<p id="id00026">It is therefore good to look on the cheerful side of life. A touch of
humor is necessary to the salvation of the serious man. It is a gift of
the men of America to see droll things and to express them in droll
fashion. To see the funny side of one's own accomplishments is the
highest achievement of the American philosopher and there is hope for
the land in which the greatest wits have been the most earnest of moral
teachers. Who was more earnest than Oliver Wendell Holmes, who more
genuine than Mark Twain? Without the saving grace of humor our Puritan
conscience which we all possess would lead us again into all
extravagance, witch-burnings, Quaker-stoning, heresy trials, and
intolerance of politics and religion. From all these we are saved by our
feeling for the incongruous. A touch of humor recalls us to our senses.
It "makes the whole world kin."</p>
<p id="id00027">In the love of nature is another source of saving grace. Science is
power. In the stores of human experience lies the key to action, and
modern civilization is built on Science. The love of nature is akin to
Science but different. Contact with outdoor things is direct experience.
It is not stored, not co-ordinated, not always convertible into power,
but real, nevertheless, and our own. The song of birds, the swarming of
bees, the meadow carpeted with flowers, the first pink harbingers of the
early spring, the rush of the waterfall, the piling up of the rocks, the
trail through the forest, the sweep of the surf, the darting of the
fishes, the drifting of the snow, the white crystals of the frost, the
shrieking of the ice, the boom of the bittern, the barking of the sea
lions, the honk of the wild geese, the skulking coyote who knows that
each beast is his enemy and has not even a flea to help him "forget that
he is a dog," the leap of the salmon, the ecstasy of the mocking-bird
and bobolink, the nesting of the field-mice, the chatter of the
squirrel, the gray lichen of the oak, the green moss on the log, the
poppies of the field and the Mariposa lilies of the cliff—all these
and ten thousand more pictures which could be called up equally at
random and from every foot of land on the globe—all these are objects
of nature. All these represent a point of human contact and the reaction
which makes for youth, for virtue and for enthusiasm.</p>
<p id="id00028">To travel is merely to increase the variety of contact by giving our
time to it, and by extending the number of points at which contact is
possible. It may be that "he who wanders widest, lifts no more of
beauty's jealous veils than he who from his doorway sees the miracle of
flowers and trees." It is true, however, that the experiences of the
traveler cover a wider range and fill his mind with a larger and more
varied store of remembered delights. The very names of beloved regions
call up each one its own picture. The South Seas; to have wandered among
their green isles is to have seen a new world, a new heaven and a new
earth. The white reef with its whiter rim of plunging surf, the swaying
palms, the flashing waterfall, the joyous people, straight as Greeks and
colored like varnished leather, the bread-fruit tree and the brown
orange, the purple splendor of the vine called Bougainvillia, and above
all the volcanic mountains, green fringed with huge trees, with tree
ferns and palms, the whole tied together into an impenetrable jungle by
the long armed lianas. The Sierra Nevada, sweeping in majestic waves of
stone, alive with color and steeped in sunshine. Switzerland, Norway,
Alaska, Tyrol, Japan, Venice, the Windward Islands and the Gray Azores,
Chapultepec with its dream of white-cloaked volcanoes, Enoshima and
Gotemba with their peerless Fujiyama, Nikko with its temples, Loch
Lomond, Lake Tahoe, Windermere, Tintagel by the Cornish Sea, the
Yellowstone and the Canyon of the Colorado, the Crater Lake of Oregon,
Sorrento with its Vesuvius, Honolulu with its Pali, the Yosemite, Banff
with its Selkirks, Prince Frederick's Sound with its green fjords, the
Chamounix with its Mont Blanc, Bern with its Oberland, Zermatt with its
Matterhorn, Simla with "the, great silent wonder of the snows."</p>
<p id="id00029">"Even now as I write," says Whymper the master mountain climber, "they
rise before me an endless series of pictures magnificent in effect, in
form and color. I see great peaks with clouded tops, seeming to mount
upward for ever and ever. I hear the music of distant herds, the
peasant's yodel and the solemn church bells. And after these have passed
away, another train of thought succeeds, of those who have been brave
