gazed out, through the vistas of the leafy trees, up at those blue,
bright, snow-capped peaks beyond! How often, among the warm, green
meadow grass, gay with May-flowers, have I wallowed just below those
rocky heights! How often, in those glad young days, have I longed to
climb those dizzy cliffs and crags and towers, or to rove among those
caves and rifts and dells and canons deep, to prospect there for gold
and gems and fruits and blossoms rare! Oh, how I longed to cross over
the range, as other boys and bearded men had done! It was there that
the Indians located their “Happy Hunting Grounds,” or the “Regions of
the Blest.” Over there they said it was that the good Indians went
after death. I had also heard men tell of California--“a delightful,
warm country,” they said, “where it is always summer, and where fruits
and flowers are plentiful and can always be had just for the picking.”
They said that a great, wide, blue sea, called the Pacific Ocean,
rippled along the coast of that green, warm land, and that the beach
of the sea was strewn with many-colored and richly-tinted shells. How
I longed to visit that glorious sunset land, just over the range, but
in my childish innocence I imagined it must be an almost life-long and
herculean task to surmount those stupendous and lofty heights where
the snows of centuries lay piled up in great banks and drifts hundreds
of feet in depth. I also fancied that I could sometimes see the forms
of giant warriors stalking about among those wild crags and cliffs.
In my belief they were the guardian watchers of those “Happy Hunting
Grounds” of the Indians. I regarded them as sentries stationed along
the outposts of that blessed place, whose duty it was to turn back all
adventurous travelers whom they might catch attempting to enter that
terrestrial paradise of the great, wild West.
One day, while my father, my mother, my brothers and myself were on
a plumming and raspberrying excursion, my father made a remark that
awoke a new superstition within my soul. My mother was driving our
wagon, which was drawn by a yoke of gentle oxen, through the level of
a beautiful vale, surrounded by lofty peaks, when my father, looking
up, said to me in a mysterious kind of way, “My son, the Genus of the
hills is looking down with wonder, for lo, behold, yonder is Madam
Progress driving by in her ox-propeller car.” Ever after that I had a
superstitious dread of this same Genus of the hills, and it was not
until long years afterward, when the dry learning and colorless truths
of youth had begun to dispel the flowery fancies, poetical fictions and
glorious myths of my childhood, that I dared to explore or venture far
into those same Genus-haunted hills.--_From May Day Dreams, published
1890._
FINIS.
_The price of_ HAPPY DAYS _in cloth is $1, prepaid. Copies may be had
by addressing The Reed Publishing Company, 1756 Champa Street, Denver,
Colo. Remit by express or post-office money order, bank draft or
registered letter._
* * * * *
Transcriber’s note
Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Hyphenation
has been standardized.
Spelling was retained as in the original except for the following
changes:
Page iv: “Premit, therefore, this” “Permit, therefore, this”
Page ix: “felicitious, although” “felicitous, although”
Page 48: “God’s debator and ye” “God’s debater and ye”
Page 48: “Listern, ye doubting” “Listen, ye doubting”
Page 69: “a cottag Manitou” “a cottage at Manitou”
Page 87: “patriarchial trees of the” “patriarchal trees of the”