C. C. Goodwin

“ If you never experienced it you don't know what the silence of the desert means. Take a day when the winds are laid; when in all directions, as far as your vision extends, thar is not a moving thing; when all that you can see is the brazen sky overhead, and the scarred breast of the earth, as if smitten and transfixed by Thor's thunderbolts, lying prone and desolate like the face of a dead world, before you; and withal not one sound: absolute stillness; and strong nerves after awhile become strained. ”

“ There in the strong arms of the mountains it is rocked, and whin the winds ruffle the azure plumage of the beautiful wathers, upon wather and upon shore a splendor rists such as might come were an angel to descend to earth and sketch for mortals a sane from Summer Land."
"You are right, Corrigan," said Ashley. "If the thirst for money does not denude the shores of their trees, and thus spoil the frame of your wonderful picture, Lake Tahoe will be a growing object of interest until its fame will be as wide as the world. ”

“ There something of the energy that creates that endless panorama is comprehended; all the deep throbbings of the mighty river's pulses are felt; all the magnificence is seen.
"In the reverberations that come of the war of waters one hears something like God's voice; something like the splendor of God is before his eyes; something akin to God's power is manifesting itself before him, and his soul shrinks within itself, conscious as never before of its own littleness and helplessness in the presence of the workings of Nature's immeasurable forces. ”

“ The ruling thought of Andy Barlow is to be a fighter, and he can draw and shoot in the space of a lightning's flash. The dream of George Washington, he having no children, was to create and adopt a nation which should at once be strong and free, and the result is, his grave is a shrine. But, as the eight notes of the scale, in their combinations, fill the world with music—or with discords, so the work of an editor covers all the subjects on which men have ever thought, or ever will think, and the best that any one editor can do is to handle a few subjects well. ”

“ Sometime all these wires will work in accord, and the good-nights and the kisses in the souls of men will materialize into harmony and fill the world with music."
"That is, Brewster," said Corrigan, "supposin' the wires do not get crossed and the girls do not kiss the wrong papas."
"Suppose, Brewster," said the Colonel, "that at the final concert it shall be discovered that certain gentlemen have not settled their monthly rents for a long time, and their connection has been cut off?"
"There is no music where there are no ears to hear," said Wright. "What if some souls are born deaf and dumb?" ”

“ The sun blazed from beyond the waters in the west, the lightnings blazed beyond the nearer hills in the east, the snowy heights in the southeast were turned to purple, while in the city every spire, every pane of glass which faced the west, every speck of metal on house and temple in a moment grew radiant as burnished gold, and there was a shimmer of splendor in all the air. ”

“ No one stopped to think that the glory which shone on high was made merely by sunlight shining through falling water; the cold explanation made by science was forgotten, and hundreds of eyes furtively watched, half expecting to catch glimpses of a divine hand and brush, for the pictures were rare enough to be the perfect work of celestial beings sent to sketch for mortals a splendor which should kindle within them dim conceptions of the glories which fill the spheres where light is born. ”

“ Around me power drills were working, cars were rattling, cages were running; three hundred men were stoping, timbering and rolling cars to and from the chutes and ore-breasts, and in the spectral light I thought it was a scene for a painter. But while so thinking, for some reason, there came to me the thought of the one hundred times three hundred men, who, for a generation, worked on a single pyramid; worked without pay days, without so much as a kind word, and on poorer fare than one gets at a fourth-rate miners' boarding house ”

“ The opportunities of this land, especially this free West, with a capacity to plan and work, are enough for any man. The trouble is, men falter too soon. On that last night of anxiety, before the New World rose out of the sea to greet the eyes of Columbus; when his sullen and fear-stricken crews were on the point of mutiny, suddenly there came to the senses of the great commander, the perfume of earthly flowers. ”

“ She is my Nora, my Nora. She, beautiful as she is, would in her divinity have bent and married a coarse mold of clay like myself, and poor, too, as I was; but her father said: 'Not yet, Joe. Go out into the world, make a struggle for two years, then come back, and if by that time you have established that you are man enough to be a husband to a true woman, and you and Nora still hold to the thought that is in your hearts now, I will help you all I can. ”

“ While journeying through the desert to come suddenly upon it, the spectacle gives one something of the emotions that would be experienced to behold a resurrection from the dead. In the midst of what seems like a dead world, suddenly there springs into irrepressible life something so marvelous, so grand, so caparisoned with loveliness and irresistible might, that the head is bowed, the strained heart throbs tumultuously and the awed soul sinks to its knees. ”

“ Club was completely broken down by it. When the lament ceased all were weeping, while warm-hearted and impetuous Corrigan was sobbing like a grieved child.
The quartette waited a moment and then sang a Cornish farewell, the music of which, though mostly very sad, had, here and there, a bar or two such as might be sung around the cradle of Hope, leaving a thought that there might be a victory even over death, and which made the hymn ring half like the Miserere and half like a benediction. ”

“ But imagine that behind the Republic there was in the treasury a thousand millions of dollars in silver, the original money of the world, and another thousand millions in gold, what combination of forces could place the money of the Nation in danger of loss by depreciation?
"Gold and silver when produced are simply the measures of the labor required to produce them; they are labor made imperishable; and when either is destroyed—and demonetization is destruction—just so much labor is destroyed, and you who work have to make up the loss by working more hours for a dollar. ”

“ As a rule, all the summer long, the skies are of a crystal clearness; the green of the hill tops melts into the everlasting incandescent white beyond, and there is no change for days and weeks at a time, except as the green of the day fades into the shadows of the night, and the gold of the sunlight gives place to the silver of the stars. ”

