At the next meeting, when the pipes were all lighted, Ashley, turning to
Miller, said:
"You took too gloomy a view of things last night. What you said, or
rather something in your tone, has haunted me ever since. But you were
wrong. The Argonauts will not be forgotten.
"The names of the kings who compelled the building of the pyramids are
mostly matters of conjecture now, but no man who ever gazed upon those
piles of stone that have borne unscarred the desert storms that have
been breaking upon and around them through the centuries, has failed to
think of the tremendous energy of the race that reared those monuments
above the sand; reared them so that the abrasion of the ages avails not
against them.
"One loves to dream of how that race must have looked, there under that
sky, while yet the world was young, and while the energy and beauty of
youth was upon it. There was no steam power to assist, no power drills,
there were only rude, untempered tools. The plain wedge, and the lever
in its more effective form, were about all that was known of mechanics;
still from the quarries of Syene, far up the Nile, those blocks were
wrested, hewed, transported, lifted up and laid in place, and with such
mathematical precision was the work performed, that the ebb and flow of
the centuries have no effect upon the work. While this material work was
going on, in the same realm wise men were putting into a language the
alphabet of the sky, tracing out the procession of the stars and solving
the mystery of the seasons. When we think of Ancient Egypt, it is not of
her kings, but what was wrought out there by brain and hand.
"To-day I was at work on the twenty-four hundred-foot level of the mine.
Around me power drills were working, cars were rattling, cages were
running; three hundred men were stoping, timbering and rolling cars to
and from the chutes and ore-breasts, and in the spectral light I thought
it was a scene for a painter. But while so thinking, for some reason,
there came to me the thought of the one hundred times three hundred men,
who, for a generation, worked on a single pyramid; worked without pay
days, without so much as a kind word, and on poorer fare than one gets
at a fourth-rate miners' boarding house; and, as I reflected over that,
our little work here seemed small indeed.
"So, in estimating Greece, we do not pick out a few men or women to
remember, but we think of the race that made Thermopylae and Marathon
possibilities, of the men who followed Xenophon, of the women who closed
their hearts and left their deformed offspring to perish in the woods
that Greece should rear no woman who could not bear soldiers, no man who
could not bear arms; of the race so finely strung that poetry was born
of it; that sculpture and eloquence were so perfected in, that to copy
is impossible; that was so susceptible to beauty that it turned justice
aside, and yet that was so valiant that it mastered the world.
"So of Rome! It is not that the great Julius lived that we call it 'The
Imperial Nation.' We stand in awe of it still, not because out of its
millions a few superb figures shine. Rather, we think of the valor that
from a little nucleus widened until it subdued the world; of the ten
thousand fields on which Romans fought and conquered. We think how they
marshaled their armies, and taught the nations how to lay out camps; how
they built roads and aqueducts, that their land might be defended and
the Imperial City sustained; how they carved out an architecture of
their own which the world still clings to in its most stately edifices;
how, from barbarism, they progressed, until they framed a code which is
still respected; how, in literature and the arts, they excelled, and
how, for a thousand years, they were the concernment of the world.
"So of England. Which merits the greater glory, King John or the stern,
half barbarous barons who, with an instinct generations in advance of
their age, circled around their sullen king and compelled him to give to
them 'the great charter?' Through the thousand years that have succeeded
that act, how many individual names can we rescue from the hosts that on
that little isle have lived and died? Not many. But the grand career of
the nation is in the mind forever. How, through struggle after struggle,
the advance has been made; struggles that, though full of errors, knew
no faltering or despair, until at last, for the world, she became the
center and the bulwark of civilization; until in material strength she
had no equal; until the sheen of her sails gave light to all the seas,
and under her flag signal stations were upreared the world around. We do
not remember many men, but there is ever in the mind the thought of
English valor and persistence, and the clear judgment which backed the
valor by land and sea.
