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Almaden-wild and bright but soft as windy days in April! The heavy rains began late, and the greenness which came with the first fall rains faded for want of encouragement. The valley was touched by frost, and this blight, added to the drought, made it look as if a flame had passed over it. We had only a few pale wreaths of fog those clear, windy mornings and they floated low, leaving the mountain line dark and sharply outlined against the most solemn radiant morning sky. The redwoods on a distant range of hills stood out like spears or furled flags of a marching army. There is always a distinctly masculine character in this scenery; the mountains are ominous, and even when all alight with color they seem to be in the shadow of some impending doom. No matter how the wind may blow here, or the people clatter and cackle in their little houses, the light on the mountains is always still, as if they were part of another world.

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suggested a reference to some wish of the one resting in peace. Many of the plants were weird, tropical-looking things,—a pepper-tree or cactus, or some shrub which may have brought up remembrances of a sunnier land even than this. Everything was dazzlingly bright, the air as mild, and the stillness as deep, as in the "hollow lotus-land."

I have seldom felt the sadness of this landscape as on that morning. It is a sadness which comes from a perpetual lack of sympa thy between Nature and the pitiful creatures whom she so grandly and calmly refuses to recognize as her children. The Mexicans alone seem to belong to her in a way they have of uniting themselves with their clothes, their houses, and even with the country itself. They are not self-asserting and full of personality as we are; they slip along in a listless, easy way, unfretted, unambitious, graceful,-struggling against nothing, accepting all without question.

On Christmas-eve there was a midnight mass at the "Campo del Mexicana." I did not know of it till too late, or I would have gone. On Christmas evening I was left alone for a while. It was a little dreary, especially after the wind rose and began making noises round the house. As I sat thus over the fire, there were steps and voices outside, then a stillness,—and then a chorus of children's voices burst out with a Christmas hymn!

According to custom, the singers were invited in. They made a very striking group. The children crowded round a small table in the center of the room, where two candles threw a strong light up into the circle of rosy young faces and bright eyes,the young men, with their stalwart figures and voices, making a contrast to the sweet youthful choir. Two of the elder girls helped me pass among the guests an elabo

In Christmas-week I sat on the piazza with broad sun-hat and a gown I wear in June. Stillness and sunshine rested everywhere. The valley was filled with haze. The mountains had withdrawn themselves into fainter outlines against the sky. Columns of smoke from burning stubble-fields rose and floated away over the valley. On Christmas-day I took a long walk, climbed the bare hill behind the Mexican camp, where there are some lonely graves in stark relief against the broad, blue, smiling expanse of sky. The skies here, except at sunrise and sunset, are very unsympathetic. From this hill, which is up in the very eye of the sun, without a tree or rock to break with a single shadow its broad, pitiless glare, we can look over all the mountains round and into the glooms of the deep cañon beyond the camp. I remember once seeing a sketch in a few lines of a knight, stand-rately frosted cake which had been given us ing alone on a hill with rays of the sun around him, as if he were the only man on the round earth. I thought of this picture as I stood here. But as I turned away from the broad light in which the whole country lay in a sort of trance, there were the lonely graves, each with its wooden cross slanted by the wind, and its rude fence to keep stray donkeys and cows from trampling what lay within. I tried to read the Spanish inscriptions, but could only make out the names and the formula which all creeds and

races cling to: "Here rests in peace." Each grave had its vine or flower planted over it, and the peculiarity of some of them

(the workmanship of Chinese Sam's subtle fingers), and then, after another song, they went away, leaving me in a sort of bewilderment as to whether it were not all imagination.

The spring at New Almaden is most bewildering! One week the rain and wind keep up a tumult round the house; the next we are flooded with sunshine; flowers are

*Often those who die at New Almaden are buried at the Company's expense or by the charity of the neighbors. strangers,-only a short time at the mine,-their Many of the graves are those of

friends unknown or out of reach.

