ribute:

"It embodies the same kind of incident which had so affected the master
himself in the papers to which I have referred; it shows the gentler
influences which, in even those California wilds, can restore outlawed
'roaring campers' to silence and humanity; and there is hardly any
form of posthumous tribute which I can imagine likely to have better
satisfied his desire of fame than one which should thus connect with the
special favorite among all his heroines the restraints and authority
exerted by his genius over the rudest and least civilized of competitors
in that far, fierce race for wealth."

In the twining of English holly and Western pine upon the great English
novelist's grave the poet expresses a happy thought. He calls East and
West together in common appreciation of one whose influence was not
merely local but worldwide. He invites the old world and the new to
kneel together at the altar of sentiment, an appeal to the emotions
which never fails to touch a responsive chord in the heart of humanity.

Frederick S. Myrtle

San Francisco, California
April, 1922

* * * * *

[Illustration]

DICKENS in CAMP

* * * * *

Above the pines the moon was slowly drifting,
The river sang below;
The dim Sierras, far beyond, uplifting
Their minarets of snow.

The roaring camp-fire, with rude humor, painted
The ruddy tints of health
On haggard face and form that drooped and fainted
In the fierce race for wealth;

Till one arose, and from his pack's scant treasure
A hoarded volume drew,
And cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure
To hear the tale anew;

And then, while round them shadows gathered faster,
And as the firelight fell,
He read aloud the book wherein the Master
Had writ of "Little Nell."

Perhaps 'twas boyish fancy,--for the reader
Was youngest of them all,--
But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar
A silence seemed to fall;

The fir-trees, gathering closer in the shadows,
Listened in every spray,
While the whole camp, with "Nell" on English meadows,
Wandered and lost their way.

And so in mountain solitudes--o'ertaken
As by some spell divine--
Their cares dropped from them like the needles shaken
From out the gusty pine.

Lost is that camp, and wasted all its fire:
And he who wrought that spell?--
Ah, towering pine and stately Kentish spire,
Ye have one tale to