"But we need not go abroad; our own land has examples enough. Not many
can call over the names of those who came in the 'Mayflower,' or those
who made up the colonies up and down the Atlantic coast. But the
spectacle of the 'Mayflower' band kneeling, on their arrival, in the
snow and singing a triumphal song, is a picture the tints of which will
deepen in splendor with the ages. We need not call over the names of our
statesmen and warriors; they give but a slight impression of our race.
But when we think how, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, the woods
were made to give place to gardens, fruitful fields and smiling homes;
when we think that the majority of those families had each of them less
to start with than any one of us gets for a month's labor, and yet how
they subdued the land, pressed back the savage, reared and educated and
created a literature for their children, until over all the vast expanse
there was peace, prosperity, enlightenment and joy, then it is that we
begin to grow proud.
"If the Argonauts of the Golden Coast can show that they have wrought as
well, they will not be forgotten. Those who succeed them will know that
they were preceded by a race that was strong and brave and true, and
their memory in the West will be embalmed with the memory of those in
the East who, starting under the spray that is tossed from the white
surf of the eastern sea, with no capital but pluck, hewed out and
embellished the Republic.
"Of course, there have been sorrows; of course, hearts have broken; but
there has been much of triumph also. It is something to have a home in
this Far West; there is something in the hills, the trees, the free air
and action of this region which brings to men thoughts that they would
never have had in other lands. It is not bad sometimes for men to leave
their books and turn to Nature for instruction. Here of all the world
some of the brightest pages of Nature's book are spread open for the
reader. And many a man that others pity because they think his heart
must be heavy, does not ask that pity; does not feel its need. Those
hearts have gathered to themselves delights, which, if not, perhaps, of
the highest order, still are very sweet. Let me give an instance.
"Last year I went to look at a mine down in Tuolumne county, California.
I was the guest of a miner who had lived in the same cabin for more than
twenty years. He was his own cook and housekeeper and seldom had any
company except his books--a fine collection--his daily papers, his gun
and some domestic animals. He had a little orchard and garden. Around
his garden tame rabbits played with his dogs. In explanation, he said:
'They were all babies at the same time and have grown up together.'
While walking with him in his garden, he asked me if I had ever seen a
mountain quail on her nest. At the same moment he parted the limbs of a
shrub, and there, within six inches of his hand, sat a bird, her bright
eyes looking up in perfect confidence into his.
"The place was in the high foothills; there was a space in front of his
cabin. From that point the hills, in steadily increasing waves, swelled
into the great ridges of the higher Sierras, and far away to the east
the blue crest of Mount Bodie stood out clear against the sky.
"It was not strange to me that he loved the place. When within doors he
talked upon every subject with a peculiar terse shrewdness all his own.
He had had many bouts with the world; he knew men thoroughly; he had in
a measure withdrawn himself from them, and found a serener comfort in
his pets, his hills and trees. He had acquired that faculty which men
often do when a great deal alone in the mountains. He did not reason his
way up through the proof of a proposition, but with a clear sagacity
reached the truth at a bound, and left the reasoning for others. He had
his theory of how fissures were originally formed and filled; he had his
opinion of ancient and modern authors; he understood politics well, and
gave brief and true reasons for his belief. In short, he was a
self-appointed ambassador to the court of the hills, to represent all
the world.
"My admiration for him increased the longer I remained with him, for he
knew much of interest to me; but he spoke always in a tone as though he
was revealing only a little of what he knew. I suspect that was the real
state of the case. There was a charm, too, about his manner. Though I
knew that he had suffered many disappointments, if not sorrows, there
was no bitterness. Whatever he did or said, was with a gentle grace of
his own. He was free, alike, from either harshness, egotism or
diffidence. Something of the great calm of the hills around him had
entered into his soul.
"But the greatest surprise was reserved for me to the last. I had to get
up at three o'clock in the morning and walk over a dim trail two or
three miles to a little village, in order to take the stage which passed
the village at five o'clock. When I was ready, my friend said: 'There
are so many trails through the hills you might take the wrong one in the
uncertain light. I will pilot you.'
