MOUNTAIN
MEDITATIONS
| CONTENTS | |
|---|---|
| PAGE | |
| [MOUNTAIN-TOPS] | 7 |
| [THE BORDERLAND] | 44 |
| [REFORMERS] | 84 |
| [NATIONALITY] | 131 |
| [RELIGION IN TRANSITION] | 179 |
MOUNTAIN-TOPS
Frères de l'aigle! Aimez la montagne sauvage! Surtout à ces moments où vient un vent d'orage.
Victor Hugo.
I belong to the great and mystic brotherhood of mountain worshippers. We are a motley crowd drawn from all lands and all ages, and we are certainly a peculiar people. The sight and smell of the mountain affect us like nothing else on earth. In some of us they arouse excessive physical energy and lust of conquest in a manner not unlike that which suggests itself to the terrier at the sight of a rat. We must master the heights above, and we become slaves to the climbing impulse, itinerant purveyors of untold energy, marking the events of our lives on peaks and passes. We may merit to the full Ruskin's scathing indictment of those who look upon the Alps as soaped poles in a bear-garden which we set ourselves “to climb and slide down again with shrieks of delight,” we
may become top-fanatics and record-breakers, “red with cutaneous eruption of conceit,” but we are happy with a happiness which passeth the understanding of the poor people in the plains.