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22 revisions | Nicole Push at Jun 23, 2020 04:34 PM | |
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278ODD CORNERS OF THE EARTH Mrs. Peattie's Address at Rescue Hall on Places of Living Interest. Strange Things About [?]--Travels From the Palm to the Glacier--Purple Speres of Sea. This paper was read before an audience of working men--some of whom have work, and many of whom have not--at Rescue Hall last Monday evening, and is one of a series of little lectures to be given there Monday evenings during the winter, this arrangement having been made by Rev. Mr. Clark, the superintendent of Rescue hall: The world, they tell me, is round. I have never proved it myself, but I would not be surprised if there were before me several men who have done so, and who know it is round for the reason that by going straight ahead, they have finally returned to the place from which they started. To have a round world which no one forbids us to wanted over, to know that it whirls and whirls endlessly through space, to know that the [?] of it can never all be discovered by us, do the best we may, affects our imaginations, when we come to think of it, with feelings of mingled terror and pleasure. To begin with, it is very wonderful that we cannot leave the earth, but are held on it fast with the invisible but unbreakable chains of graduation. We are prisoners here. We may wander about the prison yard as much as we choose, but not one of us ay step off into the "wind that blows between the worlds." We are not allowed to visit those pleasant neighbors of ours in Mars, no matter how much we may want to do so. As yet we have not even been able to signal to them, although a little while ago they were so near that we could even see their irrigating ditches--or what we were pleased to consider must be such. M. Flammarion, the French astronomer, did, indeed, have an idea that they were trying to signal to us, because he saw, with the aid of his telescope, great lights blazing there on the mountains, so placed that they formed the shape of a triangle. And perhaps some day we of earth and they of Mars will be able to let each other know that we are looking at one another. The thought will certainly be very interesting. But the fact remains that we are prisoners here on earth, and cannot escape. We therefore amuse ourselves here as best we can, and sometimes succeed so well that we forget all about being prisoners, and feel like free men. There is a great difference of opinion as to whether or not the earth is a pleasant place in which to live. I have heard those who insisted that it was just what you made it. There's a good deal in that--but it's only half a truth. The world is certainly very different in different places, who have tried your hands at various trades and occupations, are apt to have your heads crammed with knowledge of strange lands and curious men. You have seen the wharves where the sailors of a half hundred different nationalities crowd together; you know the dining camp, the [?] city, the mountains, the prairies, the river life, the traveling show life. In fact, you have eaten a much bigger meal, so to speak, at the table of life than those men who have stopped calmly into a fired occupation in the town with which they have always been associated, and who have stayed there, contest with their little prosperity, and free from curiosity about how the other half of the world looks, and what the world outside of their [?] is like. And you know that the world is not entirely what you make it. If I had been a man, instead of a woman, I should have prowled around the world a good deal. I shouldn't have cared particularly about packing my trunks and enrolling among the passengers of the "City of Paris," the marvelous ocean steamer, and going to Europe to visit the usual places along the line of travel, with a guidebook in one hand and, a fat purse in the other. Although even that probably has pleasures. But I would have liked to have lived with the Indians, to have climbed South American mountains, to have visited the islands of the Pacific, and to have gone to the diamonds fields of Africa. I would find out just how cold Siberia is, and how hot it is in Martinique. I would not take the world of anyone about the "heathen" of Burman or Khartoum, but I would find out for myself if they were not really fine fellows. And I am quite certain that I should find them not half bad. I would know the world from Congo to [?], from Kamchatka to Terra del Fuego. But a woman has to take things more slowly than a man, and I am afraid it will be a long time before I have covered the ground I am ambitious to go over. But I have been in a few curious places, and perhaps you would enjoy hearing about two or three of them. Now listen to this. I will describe a place to you and leave you to decide from my description whether you have ever been there or not. A bay, shut in with ice. A bay so wide it seemed the sea, except that the sea was just behind, warmer, and less terrible than this bay. The water, a brooding blue; the sky a blue of deeper tint. The mountains circling round the bay, wrapped in mists of blue, and the tremulous air a liquid sapphire diluted with tender and etherial radiance. The cakes of ice floating around the veering ship, all white, whiter than any whiteness save that of a diamond. And down the crevices of them, a blueness quivering as bright as a jewel and as luminous as a beautiful eye. These cakes of ice groaned and fretted. They knocked viciously against the copper bottom of the staunch, but trembling ship. Many streams flowed out from the glaciers DR. PRICES DELICIOUS Flavoring Extracts and crossed and recrossed each other. The water was full of vexed currents. The bergs were the victims of their caprice and tossed this way and that in the so two copper-colored orbs burned dully through the ether. One of those was the sun. The other, equally bright, was a muck sun, fashioned by a trick of the atmosphere, which doubled the object looked at as the excited optic nerve of a drunken man sometimes does. One had to look closely to determine which of these two strange, dully bright bodies were the substance and which the shadow. Thus, by the mystic light of two suns, the vessel forced its way through the clustering bergs to where the engulphing blueness seemed to concentrate itself into an intensity [?] than any mid-summer sky, more radiant than any [?]'s eyes, more splendid than any tint of wave in sun-lit depths. The roar of falling ice dropping in the sea stirred one as if he were hearing the great mechanic working at his world. And all around this thunderous noise hung silence. No letter clamor broke in to make these crashed of ice and water less terrible. The mountains, the sea, the glacier, the wind and the sky had it all their own way there, and warred together, and were contemptuous of man and his interruptions. And up before the ship arose a mountain of ice, cut through with moraine and [?], [?], beautiful, yet fearful. Do you recognize the place? It is the Muir glacier of Alaska. Frederick Schwatks, standing in that bay, said, "You can take what we [?] here, and put it down in Switzerland, and it will hide the mountain scenery of Europe." Alaska, which seems made of silence, | 278ODD CORNERS OF THE EARTH Mrs. Peattie's Address at Rescue Hall on Places of Living Interest. Strange Things About [?]