But afar on the lofty exposed peaks of the range standing so high in the sky, the storm was expressing itself in still grander characters, which I was soon to see in all their glory. I had long been anxious to study some points in the structure of the ice-cone that is formed every winter at the foot of the upper Yosemite fall, but blinding spray by which it is invested had hitherto prevented me from making a sufficiently near approach. This morning the entire body of the fall was torn into gauzy shreds, and blown horizontally along the face of the cliff, leaving the cone dry; and while making my way to the top of an overlooking ledge to seize so favorable an opportunity to examine the interior of the cone, the peaks of the Merced group came in sight over the shoulder of the South Dome, each waving a resplendent banner against the blue sky, as regular in form, and as firm in texture, as if woven of fine silk. So rare and splendid a phenomenon, of course, overbore all other considerations, and I at once let the ice-cone go, and began to force my way out of the valley to some dome or ridge sufficiently lofty to command a general view of the main summits, feeling assured that I should find them bannered still more gloriously; nor was I in the least disappointed. Indian Canon, through which I climbed, was choked with snow that had been shot down in avalanches from the high cliffs on either side, rendering the ascent difficult; but inspired by the roaring storm, the tedious wallowing brought no fatigue, and in four hours I gained the top of a ridge above the valley, 8,000 feet high. And there in bold relief, like a clear painting, appeared a most imposing scene. Innumerable peaks, black and sharp, rose grandly into the dark blue sky, their bases set in solid white, their sides streaked and splashed with snow, like ocean rocks with foam; and from every summit, all free and unconfused, was streaming a beautiful, silky, silvery banner, from half a mile to a mile in length, slender at the point of attachment, then widening gradually as it extended from the peak until it was about 1,000 or 1,500 feet in breadth, as near as I could estimate. The cluster of peaks called the "Crown of the Sierra," at the head of the Merced and Tuolumne rivers,—Mounts Dana, Gibbs, Conness, Lyell, Maclure, Ritter, with their nameless compeers,—each had its own refulgent banner, waving with a clearly visible motion in the sun glow, and there was not a single cloud in the sky to mar their simple grandeur. Fancy yourself standing on this Yosemite ridge looking eastward. You notice a strange garish glitter in the air. The gale drives wildly overhead with a fierce, tempestuous roar, but its violence is not felt, for you are looking through a sheltered opening in the woods as through a window. There, in the immediate foreground of your picture, rises a majestic forest of silver fir blooming in eternal freshness, the foliage yellow-green, and the snow beneath the trees strewn with their beautiful plumes, plucked off by the wind. Beyond, and extending over all the middle ground, are somber swaths of pine, interrupted by huge swelling ridges and domes; and just beyond the dark forest you see the monarchs of the High Sierra waving their magnificent banners. They are twenty miles away, but you would not wish them nearer, for every feature is distinct, and the whole glorious show is seen in its right proportions. After this general view, mark how sharply the dark, snowless ribs and buttresses and summits of the peaks are defined, excepting the portions veiled by the banners, and how delicately their sides are streaked with snow, where it has come to rest in narrow flutings and gorges. Mark, too, how grandly the banners wave as the wind is deflected against their sides, and how trimly each is attached to the very summit of its peak, like a streamer at a masthead; how smooth and silky they are in texture, and how finely their fading fringes are penciled on the azure sky. See how dense and opaque they are at the point of attachment, and how filmy and translucent toward the end, so that the peaks back of them are seen dimly, as though you were looking through ground glass. Yet again, observe how some of the longest, belonging to the loftiest summits, stream perfectly free all the way across intervening notches and passes from peak to peak, while others overlap and partly hide each other. And consider how keenly every particle of this wondrous cloth of snow is flashing out jets of light. These are the main features of the beautiful and terrible picture as seen from the forest window; and it would still be surpassingly glorious were the fore and middle grounds obliterated altogether, leaving only the black peaks, the white banners and the blue sky.
Glancing now in a general way at the formation of snow-banners, we find that the main causes of the wondrous beauty and perfection of those we have been contemplating were the favorable direction and great force of the wind, the abundance of snow-dust, and the peculiar conformation of the slopes of the peaks. It is essential not only that the wind should move with great velocity and steadiness to supply a sufficiently copious and continuous stream of snow dust, but that it should come from the north. No perfect banner is ever hung on the Sierra peaks by a south wind. Had the gale that day blown from the south, leaving other conditions unchanged, only a dull, confused, fog-like drift would have been produced; for the snow, instead of being spouted up over the tops of the peaks in concentrated currents to be drawn out as streamers, would have been shed off around the sides, and piled down into glacier wombs. The cause of the concentrated action of the north wind is found in the peculiar form of the north sides of the peaks, where the amphitheaters of the residual glaciers are. In general, the south sides are convex and irregular, while the north sides are concave both in their vertical and horizontal sections; the wind in ascending these curves converges toward the summits, carrying the snow in concentrating currents with it, shooting it almost straight up into the air above the peaks, from which it is then carried away in a horizontal direction.
