RADIANCIES OF EXTREMES

Life is made up of extremes and everything that comes between them. There is the North Pole and there is the South Pole. There is the heat of the fiery furnace and the cold of the Arctic Zone. There is the height of heaven and the depth of hell; the voice of the thunder and the whisper of the gentle zephyr.

Man is a singular being. He is as diverse as is the manifold face of Nature upon which he gazes. His likes and dislikes are many and varied. Men of equal intelligence and equal powers differ in their ways of looking at the same thing. The poet Browning effectively states this when he says:

In the face of such facts one is compelled to the conclusion that personal idiosyncrasy or individual preference alone can decide what it wants, needs, and must have, in this large diversity that is offered it.

The fact that ten men who have equal powers of observation and reflection as myself love the things that I hate, and reject the things that I receive, has absolutely no influence in deciding me in regard to the things that I hate and receive, any more than the fact that I hate and receive things to which they have the antagonistic feeling influences them; hence it is useless for me to attempt to enforce my likings and antipathies upon others, even as it is useless for them to attempt to force theirs upon me.

So I have been led to accept the philosophy, which I wish to radiate to all men, that it appears to me the Divine Wisdom has provided for these personal idiosyncrasies of human nature by giving to us the extremes of things with everything that lies between. So, regardless of my own preference, I believe that the strong wind is as much a beneficent force of Nature as is the zephyr; the thundering cataract of Yosemite as the placid Mirror Lake; the avalanche as the snowflake; the thunder as the violet; the earthquake as the rippling rill; the blazing meteor as the Milky Way; the flaming sun-spots as the sparkling dewdrop; the fiery volcano as the quiet glowworm; the giant sequoia as the tiny forget-me-not; the thundering breakers of ocean as the gentle pattering raindrop; the fiery boiling geyser as the silently flowing fountain; the dazzling comet as the serene fixed star; the rugged Grand Canyon as the flower-besprinkled sward; the monster whale as the tiny gold-fish; the giant elephant as the timid mouse; the blaring trumpet as the soothing guitar; the startling kettle-drum as the smoothly flowing 'cello; the clanging cymbals as the seductive oboe.

I firmly believe and wish to radiate my belief that God has as much use for the man of the farm as for the man of the drawing-room; the rudeness of "The man with the hoe" as the smoothness of the man with the higher education. He needs the arid desert as well as the fertile plain; the wild ruggedness of the ravine as well as the cultivated garden; the colorless abysses of the glacier as well as the flower-besprinkled foothills. He has use for the snowy plains of the north as well as the rice fields of the south; the cactus as well as the orchid; the giant suaharo as well as the shrinking gilia; the prickly pear, as the velvety peach; the sword-fish, as the nautilus; the shark as the flying-fish; the flaming sunrises and sunsets, as the tender tints of the lily, and the night-blooming cereus; the deep purples, as well as the blush rose; the glowing yellows as the softer blues; the piercing greens as the quieter violets. The bluffs and promontories that thrust their heads out into the ocean are as much a part of God's great out-of-doors and of as much use as are the placid landscapes; the mountain heights as much needed as are the flower-bespangled levels; the vast reaches of prairie as the secluded and confined valley. The piercing cold of the Arctic has as much a place in Nature as the alluring mildness of Southern California or the Riviera; the monster tides of the Bay of Fundy as the ripples of the placid pool.

The sturdy and warlike Viking has as much a place in history as the diplomatic and artistic Italian; the Negro as the Caucasian; the Chinaman as the French; the Oriental as the English; the Japanese as the American.

El Capitan and Gibraltar are not exquisitely carved statues by Canova or Thorwaldsen, but they have just as much a place in the history of the world's development.

The wilds of the high Sierras, in all their rude and majestic splendor, rugged and tremendous vastness, where clear-eyed, horny-handed, strong-oathed, and rudely clad men wander and labor, are very different from the city drawing-rooms,—those places of pink teas and white kid-gloved men and women; those breeding places of superficial conventionality and effete conceptions of people and life, but I doubt not that the high Sierras have produced more of benefit to mankind than all the drawing-rooms of all the civilizations.

