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
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOUNTAIN MEDITATIONS ***
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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
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