e that, in the mysterious cycle of time, the richest field is not
seldom sown by hands that have been without honor or recognition in
their season? Does wealth or authority spell success, or is it the
meed of those who have given rather than taken, who have toiled on the
mountain side rather than sought the peaks of publicity? Clark came to
St. Marys a poor man, and he left it no whit the richer. What he made,
he spent. And when the day of his departure dawned, he went as one who
had attempted and failed, carrying with him the resentment of those who
lost, and few thanks from those who profited.

But did Clark actually fail?

To-day the mines of Algoma are supplying steel rails for Asiatic
railways; the forests about St. Marys are yielding pulp for Australia,
and the great power house is sending carbide to the mines of India.
This and much more is the fruit of vision. What matter that
Philadelphia stormed, and that the reins of government were snatched
from those masterful hands? The dream has come true.

Consider for a moment this man, who is stranger to most. He desired
neither wealth nor ease, being filled with a vast hunger for creation,
and to forest, mountain and river he turned with confidence and abiding
courage. It was as though nature herself had whispered misty secrets
in his ear. Being a prophet, he suffered like a prophet, but the
years, rolling on, have enabled him to look back on the later flower of
his earlier days, for it was written that he should plow and others
reap. And of necessity it was so. Like the prospector who finds gold
in the wilderness and straightway shoulders his pack to seek for
further treasure, his unwearying soul drove him on in steadfast pursuit
of that which lay just over the hill. It was not the thing that lay at
his feet which fascinated, but the promise of the morrow, whose dawn
already gilded the horizon of his spirit.

Clark, with his impetuous energy, is typical of a country in which few
achievements are impossible. He provided his own motive power and used
his hypnotic influence only in one direction--that of progress. Ever
faithful to his destiny, he was too busy to have time to suffer, too
occupied to waste himself in regrets. Like the rapids themselves, his
work moves on, and in its deep rumble may be distinguished the confused
note of humanity, striving and ever striving.

THE END

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Rapids, by Al