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MOUNTAINS :
CT) vou: tell me! What else akin to my own soul have

you; with your varying moods, your different season:

garbs, your other mountain friends, your thoughts an
actions? I think I have seen them all—but no—yet again you
change, presenting something new, something undiscovered—pet
ceived for the first time, and I am baffled again. Surely you are
human!
In the morning at sunrise you lift your head, rosily flushed fro
the night’s slumber, and stretch, vividly alive, to rise to great
heights during the sun’s journey across the sky, till at noon yor
langorously rest and lave yourself in the rays of intense light a
warmth. Then as eventide approaches, you garb yourself in rega
robes of purple and ermine to await the night’s regime, when she
will make for you a worthy crown of myriad sparkling jewels
the stars.

What a great mother you are! How many of nature’s childre
you nurture; all the animals, great and small, all foliage fro
the tiniest rock lichens to the hoary, gnarled warriors, the tree arm’
clinging with tenacious grip to your huge boulders. Then, toe
your choristers—the birds, the bees—join their rhapsodies w
the harmonious song of the wind through the grass, and heavi
branches all bend to its rhythm. :
What of the passions that assail you, when without warning, gigar
tic clouds pass over your brows in anger, and your fury breaks for
in the lightning’s flash and the thunder’s roll, while from your dep
of soul—the valleys and gorges—trise vapours, like evil-smellit
potions from a witch’s cauldron, gradually passing over, and at la
leaving you again serene and tranquil against the intense blue sky.
When you are old and hoary, with your white crowned head ane
silvery locks falling down about you, and your offspring, the lesse
hills, for companions, what a glorious memory, a pageant of th
years, is thy dower for the countless ages to come. i
Oh, mountains, it has been sung of thee: j

“Unto the hills around do I lift up my longing eyes from when¢

cometh my joy and my salvation.”
May this be true—always!

ADA CURRIE.

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