and true, of kind hearts and bold deeds, of courtesies received from
strangers' hands, trifles in themselves but expressive of that good-will
which is the essence of charity."</p>
<p id="id00030">That poetry was a means of grace was known to the first man who wrote a
verse or who sang a ballad. It was discovered back in the darkness
before men invented words or devised letters. The only poetry you will
ever know is that you learned by heart when you were young. Happy is he
who has learned much, and much of that which is good. Bad poetry is not
poetry at all except to the man who makes it. For its creator, even the
feeblest verse speaks something of inspiration and of aspiration. It is
said that Frederick the Great went into battle with a vial of poison in
one pocket and a quire of bad verse in the other. Whatever we think of
the one, we feel more kindly toward him for the other.</p>
<p id="id00031">Charles Eliot Norton advises every man to read a bit of poetry every day
for spiritual refreshment. It would be well for each of us if we should
follow this advice. It is not too late yet and if some few would heed
his words and mine, these pages would not be written in vain.</p>
<p id="id00032">I heard once of a man banished from New England to the Llano Estacado,
the great summer-bitten plains of Texas. While riding alone among his
cows over miles of yucca and sage he kept in touch with the world
through the poetry he recited to himself. His favorite, I remember, was
Whittier's "Randolph of Roanoke:"</p>
<p id="id00033">"Here where with living ear and eye<br/>
He heard Potomac flowing,<br/>
And through his tall ancestral trees<br/>
Saw Autumn's sunset glowing;<br/></p>
<p id="id00034">"Too honest or too proud to feign<br/>
A love he never cherished,<br/>
Beyond Virginia's border line<br/>
His patriotism perished.<br/></p>
<p id="id00035">"But none beheld with clearer eye<br/>
The plague spot o'er her spreading,<br/>
Nor heard more sure the steps of doom<br/>
Along her future treading."<br/></p>
<p id="id00036">This is good verse and it may well serve to relate the gray world of
Northern Texas to the many-colored world in which men struggle and die
for things worthwhile, winning their lives eternally through losing
them.</p>
<p id="id00037">Here are some other bits of verse which on the sea and on the lands, in
the deserts or in the jungles have served the same purpose for other
men, perhaps indeed for you.</p>
<p id="id00038">"It has been prophesied these many years<br/>
I should not die save in Jerusalem,<br/>
Which vainly I supposed the Holy Land.<br/>
But bear me to that chamber, there I'll lie,<br/>
In this Jerusalem shall Hardy die."<br/></p>
<p id="id00039">—</p>
<p id="id00040">"And gentlemen of England now abed<br/>
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,<br/>
And hold their manhood cheap while any speaks<br/>
Who fought with us upon St. Crispin's day."<br/></p>
<p id="id00041">—</p>
<p id="id00042">"Let me come in where you sit weeping, aye:<br/>
Let me who have not any child to die<br/>
Weep with you for the little one whose love<br/>
I have known nothing of.<br/>
The little arms that slowly, slowly loosed<br/>
Their pressure round your neck, the hands you used<br/>
To kiss. Such arms, such hands I never knew.<br/>
May I not weep with you<br/>
Fain would I be of service, say something<br/>
Between the tears, that would be comforting.<br/>
But ah! So sadder than yourselves am I<br/>
Who have no child to die."<br/></p>
<p id="id00043">—</p>
<p id="id00044">"Your picture smiles as once it smiled;<br/>
The ring you gave is still the same;<br/>
Your letter tells, O changing child,<br/>
No tidings since it came!<br/>
Give me some amulet<br/>
That marks intelligence with you,<br/>
Red when you love and rosier red,<br/>
And when you love not, pale and blue.<br/>
Alas that neither bonds nor vows<br/>
Can certify possession.<br/>
Torments me still the fear that Love<br/>
Died in his last expression."<br/></p>
<p id="id00045">—</p>
<p id="id00046">"He walks with God upon the hills<br/>
And sees each morn the world arise<br/>
New bathed in light of Paradise.<br/>
He hears the laughter of her rills;<br/>
She to his spirit undefiled<br/>
Makes answer as a little child;<br/>
Unveiled before his eyes she stands<br/>
And gives her secrets to his hands."<br/></p>
<p id="id00047">—</p>
<p id="id00048">"Above the pines the moon was slowly drifting,<br/>
The river sang below,<br/>
The dim Sierras far beyond uplifting<br/>
Their minarets of snow.<br/>
The roaring campfire with good humor painted<br/>