--Travels From the Palm to the Glacier--Purple Speres of Sea. This paper was read before an audience of working men--some of whom have work, and many of whom have not--at Rescue Hall last Monday evening, and is one of a series of little lectures to be given there Monday evenings during the winter, this arrangement having been made by Rev. Mr. Clark, the superintendent of Rescue hall: The world, they tell me, is round. I have never proved it myself, but I would not be surprised if there were before me several men who have done so, and who know it is round for the reason that by going straight ahead, they have finally returned to the place from which they started. To have a round world which no one forbids us to wanted over, to know that it whirls and whirls endlessly through space, to know that the [?] of it can never all be discovered by us, do the best we may, affects our imaginations, when we come to think of it, with feelings of mingled terror and pleasure. To begin with, it is very wonderful that we cannot leave the earth, but are held on it fast with the invisible but unbreakable chains of graduation. We are prisoners here. We may wander about the prison yard as much as we choose, but not one of us ay step off into the "wind that blows between the worlds." We are not allowed to visit those pleasant neighbors of ours in Mars, no matter how much we may want to do so. As yet we have not even been able to signal to them, although a little while ago they were so near that we could even see their irrigating ditches--or what we were pleased to consider must be such. M. Flammarion, the French astronomer, did, indeed, have an idea that they were trying to signal to us, because he saw, with the aid of his telescope, great lights blazing there on the mountains, so placed that they formed the shape of a triangle. And perhaps some day we of earth and they of Mars will be able to let each other know that we are looking at one another. The thought will certainly be very interesting. But the fact remains that we are prisoners here on earth, and cannot escape. We therefore amuse ourselves here as best we can, and sometimes succeed so well that we forget all about being prisoners, and feel like free men. There is a great difference of opinion as to whether or not the earth is a pleasant place in which to live. I have heard those who insisted that it was just what you made it. There's a good deal in that--but it's only half a truth. The world is certainly very different in different places, who have tried your hands at various trades and occupations, are apt to have your heads crammed with knowledge of strange lands and curious men. You have seen the wharves where the sailors of a half hundred different nationalities crowd together; you know the dining camp, the [?] city, the mountains, the prairies, the river life, the traveling show life. In fact, you have eaten a much bigger meal, so to speak, at the table of life than those men who have stopped calmly into a fired occupation in the town with which they have always been associated, and who have stayed there, contest with their little prosperity, and free from curiosity about how the other half of the world looks, and what the world outside of their [?] is like. And you know that the world is not entirely what you make it. If I had been a man, instead of a woman, I should have prowled around the world a good deal. I shouldn't have cared particularly about packing my trunks and enrolling among the passengers of the "City of Paris," the marvelous ocean steamer, and going to Europe to visit the usual places along the line of travel, with a guidebook in one hand and, a fat purse in the other. Although even that probably has pleasures. But I would have liked to have lived with the Indians, to have climbed South American mountains, to have visited the islands of the Pacific, and to have gone to the diamonds fields of Africa. I would find out just how cold Siberia is, and how hot it is in Martinique. I would not take the world of anyone about the "heathen" of Burman or Khartoum, but I would find out for myself if they were not really fine fellows. And I am quite certain that I should find them not half bad. I would know the world from Congo to [?], from Kamchatka to Terra del Fuego. But a woman has to take things more slowly than a man, and I am afraid it will be a long time before I have covered the ground I am ambitious to go over. But I have been in a few curious places, and perhaps you would enjoy hearing about two or three of them. Now listen to this. I will describe a place to you and leave you to decide from my description whether you have ever been there or not. A bay, shut in with ice. A bay so wide it seemed the sea, except that the sea was just behind, warmer, and less terrible than this bay. The water, a brooding blue; the sky a blue of deeper tint. The mountains circling round the bay, wrapped in mists of blue, and the tremulous air a liquid sapphire diluted with tender and etherial radiance. The cakes of ice floating around the veering ship, all white, whiter than any whiteness save that of a diamond. And down the crevices of them, a blueness quivering as bright as a jewel and as luminous as a beautiful eye. These cakes of ice groaned and fretted. They knocked viciously against the copper bottom of the staunch, but trembling ship. Many streams flowed out from the glaciers DR. PRICES DELICIOUS Flavoring Extracts and crossed and recrossed each other. The water was full of vexed currents. The bergs were the victims of their caprice and tossed this way and that in the so two copper-colored orbs burned dully through the ether. One of those was the sun. The other, equally bright, was a muck sun, fashioned by a trick of the atmosphere, which doubled the object looked at as the excited optic nerve of a drunken man sometimes does. One had to look closely to determine which of these two strange, dully bright bodies were the substance and which the shadow. Thus, by the mystic light of two suns, the vessel forced its way through the clustering bergs to where the engulphing blueness seemed |
