quire great gifts or a fine
education. We might all be that to each other. And there was no
opportunity for vanity or pride in receiving a beautiful influence, and
giving it out again.

I do not suppose that I definitely thought all this, though I find that
the verses I wrote for our two mill magazines at about this time often
expressed these and similar longings. They were vague, and they were
too likely to dissipate themselves in mere dreams. But our aspirations
come to us from a source far beyond ourselves. Happy are they who are
"not disobedient unto the heavenly vision"!

A girl of sixteen sees the world before her through rose-tinted mists,
a blending of celestial colors and earthly exhalations, and she cannot
separate their elements, if she would; they all belong to the landscape
of her youth. It is the mystery of the meeting horizons,--the visible
beauty seeking to lose and find itself in the Invisible.

In returning to my daily toil among workmates from the hill-country,
the scenery to which they belonged became also a part of my life. They
brought the mountains with them, a new background and a new hope. We
shared an uneven path and homely occupations; but above us hung
glorious summits never wholly out of sight. Every blossom and every
dewdrop at our feet was touched with some tint of that far-off
splendor, and every pebble by the wayside was a messenger from the peak
that our feet would stand upon by and by.

The true climber knows the delight of trusting his path, of following
it without seeing a step before him, or a glimpse of blue sky above
him, sometimes only knowing that it is the right path because it is the
only one, and because it leads upward. This our daily duty was to us.
Though we did not always know it, the faithful plodder was sure to win
the heights. Unconsciously we learned the lesson that only by humble
Doing can any of us win the lofty possibilities of Being. For indeed,
what we all want to find is not so much our place as our path. The path
leads to the place, and the place, when we have found it, is only a
clearing by the roadside, an opening into another path.

And no comrades are so dear as those who have broken with us a pioneer
road which it will be safe and good for others to follow; which will
furnish a plain clue for all bewildered travelers hereafter. There is
no more exhilarating human experience than this, and perhaps it is the
highest angelic one. It may be that some such