhere else could such absolutely restful 
elements be found. Sweet pine air — almost silence, no tur¬ 
bulent streams, a long way off a pale Nile-green stream mur¬ 
murs— just enough sound to give movement to the scene. 
The mountains do not oppress — all gayly colored, not over 
9,000 or 10,000 feet in height. They seem simply to exclude 
too much of the world.” 
After her return to America she contributed to a paper 
published in Portland, Oregon, a letter descriptive of her 
experiences in the Austrian Alps. It was signed Alfred Kar- 
son, the initials of which pseudonym she was accustomed, 
during that year and the next, to affix to the poems which 
she liked to send to her niece and one or two friends. This 
letter is sufficiently interesting and characteristic to cite in 
extenso. 
A PAGE FROM A SUMMER DIARY 
If I were asked to give of all the impressions of the past 
few months spent abroad those which were then and still are 
in memory the most vivid, they would not be of the streets 
and sights of a gay capital, nor of a much-talked-of artiste 
