ily in the music, the motion, and the movement of the elemental
dance with the winds. I hope it will live with rapture in the
flower-opening days of spring and also enjoy the quiet summer rain.
I hope it will be a home for the birds and hear their low, sweet
mating-songs. I trust that when comes the golden peace of autumn days,
it will be ready with fruited boughs for the life to come. I never
fail to hope that if this tree is cut down, it may be used for a
flagpole to keep our glorious banner in the blue above, or that it may
be built into a cottage where love will abide; or if it must be burnt,
that it will blaze on the hearthstone in a home where children play
in the firelight on the floor.

In many places the Rockies rise more than three thousand feet above
the heights where live the highest struggling trees at timber-line,
but these steep alpine slopes are not bare. The rocks are tinted with
lichens. In places are miles of grassy slopes and miniature meadows,
covered with coarse sedges and bright tender flowers. Among the
shrubs the _Betula glandulosa_ is probably commonest, while _Dasiphora
fruticosa_ and _Salix chlorophylla_ are next in prominence. Here and
there you will see the golden gaillardia, the silver and blue
columbines, splendid arrays of sedum, many marsh-marigolds, lungworts,
paint-brushes of red and white and yellow green, beds of purple
primroses, sprinklings of alpine gentians, many clusters of
live-forever, bunches of honey-smelling valerian, with here and there
standing the tall stalks of fraseria, or monument-plant. There are
hundreds of other varieties of plants, and the region above
timber-line holds many treasures that are dear to those who love
flowers and who appreciate them especially where cold and snow keep
them tiny.

Above timber-line are many bright blossoms that are familiar to us,
but dwarfed to small size. One needs to get down and lie upon the
ground and search carefully with a magnifying-glass, or he will
overlook many of these brave bright but tiny flowers. Here are blue
gentians less than half an inch in height, bell-flowers only a trifle
higher, and alpine willows so tiny that their catkins touch the
ground. One of the most attractive and beautiful of these alpine
flowers is the blue honeysuckle or polemonium, about an inch in
height. I have found it on mountain-tops, in its fresh, clear
coloring, at an altitude of fourteen thousand feet, as serene as
the sky above it.

A