y before the raging fury of the gale, seemed
struck by death. Lightning continued its electrical vividity of
fork-like greenish white among the heavy clouds, drooping threateningly
from the hill-tops to the darkened valleys below, laden still with their
waiting, unshed deluge. Through a narrow incision in the cruel clouds
the sun peeped out with a nervous timidity, and a tiny patch over
yonder, in a flash illuminated with gold and purple, across which the
lightning danced in heavenly rivalry, displayed the magic touch of the
Artist of the skies. Then came a rainbow of sweetest multi-color, of a
splendor glorious and exquisite, delicate as the breath from paradise,
stretching its majestic archbow athwart the waning gloom from range to
range. As one drank in the glimpses of that dark corner in this peculiar
fairyland, a mighty peal of magnificent, stentorian clashing broke
finally upon me, and heaven's electricity again flitted fearfully over
the earth, aslant, upwards, downwards again, upwards again, disappearing
over the unmoved hills like a thousand tortured souls fleeing from
Dante's Hades. And here I sit on, in that veritable "rock of ages" cleft
for me, glad that no human touch save that of my own mean clay, that no
human voice came between me and the voice of that Infinite beyond. I
seemed to have been standing on the verge of another world, another
great unknown. The heavens raged and the thunders thereof roared, and
the wild wind hissed and moaned and wailed the hopeless wail of a
lonely, tormented soul. The cold was intense, and through it all I sat
drenched to the skin.

On the bleak mountain thus I was the pitifulest atom of loneliest
humanity, yet felt no loneliness. The face of the earth frowned in angry
fury, the awfulness of the raging elements dwarfed all else to utter
annihilation. But even at such a time, coming all too seldom in the
lives of most of us, when standing in some remote spot which still tells
forth the story of the world's youth, one's inmost nature thrills with a
sense of unison with it all beyond human expression. All was so grand,
inspiring one with an awe beyond one's comprehension, a peculiar, dread
of one's own earthly insignificance. These pictures, graven in one's
memory with the strong pencil of our common mother, are indelible, yet
quite beyond expression. As in our own souls we cannot frame in words
our deepest life emotions, so as we penetrate into the depths of that
kindly comm