This difference in form between the north and south sides of the peaks was almost wholly produced by the difference in the kind and quantity of the glaciation to which they have been subjected, the north sides having been hollowed by residual shadow-glaciers of a form that never existed on the sun-beaten sides.
It appears, therefore, that shadows in a great part determine not only the forms of lofty icy mountains, but also those of the snow-banners that the wild winds hang on them.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX.
"If you haven't what you like, try to like what you have."
In this quotation is found the philosophy of life during many severe trials of one whose girlhood and early career as a writer were spent entirely within the confines of Wisconsin. Ella Wheeler was born at Johnstown Center, Wisconsin, sometime in the '50's, and the family moved to a farm near Madison when she was a year old. The discussion of her life given here is derived quite largely from her own statements in an article, "My Autobiography," published in the Cosmopolitan magazine for August, 1901.
Mrs. Wheeler, Ella's mother, was a woman of some literary inclinations and was very fond of reading. She loved not only the good society of books, but she longed also for the pleasures of the social life of a cultured community such as she had known in her Vermont home. Pioneer life was especially irksome to her, and she found herself unable to meet patiently the many hardships that the change of fortune had brought her, and her attitude in the home was not always buoyant.
Some time after the home was established in Wisconsin, there was born to these parents their fourth child, Ella, the future poetess. It may not be too much to say, since Mrs. Wilcox seems to think it herself, that from the struggles of the father to meet the hardships that his new life brought him, may have sprung that bit of wholesome philosophy which stands at the head of this discussion. It is evident that she found many opportunities to test it to the utmost. From the suppressed literary desires of the mother may have come the intense longing of the daughter to achieve helpfulness through writing.
From the standpoint of language training this home was far from limited, and Ella had opportunities here accorded to the minority of children even at the present time. She says: "My mother was a great reader of whatever came in her way, and was possessed of a wonderful memory. The elder children were excellent scholars, and a grammatical error was treated as a cardinal sin in the household." That Ella profited from this inheritance and training may be seen from the following statements. At school she found the composition exercises the most delightful of all her school duties. As early as eight she was excelling in the expression of her thoughts in essay form. By the age of fourteen she had become the neighborhood celebrity because of her stories and her poetry. Naturally these pioneer people would criticise the mother for allowing Ella to scribble so much when she might have been doing household or farm tasks; but their criticism was silenced, and they learned to praise her efforts when they found that there was a market with the magazines and papers for Ella's "scribblings."
At the age of fourteen Ella Wheeler's education, "excellent in grammar, spelling and reading, but wretched in mathematics," was completed so far as the rural school was concerned. Sometime later, through great sacrifice on the part of her people, she was placed for one term in the University of Wisconsin. Of this experience she says: "I was not at all happy there; first, because I knew the strain it put upon the home purse; second, because I felt the gulf between myself and the town girls, whose gowns and privileges revealed to me for the first time, the different classes in American social life; and third, because I wanted to write and did not want to study." Thus her school work ended and her acquisition of knowledge necessary to furnish details for her emotional poems has been made through her individual study since the University experience.
Ella Wheeler's struggle to become a writer is one of the most inspiring stories among Wisconsin writers. A weekly paper came to the home and besides this there was an old red chest in their upstairs wherein there was kept the often-read copies of Arabian Nights, Gulliver's Travels, John Gilpin's Ride, and a few of Shakespeare's plays. In addition to these, friends had sent the family the New York Ledger and the New York Mercury. The serial stories of these papers furnished not only pleasing reading, but models of plots and of forms of expression which became the guide to her in the art of story writing.
When Ella was thirteen years old the Mercury ceased to come to her home, and she regretted the loss of the stories so much that she determined to write something for the paper with the hope that the publisher would pay for her article through subscription. After some delay this brought the much coveted subscription and she says: "Perhaps the most triumphant and dramatic hour of my life was when I set forth and announced to the family that my literary work had procured the coveted Mercury for our united enjoyment."
This experience led her to write extensively for the magazines and papers, a list of which a University friend had sent her. The articles which they accepted soon enabled her to supply the home with many periodicals and books and other articles of home use. She was not content with writing essays very long, but soon undertook the production of verse. Her first poem was rejected by the Mercury with some degree of scorn, but she soon offered it to other papers and so continued until she found a publisher. Very frequently some of her articles would be returned as many as nine times before she found a publisher.
