The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mountain Meditations, by L. Lind-af-Hageby

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Title: Mountain Meditations
and some subjects of the day and the war

Author: L. Lind-af-Hageby

Release Date: June 30, 2009 [EBook #29277]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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MOUNTAIN
MEDITATIONS

AND SOME SUBJECTS OF
THE DAY AND THE WAR

_By_ L. LIND-AF-HAGEBY

AUTHOR OF "AUGUST STRINDBERG:
THE SPIRIT OF REVOLT"

[Illustration: Publisher's device]

LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.
RUSKIN HOUSE 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C. 1

_First published in 1917_

(_All rights reserved_)

CONTENTS

PAGE

MOUNTAIN-TOPS 7

THE BORDERLAND 44

REFORMERS 84

NATIONALITY 131

RELIGION IN TRANSITION 179

MOUNTAIN-TOPS

Freres de l'aigle! Aimez la montagne sauvage!
Surtout a ces moments ou 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.

Others experience no acceleration of p