Morning appeal. [volume] (Carson City, Nev.) 1877-1906, 1877-10-23
NOTES AND QUERIES.

son street, or from carson SLreeL toward the
Old Race Course yesterday morning, if you
noticed the Pine Nut Range of mountains at
all you noticed that they looked dull, mo-
notonous blackish color and seemed cold and
unattractive complexion as did the other high
lands round about the anphitheater of Eagle
Valley If you are impossible by colors and
tones, tints and atmospheric phenomena you
call to mind the sunset hues of those noun
tains in the East yonder. Of a clear, still
cleaning the Pine Nut Hills loom up into the
golden ether aglow with such rosy lights and
violet shadows as the painters whose skilled
hands so often have portrayed the Tyrolean
Alps like to initiate upon their canvases. You
say to yourself these gloomy peaks are not the
pleasant mountains 1 saw at sunset. If they
the same, indeed, then hath nature taken
upon herself the arts of the changing and the
false colors of the coquette. You accuse her
of painting" for you have caught her IN her
dishabille and without her rouge and her
Bloom of Youth. But how do you know
which is the rightful tinting for the face of
yon hillsides to bear before your eyes9 Why
may not the mountains have moods as well as
any man or woman? But in fact these grim
peaks so black with the darkness of dull
October morn are not the same you saw at
twilight Where is the deep and jagged ra-
vine so shaded with the royal purple of sun
down! 1t is gone. Where is that distinct
peak which casts shadow upon its fellows,
giving US the strong and definite outlines of
an independent, self-sustained mountain?
Gone This is another wall reared against the |
horizon. There are two, yes, an infinite num-
Der of mountain ranges there-a number as
infinite as the changes of the changing sky
as changeable as the clouds. To be sure
Summer, being cloudless, has a certain set of
mountains for its landscape; but these must
yield and be gone with Autumn, with Winter
and with Spring. Yesterday we caught a
glimpse Of an old friend of ours that has been
gone, God knows where, these ever-so-many
months He showed his head, dark and
threatening as is his wont, high topping the
crest of the Sierra there. Some wells of mist
and changing storm-clouds had revealed his
outlines He has been away, with the white
mountain hares, the snowy owls and the Pogo
nip all Summer. He is as distinct from any
mere summer mountain as if he were a snow
storm OF Christmas Eve. Some weak phi
losopher will sneer at this Notary for a vaga-
rist or mailman, perhaps. But where is any
sanity or soberness of statement to be had if
not in an account of the actual, the visible
and the present? Is there a peach-bloom
tinted mountain range in the East, this heavy
tuesday, Was there not such mountain
there last Sunday at the going down of the
SUM- You swear to what you see, not what !
might have been or may be again. That :;
black summit there, over against the western G
sky, capped with those frowning clouds, stands .
midway and above two sharply defined peaks, :;
the two making a gorge and showing deep =
shadows and great gloomy precipices which +
was not so before" The plain fact is, some
migratory mountains, just from summering
at the North Pole or amid the surges of the
Antarctic have come back again to their old L
haunts. You say, in your thoughtless way, "
that the lights and shades are so disposed as a
to bring out, in an unaccustomed relief those Il
outlines. This, my dear Reader, it
is to jump at conclusion. You are taking IL
the unnecessary pains to build, to suit your o
self the contour of your neighboring acclivi ti
ties. Why not take them as you find them e.
Is the old garden gate of your boyhood the a.
gate that it used to be, seen through the eyes Is
Of long ago2 Are the eyes, themselves, the III
same? Look at that complacent matroR her al
,orm rounded to womanly fulness, her silky tn
brown hair tinged with slvery streaks and SC
Ter manner so gentle and winning but so ps
something formal, withal Is that your sweet
leart, Fanny, think you9 No Sir That
notherly woman who meets you with SO much in
If cordiality mixed with wise reserve is no of
more the Fanny of your boyhood than the w
glossy fabric of your wife's dress is silkworm m
Fanny vanished forever one day when she of
vept you out of sight, and went away to or
chool there to stay until she should be ne
voman. Also you went out of sight-her in
and ever. You who are so pa Or
ernal and bewhiskered, what business have in,
GU to give yourself the airs of a boy of six of
cent Am l to be told that my broadcloth is cal
sleeps fleece because it once was wool
md if immortal man and beatifed woman are =.