I believe it climatic, and humbly offer my tribute to the thermometer-man, who among many ventures has this time probably stumbled upon truth.
Let us not grieve because the writers and lecturers have not found Californian society all their ideals demanded, for (saving always the dry-bulb readers of past and future) their dictum is confined to existing conditions. Have they forgotten that these are less potent factors in development than the impulse, that what a man is, is of far less consequence than what he is becoming?
Show these gloomy critics a bare stretch of vulgar Sierra earth, and they will tell you how barren, how valueless it is, ignorant that the art of any Californian can banish every grain of sand into the Pacific’s bottom, and gather a residuum of solid gold. Out of the race of men whom they have in the same shallow way called common, I believe Time shall separate a noble race.
Travelling to-day in foot-hill Sierras, one may see the old, rude scars of mining; trenches yawn, disordered heaps cumber the ground, yet they are no longer bare. Time, with friendly rain, and wind, and flood, slowly, surely, levels all, and a compassionate cover of innocent verdure weaves fresh and cool from mile to mile. While Nature thus gently heals the humble Earth, God, who is also Nature, moulds and changes Man.
THE END.