I love the pastoral and quiet landscapes of the Connecticut River Valley, of placid Killarney, of the quiet vale of Avoca, of picturesque Normandy, but the passion, power, majesty, sublimity, solitude, dreariness and desolation of the far-reaching Colorado Desert, deep descending Grand Canyon, bold escarpments of the Red Rock country, and other tremendous and solitary places of Nature command me, allure me, appeal to me, and dominate me quicker than the quiet places of beauty.

What, in Nature, to some men is the end of things to others is the beginning. The sacred writer says that God even "maketh the wrath of men to praise him," as well as their love and tenderness.

Life is not all comprised about a slender figure and transparent profile; faultless coils of hair; soft, rich, clinging garments; laces falling over taper fingers; graceful and dignified demeanor; low and sweetly modulated voice, and the perfection of faultless manners. There may be a place for the rude, uncouth clodhopper with disfigured features; tousled hair; clad in homespun or cheap denim; rags taking the place of lace; boorish and clumsy demeanor; a voice like a steamer foghorn; and the apotheosis of all that is blundering and awkward in manner.

I do not, for one moment, defend any unnecessary boorishness or uncouthness of manner, and must not be understood as doing so, but at the same time, in spite of these things, I am impelled to state my conviction that the latter class is more needful to the real progress of the world than the former. I notice that several times in the history of the world, canal-drivers, shepherd-boys, wood-choppers, and rail-splitters have made wonderful pilots for the Ship of State.

God has use in His world for the rough as well as the polished; the roar of the thunder as well as the coo of the dove; the stentorian trumpet-tone as well as the still, small voice. John the Baptist came from the desert robed in skins and camel's hair; his voice, doubtless, was not soft and well-modulated as were those of Herodias and Salome. He was "the voice of one crying in the wilderness." His call contained the thunder tones of the storm and wild cry of the lonely eagle seeking its solitary aerie; the strength and the roar of the lion. It was neither refined, pleasing, nor cultured, but it possessed life and power and it was chosen to herald the coming of the Messiah.

Nowhere have we been told that Elijah, Jeremiah and Daniel were noted for the soft and dulcet tones of their voices, yet they were the chosen instruments of the Divine in overthrowing dynasties and changing the history of nations. Peter the Hermit was not a sweet-voiced singer in Israel, but he started a movement that led to the civilization of Europe. I doubt not that the charges of the British against Joan of Arc that she cried in a coarse military voice when she led the armored hosts of France were true, but she drove the foreign invader from the soil of her beloved France where they had held footing for nigh upon a hundred years and no one else had been able to win a victory from them.

I doubt not there were times when Grant's voice did not possess the mellow and refined quality of the drawing-room exquisite, but he won victories and made a united people possible. John Brown was rude, rough, uncouth, boorish, when compared with the refined and polished cavaliers of the South. They called him a bandit, an invader, a revolutionist, an anarchist, and they captured and hanged him, but to thousands of men his crazy dream of the invasion of the South to forcibly compel the freedom of the slave is being more and more seen by hundreds of thousands of wise men to have been one of the most practical and effective means of calling the attention of men to the moral principle involved in the question of slavery, as to whether men of one color of blood or skin had the right to hold in bondage men of a different color.

When Theodore Parker was denouncing the iniquities of any and all slavery, his voice was not as soft and gentle and sweetly modulated as that of Longfellow, yet it played as important a part in the history of the development of mankind and stirred men to higher endeavor on the part of their suffering and down-trodden fellows.

What, then, is the upshot of the whole matter? It seems to me it is this: Listen to the voice that appeals to your own soul; that lifts you from the lower to the higher; that thrills you to deeds of heroism, that stimulates you to acts of nobleness, that calls you to a life of helpful self-sacrifice; and while doing this, cease to criticise, to find fault, to censure the kind of voice to which you do not care to listen. The strong, vigorous, robust, red-blooded man of the out-of-doors generally will not speak nor act with the perfect restraint and conventionality of the man born in the atmosphere of the drawing-room, but his message may be just as helpful to the world, and as divinely inspired as that of his more refined and dignified prototype.