The Business That Goes On In The Street Of The
Mountain Is Tremendous, World-Formative.
Here go birds, squirrels,
and red deer, children crying small wares and playing in the
street, but they do not obstruct its affairs.
Summer is their
holiday; "Come now," says the lord of the street, "I have need of
a great work and no more playing."
But they are left borders and breathing-space out of pure
kindness. They are not pushed out except by the exigencies of the
nobler plan which they accept with a dignity the rest of us have
not yet learned.
WATER BORDERS
I like that name the Indians give to the mountain of Lone Pine, and
find it pertinent to my subject,--Oppapago, The Weeper. It sits
eastward and solitary from the lordliest ranks of the Sierras, and
above a range of little, old, blunt hills, and has a bowed, grave
aspect as of some woman you might have known, looking out across
the grassy barrows of her dead. From twin gray lakes under its
noble brow stream down incessant white and tumbling waters.
"Mahala all time cry," said Winnenap', drawing furrows in his
rugged, wrinkled cheeks.
The origin of mountain streams is like the origin of tears,
patent to the understanding but mysterious to the sense. They are
always at it, but one so seldom catches them in the act. Here in
the valley there is no cessation of waters even in the season when
the niggard frost gives them scant leave to run.
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