"When we set out it was yet dark. There was an absolute hush upon the
world. Up through the branches of the great pines, God's lanterns were
swinging as though but just trimmed and lighted, and under the august
roof where they swung, they shone with rays more pure than vestal lamps.
But at length up the east some shafts of light were shot, and soon the
miracle of the dawn began to unfold. It was a June morning and entirely
cloudless. Soon the warm rays of approaching day began to bend over the
hills from the east; the foliage which had been black began to grow
green; the scarlet of the hills shone out where the light touched it;
the sentinel fires above began to grow dim. A little later the hills
began to grow resonant with the manifold voices which they held, and
which commenced to awaken to hail the approaching day.
"Then my sententious companion, as though kindled by the same
influences, opened his lips. He seemed to have forgotten that I was
near; he was answering the greetings of his friends in the woods. I can
only give the faintest idea of what he said, and I grieve over it, for
it was sweeter than music. His words ran something like this:
"'Chirp, chirp; O, my martin, (the swallow's grandmother); as usual you
are up first, to say good morning, the first to hail the beautiful
coming day. Ah, there you are, whistling, my lovely quail, you charming
cockaded glory; and now, my mocking bird, you brown splendor with a flat
nose, where do you get all your voices? Heigh, O! you are up, Mr. Jacob
(woodpecker) up to see if Mrs. Jacob is gathering acorns this morning,
you old miser of the woods, with your black and white clothes and your
thrift worse than a Chinaman's; and now, my morning dove has commenced
its daily drone, growling because breakfast is not ready, I suppose. At
last you have opened your eyes, Mrs. Lark; a nice bird you are to claim
to be an early riser, but you have a cheery voice, nevertheless. Now, my
wren and my oreole, you are making some genuine music, if both of you
together are not as big as one note of an organ. Hist! that was a
curlew's cry from away down on the river's bank, and now you are all
awake and singing, you noisy chatterers, as though your hearts would
burst for joy. Finally, old night-raiding owl, you are saying 'good
night' this morning, you old burglar of the woods.'
"Meanwhile the banners of the dawn had grown more and more bright in the
sky, and as he ceased speaking, the full disc of the sun, lighted with
omnipotent fires, shone full above the hills, with a splendor too severe
for human eyes.
"I had not interrupted my friend during the half hour that he, striding
before me on the trail, had been talking. I half suspected that he had
forgotten that I was near, absorbed as he was in greeting his warblers.
Of course I have not named the birds in their order; nor have I named
half that he greeted; I might as well try to repeat to you all the
scientific terms in one of Professor Stewart's earthquake lectures. But
all that day, and for many days afterwards, his words were ringing in my
ears; and often have I wondered, if, with his thoughts and his
surroundings, he was not with more reason and more peace, passing down
life's trail, than as though he were out in the pitiless world of men,
striving for wealth and for power. Never since have I seen a lonely man
in town, with shy face which revealed that he was unused to the crowds
of the city, purchasing some few little necessaries, and, apparently,
hurrying to get away, that I have not said to myself: 'He has a cabin
somewhere with books and dogs, and with a garden outside, and he knows
every bird in the forest by its morning call.'"
While Ashley was talking, he had unconsciously fixed his eyes upon the
light which shone from a reflector, up through the window from the
hoisting works down the hill, and seemed to forget the presence of any
one near.
As he ceased and looked around, he discovered that all his auditors had
fallen asleep in their chairs, except Yap Sing, who had stolen into the
room. He looked up knowingly, smiled and said:
"You talkie belly nice. Me heap sabbie, clail, chickie, duckie, goosie.
Me cookie lem flirst late, you bettie."
"You be--" said Ashley, and went to bed. The rest, awakened by the
whistles, started up in surprise, and Corrigan said: "I was dramin' of
agles and pacocks and swans and hummin' birds. I must have been afther
atin too much supper."