The higher one climbs in the mountains the less becomes the atmospheric pressure upon him, and lungs, heart and nerves all feel the reduction of the pressure. All experience new sensations of freedom and vigor, activity and exuberance, felt only on the levels in times of excitement or stimulation. The lungs expand and the breathing is more profound; the heart thereupon beats fuller and more vigorously, while the subtle oxygen, no longer stealing into the body in a half-afraid, surreptitious way, but taking fuller possession at each more vigorous heart-beat, healthfully stimulates the nerves and the brain. Renewed activity is the result, with the vim, verve, joy and happiness that are natural concomitants of healthful physical conditions.

So mentally and spiritually. The higher we go, the less atmospheric pressure is there upon us.

We think easier and to better advantage, and our hearts respond more readily to the grand, the good, the beautiful and the sublime. The subtlety of the mental and spiritual stimulus that comes into the life when we are above the fogs and the clouds, breathing deeply a pure atmosphere, is one of its chief charms. We feel the stimulus or respond to it and wonder how and whence it came. A quickened mental and spiritual life is the result. Thoughts whose existence were never before dreamed of come and go with rapidity, and we experience all the thrilling joy of mental and spiritual discovery.

Not only are spiritual, mental and physical power gained on the mountains, but in them is contained a marvelously extended store of material for the building up of the artistic and Æsthetic sides of men. Here artist, poet, orator may gain a stock of unforgettable memories and provide themselves with gallery after gallery of perfect pictures; pictures of beauty, sublimity, majesty and grandeur.

Just think for a moment of the canvases depicting mountains. Some of the greatest artists of the world have built up their reputations through their mountain pictures. Three of our greatest artists owe their success to mountain pictures. Bierstadt, Moran and Hill are alike mountain lovers and worshippers.

Then who can overlook the place mountains have in the poetry of all peoples, of all times? And to merely recount the exquisite and strong, the beautiful and the sublime passages in literature, of which mountains are the theme, would fill many hundreds of volumes. Their heights and their unattainableness, and yet the luring of us onward and upward. The snow-capped peaks, the emblems of eternal purity. The dangerous precipices. The shady recesses. The thrilling canyons. The cooling fountains. The secret stores of waters they contain. The minerals they hide. The towering rocks looking down upon all below. The trees they nourish. The flowers they cherish. The valleys they make and sustain. The clouds they arrest and make contributors to the common good. The shields they are to the winds.