The ruddy tints of health<br/>
On haggard face and form that drooped and fainted<br/>
In the fierce race for wealth.<br/>
Till one arose and from his pack's scant treasure<br/>
The hoarded volume drew,<br/>
And cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure<br/>
To hear the tale anew.<br/>
And as around them shadows gathered faster<br/>
And as the firelight fell,<br/>
He read aloud the book wherein the Master<br/>
Had writ of Little Nell.<br/>
Perhaps 'twas boyish fancy, for the reader<br/>
Was youngest of them all,<br/>
Yet, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar<br/>
A silence seemed to fall.<br/>
The fir trees gathering closer in the shadows<br/>
Listened in every spray,<br/>
While the whole camp with little Nell, on English meadows,<br/>
Wandered and lost their way.<br/>
Lost is that camp and wasted all its fire,<br/>
And he who wro't that spell;<br/>
Ah, towering pine and stately Kentish spire,<br/>
Ye have one tale to tell.<br/>
Lost is that camp, but let its fragrant story<br/>
Blend with the breath that thrills<br/>
With hop vines' incense all the pensive glory<br/>
That fills the Kentish hills.<br/>
And on that grave where English oak and holly<br/>
And laurel wreath entwine,<br/>
Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly,<br/>
This spray of Western pine."<br/></p>
<p id="id00049">—</p>
<p id="id00050">"Dark browed she broods with weary lids<br/>
Beside her Sphynx and Pyramids,<br/>
With her low, never lifted eyes.<br/>
If she be dead, respect the dead;<br/>
If she be weeping, let her weep;<br/>
If she be sleeping, let her sleep;<br/>
For lo, this woman named the stars.<br/>
She suckled at her tawny dugs<br/>
Your Moses, while ye reeked with wars<br/>
And prowled the woods, rude, painted thugs."<br/></p>
<p id="id00051">—</p>
<p id="id00052">"The tumult and the shouting dies;<br/>
The captains and the kings depart;<br/>
Still stands thine ancient sacrifice,<br/>
The humble and the contrite heart."<br/></p>
<p id="id00053">—</p>
<p id="id00054">"Careless seems the Great Avenger,<br/>
History's pages but record<br/>
One death grapple in the darkness<br/>
Twixt old systems and the word.<br/>
Truth forever on the scaffold,<br/>
Wrong forever on the throne;<br/>
But that scaffold sways the future,<br/>
And behind the dim Unknown<br/>
Standeth God within the shadow.<br/>
Keeping watch above his own."<br/></p>
<p id="id00055">—</p>
<p id="id00056">"Pledge me round, I bid you declare,<br/>
All good fellows whose beards are gray,<br/>
Did not the fairest of the fair<br/>
Common grow and wearisome, ere<br/>
Ever a month had passed away?<br/>
The reddest lips that ever have kissed,<br/>
The brightest eyes that ever have shone<br/>
May pray and whisper and we not list<br/>
Or look away and never be missed<br/>
Ere yet ever a month is gone.<br/>
Gillian's dead. God rest her bier!<br/>
How I loved her twenty years syne!<br/>
Marian's married and I sit here<br/>
Alone and merry at forty year,<br/>
Dipping my nose in the Gascon wine."<br/></p>
<p id="id00057">—</p>
<p id="id00058">"Under the wide and starry sky<br/>
Dig my grave and let me lie.<br/>
Glad did I live and gladly die<br/>
And I lay me down with a will.<br/>
This be the verse ye grave for me:<br/>
'Here he lies where he longed to be.<br/>
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,<br/>
And the hunter home from the hill.'"<br/></p>
<p id="id00059">—</p>
<p id="id00060">"By the brand upon my shoulders,<br/>
By the lash of clinging steel,<br/>
By the welts the whips have left me,<br/>
By the wounds that never heal,<br/>
By the eyes grown dim with staring<br/>
At the sun-wash on the brine,<br/>
I am paid in full for service,—<br/>
Would that service still were mine."<br/></p>
<p id="id00061">And with these the more familiar verses beginning:</p>
<p id="id00062">"Break, break, break,<br/>
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea."<br/></p>
<p id="id00063">"Bells of the past whose long-forgotten music."</p>
<p id="id00064">"Just for a handful of silver he left us."</p>
<p id="id00065">"Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead."</p>
<p id="id00066">"O to be in England, now that April's there."</p>
<p id="id00067">"The mists are on the Oberland,<br/>
The Fungfrau's snows look faint and far."<br/></p>
<p id="id00068">"The word of the Lord by night<br/>
To the watching pilgrims came."<br/></p>
<p id="id00069">"Fear, a forgotten form;<br/>
Death, a dream of the eyes;<br/>
We were atoms in God's great storm<br/>
That raged through the angry skies!"<br/></p>
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