We do not get these sensations often in our lives, and when we do we do not always recognize what they mean. A Bach prelude in its rhythm, accord, and beauty of sound; a dancer who at moments seems to reach that perfect co-ordination of movement and balance; and certain color combinations—always put a stop to light thinking, and there is—a pause. If we touch the realm of high beauty, we enter the realm of high thinking, and no matter if the effect is produced by the hind legs of a dancer or the thumb of a sculptor, if we get there, we are at the edge of the goal and something whispers:
“Be careful; tread slowly; you are on sacred ground.”
I had felt and realized my first artistic harmony, and it was in the realm of color.
The sun was high in the heavens before I began to think of Casey’s breakfast. Walking out on a huge log that lay across the river and in some past time had been leveled off, making a bridge wide enough for horses to pass over, I gazed into the water. It was clear as a crystal and far down—too far for a line to reach—I could see the lazy fish moving languorously in their glassy pools. All of a sudden, upon the improvised bridge, which was decayed and sagged into the water in spots, appeared a female otter, her coat as sleek as a wet seal’s, her long tail dragging after her, and in her mouth she held the most beautiful silver two-pound trout you ever saw. What a perfect breakfast dish!
It all happened in an instant. I was out upon the log with a loud cry of, “Wow!” The little animal snapped into the water and, before I could think, the fish, gills between my fingers, was flapping in my hand.
Casey was asleep when I carried the steaming dish and put it under his nose, crying:
“Wake up, old man! The sun is shining. Here is a king’s breakfast for you, and to-night you are going to sleep between dry blankets!”
That day, resting much along the way, I carried Henry Casey on my back five miles to the nearest cabin, belonging to a man named Scott. The next day he was driven to the stage, went to San Francisco, took the boat for Panama, and arrived in New York to spend just three weeks with his family before he died of tuberculosis—not pleurisy.
Sissons was four or five miles from the base of Mount Shasta in Strawberry Valley, and here it was that I went, after the departure of Casey. I wanted human companionship and I needed a job. As usual, the place was named for the first settler; and in this case Sisson was the hotel proprietor and owner of practically all the worth-while land about. He was a small man and very pugnacious, but he had been in the woods for twenty-five years, and that he had managed to keep his equilibrium for so long was pretty good testimony as to his strong character. Most everyone went to pieces before that time.
This was the country of which Bret Harte wrote. Overlooking the valley, where nestled the homes of twelve families, stood that strange sentinel—Mount Shasta—snowcapped, but inside, a seething mass of fire and lava causing bubbling springs to burst forth in many places, and one at the top so hot that an egg dropped in it would be perfectly boiled. Out of her sides (no paltry spring forming its source) rushed the McCloud River, full born, as Minerva leaped out of the brain of Jove.