“ But when we think how, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, the woods were made to give place to gardens, fruitful fields and smiling homes; when we think that the majority of those families had each of them less to start with than any one of us gets for a month's labor, and yet how they subdued the land, pressed back the savage, reared and educated and created a literature for their children, until over all the vast expanse there was peace, prosperity, enlightenment and joy, then it is that we begin to grow proud. ”

“ But the grand career of the nation is in the mind forever. How, through struggle after struggle, the advance has been made; struggles that, though full of errors, knew no faltering or despair, until at last, for the world, she became the center and the bulwark of civilization; until in material strength she had no equal; until the sheen of her sails gave light to all the seas, and under her flag signal stations were upreared the world around. ”

“ It makes a man a better American to go up the Columbia to the Cascades and look about him. He is not only impressed with the majesty of the scene, but thoughts of empire, of dominion and of the glory of the land over which his country's flag bears sovereignty, take possession of him. He looks down upon the rolling river and up at Mount Hood, and to both he whispers, 'We are in accord; I have an interest in you,' and the great pines nod approvingly, and the waterfalls babble more loud. ”

“ Columbus was not the only man who ever discovered a new world. They are being found daily. I meet men often on the street and know by something in their faces, that, at that very moment, the perfume of the flowers of some glory to come is upon them, and that the first rays of the dawn of a divine light are commencing to fill with splendor their eyes. ”

“ And before Sister Celeste had any time for preparation or remonstrance, the young man added:
"'You have been my guardian angel; you have saved my life. The world will be all dark without you. You can serve God and, humanity better as my wife than as a lowly and poor Sister here. Some women have higher destinies and a nobler sphere to fill on earth than as Sisters of Charity; you were never meant to be a nun, but a loving wife. Be mine. If it is the poor you wish to serve, a thousand shall bless you where one blesses you here ”

“ There were great soldiers before Achilles or Hector, but there were no Homers, or if there were, they were dissipated fellows, or they were absorbed in business, or, under the clear Grecian sky, it was their wont to dream the beautiful days away, and so, no sounds were uttered, of the kind which, booming through space, strike at last on the immortal heights, and there make echoes which thrill the earth with celestial music ever after. ”

“ Men follow the occupation for months and years without an accident or mistake, but now and then, through the ceaseless strain, their nerves break down; something like an aberration of the mind comes over them and they watch, dazed like sleep-walkers, as the cage shoots out of the shaft and mounts up into the sheaves and cannot command themselves enough to move the lever of the engine which is in their hand.
Such an accident as this overtook Wright and his companion. Poor Wright was carried home by brother miners. ”

“ But when this soldier of peace assaults the wilderness, no bugles sound the charge; the forest, the desert, the wild beast, the savage, the malaria, the fatigue, are the foes that lurk to ambush him, and if, against the unequal odds, he falls, no volleys are fired above him; the pitiless world merely sponges his name from its slate. ”

“ He is a rough fellow, but he declares that since he commenced to receive those kisses, he knows that an answer to prayer is not impossible; that if that child's voice can come to him, stealing past the night patrol unheard, stealing in clear and distinct and like a benediction, while the winds and the city are roaring outside, there is nothing wonderful in believing that on the invisible wire of faith the same voice could send its music to the furthest star, and that the Great Father would bend His ear to listen. ”

“ Detroit was reached and passed; the arm of the Dominion was crossed, and finally, when in the early morning the train stopped, the boom of Niagara filled the air, and the enchantment of the picture which the river and the sunlight suspend there before mortals, was in full view. Next the valley of the Genesee was unfolded, and with each increasing mile more and more distinct grew the clamors of toiling millions, jubilant with life and measureless in energy. ”

“ If the Argonauts of the Golden Coast can show that they have wrought as well, they will not be forgotten. Those who succeed them will know that they were preceded by a race that was strong and brave and true, and their memory in the West will be embalmed with the memory of those in the East who, starting under the spray that is tossed from the white surf of the eastern sea, with no capital but pluck, hewed out and embellished the Republic. ”

“ In the hot summer days as the farmers at Shasta's base gather their harvests, they can see where the wild wind is heaping the snow drifts about his crest. The mountain is one of Winter's stations, and from his forts of snow upon its top he never withdraws his garrison. There are the bastions of ice, the frosty battlements; there his old bugler, the wind, is daily sounding the advance and the retreat of the storm. The mountain holds all latitudes and all seasons at the same time in its grasp. Flowers bloom at its base, further up the forest trees wave their ample arms ”

“ Surely the eagle is a fitting symbol of perfect fearlessness and of that exultation which comes with battle clamors.
"But these first falls are but a beginning. The greater splendor succeeds. With swifter flow the startled waters dash on and within a few feet take their second plunge in a solid crescent, over a sheer precipice, two hundred and ten feet to the abyss below. On the brink there is a rolling crest of white, dotted here and there, in sharp contrast, with shining eddies of green, as might a necklace of emerald shimmer on a throat of snow, and then the leap and fall. ”

“ We do not remember many men, but there is ever in the mind the thought of English valor and persistence, and the clear judgment which backed the valor by land and sea.
"But we need not go abroad; our own land has examples enough. Not many can call over the names of those who came in the 'Mayflower,' or those who made up the colonies up and down the Atlantic coast. But the spectacle of the 'Mayflower' band kneeling, on their arrival, in the snow and singing a triumphal song, is a picture the tints of which will deepen in splendor with the ages. ”

“ If fortune had not made an actor of Shakespeare, and if his matchless spirit, working in the line of his daily duties, had not felt that all the plays offered were mean and poor, as wanting in dramatic power as they were false to human nature, and so was roused to fill a business need, the chances are a thousand to one that he 'would have died with all his music in him,' and would, to-day, have been as entirely lost in oblivion as are the boors who were his neighbors. ”