The Wheeler family were enthusiastic advocates of total abstinence, and Ella used her pen to advance this cause. Her first collection of poems into book form was entitled "Drops of Water." A poem with temperance as its theme is given as the first illustration of her efforts in the collection published here.
Ella Wheeler's training tended to make her the lyric rather than the narrative poetess. She wrote largely of the emotion that played through her passing experiences. "Everything in life," she says, "was material for my own emotions, the remarks or experiences of my comrades and associates, sentences from books I read, and some phases of Nature." In general three things may be said to characterize these short poems and her own life as revealed by them, for her life itself is a poem. First, she is convinced that the supreme thing in life is love. In one poem she asserts that love is the need of the world. In another, "The Kingdom of Love," which is given later, she truthfully proclaims that love is the very essence of the home.
The second characteristic is her spirit of buoyancy which has enabled her to surmount the many crushing deprivations and disappointments in her life. She was born with an unquenchable hope and an unfaltering trust in God and guardian spirits. "I often wept myself to sleep after a day of disappointment and worries," she says, "but woke in the morning singing aloud with the joy of life." It was such experiences as these that enabled her to say:
"Laugh and the world laughs with you;
Weep and you weep alone."Her faith in the better things to be is well expressed in the little poem, "The Tendril's Fate." Trials to her are frequently the means by which the soul's true worth is tested. This thought is expressed in the poem, "Three Friends." She bears trials not merely for her own sake, but for the sake of those about her. We are illustrating this quality with the poem "Ambition's Trail." Her faith that life has still much that is better than the present may be illustrated by her Morning Prayer.
The third characteristic manifest in her poetry is that of the spirit of helpfulness that manifests itself in every new phase of life that she assumes. This attitude is illustrated with respect to mankind in general and also with respect to her own sex. The poems used are "I Am" and "Which Are You?"
With love and helpfulness as the bond which unite mankind, Mrs. Wilcox feels there is no place for strife and warfare. She assails war and expresses her conviction that womankind shall have much to do with the final disarmament of nations. She believes implicitly in the mutual helpfulness of man and woman in solving the great problems of the world. Her own home life is one of constant happiness and of constant useful activity. When asked to express what life means to her she wrote an article for the Cosmopolitan which began thus: "Exhilaration, anticipation, realization, usefulness, growth—these things life has always meant and is meaning to me. I expected much of life; it has given, in all ways, more than I expected. Love has been more loyal and lasting, friendship sweeter and more comprehensive, work more enjoyable, and fame, because of its aid to usefulness, more satisfying than early imagination pictured." Of one whose ideals of life are so high the state should be justly proud and its people should delight to hear her sing:
"I know we are building our heaven
As we journey along by the way;
Each thought is a nail that is driven
In structures that cannot decay,
And the mansion at last shall be given
To us as we build it today."It was not until after her return from the University that Ella Wheeler discovered that her poems had a money value. She sent Frank Leslie's Publishing House three little poems written in one day. These were accepted and a check sent her for ten dollars. She now bent every effort towards making her literary efforts return substantial aid to herself and her family. It was all her own effort and the worth of her productions that brought her success, for she had no one to aid her in securing publication. She sent her poems to various magazines,—a practise she still continues. During the years 1912 and 1913, she had poems and prose productions listed in the following periodicals: Current Literature, Everybody's, Good Housekeeping, Ladies' Home Journal, Collier's Magazine, New England Magazine, The Bookman, Lippincott's, Forum, Cosmopolitan, Musician, Current Opinion, and Hearst's magazine.
Mrs. Wilcox has attempted only one long narrative poem, "Maurine." In this she endeavors to set forth the doctrine of what she regards as the highest type of friendship. Her collections of poems bear the following titles: Drops of Water, Shells, Poems of Passion, Three Women, An Ambitious Man, Everyday, Thought in Prose and Verse, Poems of Pleasure, Kingdom of Love and Other Poems, An Erring Woman's Love, Men, Women and Emotions, The Beautiful Land of Nod, Poems of Power, The Heart of the New Thought, Sonnets of Abelard and Heloise, Poems of Experience, Yesterday, Poems of Progress, Maurine, and Poems of Problems.
Some time after a brief venture in editorial work, she was married, 1884, to Robert M. Wilcox, a business man of New York City. Their home life in the city and by the seashore at Granite Bay, Short Beach, Connecticut, has been most delightful to them. They have been able to travel extensively and in this manner to realize many of Mrs. Wilcox's early dreams. The following poems are from "The Kingdom of Love" and "Poems of Power."