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springing up everywhere; the grass is like a miracle, growing out of places that looked as if they had been sowed with salt. I go every afternoon over the hills in search of wild flowers, and in the morning, before the dew is dried, after mushrooms. They grow in great profusion, if one can use such a flowery word in reference to the modest little pink and drab buttons that hide in the sod. Buttercups here grow double and are no prettier on that account. There is a delicate white-and-pink four-petaled flower with a faint perfume and a long drooping stem-it reminds me of our eastern anemone; and one day I found growing in the clefts of a mossy pile of rock a mass of fresh young maiden-hair ferns. I put my face down close among them to smell that delicious pungent, growthy smell, mixed with the moist, wholesome breath of the ground.

The long, hot, dry "winter of our discontent" has passed, and this is the "glorious glorious summer." Morning-glories were planted around the piazza, and at the root of an old half dead live-oak tree at the foot of the yard. There were clumps of purple iris growing near the house. As the season moved on we had violets, wild roses, clematis, blackberry-vines, in profusion. I did not care so much for the great scarlet geranium bushes, though it is very ungrateful. They stood by us bravely all through the dry season, blooming continually. Their red flames seemed to defy the sunshine and would not be put out.

We call our piazza the "quarter-deck," and with its wide outlook and the strong wind that always blows there, I often feel as if we were at sea. From here I can see

the trail which winds steeply up the hill behind the house and disappears in a dark clump of live-oak trees; opposite is a bold spur of the mountains round which winds the road from the Hacienda. At sunset I can see the stage-coach crawling up with its black leather curtains flapping in the wind, horses and driver covered with dust. It is the bearer of letters, and therefore the only visible link with the world beyond the mountains. These mountains are beginning to have a human expression as I watch them day after day; they are stern, brooding giants. They make a barrier along

the horizon like the tents or fortifications of an immense army, and seem to hold us prisoners. Last night they were wonderful in the pink sunset light; but they always give me the same feeling, whether dark with cloud-shadows or gorgeous in sunlight, the sense of a silent irresistible fate-waiting there, patient, unpitying, eternal.

We see the lights of distant camp-fires burning after dark on the side of the first mountain range across the valley. Every night night as twilight closes, we behold them shining always in the same place. I used to wonder what lonely men they might be, and if they could see our light-one little spark, faint and uncertain like theirs, but human. Now I am told that they are sheep-herders' camps. I asked how many men were together? "Generally," said my friend, "one man alone." He had met them on the Sierras and found them the most utterly discouraged men he had ever seen,-men who had been unsuccessful in all other ways. Now when I look at those fires they seem like signals of distress.

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"Alas, and hast thou then so soon forgot
The bond that with thy gift of song did go-
Severe as fate, fixed and unchangeable?
Dost thou not know this is the poet's lot:

'Mid sounds of war-in halcyon times of peace-
To strike the ringing wire, and not to cease:

In hours of general happiness to swell

The common joy; and when the people cry

With piteous voice loud to the pitiless sky,

"Tis his to frame the universal prayer,

And breathe the balm of song wide on the accursed air?"

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To guess what knowledge is, what grief may be,
And all the infinite sum of human misery;
Shalt find for each rich drop of perfect good
Thou payest, at last, a threefold price in blood;
What is most noble in thee-every thought
Highest and best-crushed, spat upon, and brought
To an open shame; thy natural ignorance

Counted thy crime; the world all ruled by chance,
Save that the good most suffer; but above
These ills another,-cruel, monstrous, worse
Than all before,-thy pure and passionate love
Shall carry the old immitigable curse."

"And thou who tell'st me this, dost bid me sing?"

"I bid thee sing, even though I have not told
All the deep flood of anguish shall be rolled
Across thy breast. Nor, Poet, shalt thou bring
From out those depths thy griefs. Tell to the wind
Thy private woes, but not to human ear,
Save in the shape of comfort for thy kind.
But never hush thy song, dare not to cease

While life is thine. Haply 'mid those who hear
Thy music to one soul shall murmur peace,
Though for thyself it hath no power to cheer.
Then shall thy still unbroken spirit grow
Strong in its suffering, and more tender-wise;
And as the drenched and thunder-shaken skies
Pass into golden sunset-thou shalt know
An end of calm, when evening's breezes blow;
And looking on thy life with vision fine,
Shalt see the shadow of a hand divine."

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