The Warner weekly sun. (Warner, Brown Co., Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1885, 1884-12-19

cruSneQ Jewels, Opal anu sapphire, aHu
emerald. Ell Captain lifted his white
plume among the army about him. The
exquisite Bridal Veil swept in frosty
tissue down the white-robed cliff. The
Cathedral Spires rose crystal clear into
the blue sky, and on Clouds Rest, the
white drifting nimbus of the sky
caressed their sister snowdrlfts of the
peaks. The great pines of the valley
were cones of amethyst; the very air
vas set with dazzling jewel points, and
the pure solitudes pulsed with impris-
oned sparks of heavenly fire.
An artist sketching the picturesque
groups of mo~untaineers, heard of "the
girl up yonder"-a grl whose daily
haunts were where the clouds and ST.
lence wander, a maiden who was seated
beside the moon, while the stars twink
led like tireaies about her.
In time he found her. Never flower
before bloomed like this snowfower be-
meath his gaze.
Shows can not smother passion, or stars
stir the pulses like the light in nearer
eyes. To this ardent poetic soul, with
its disregard of fitness, of constancy,
or duty, or happiness beyond the pres
ent hour, the snowfiower gave her life.
He had found beauty, he worshipped it.
The humble eye is satisfied forever with
the shabby print of q Madonna on
the wall, but new pictures replace the
old on the easel of the artist. His
search is always for beauty; having fix
ed n face upon the canvas his eye
roves for a brighter cheek and SUMMER
hair.
But, for the time, she was his angel.
Disregarding the world, society, friends;
forgetting education, style, culture
all that he would at another time re-
member-he took Ter from the heights
where she had been the companion of
nature, to show her to a groveling, pu>
trid world.
Alas! Snowf1ower of the Sierras!
Alas. that fatal ~name-that pure and
fatal name--fower of the SHOWS!
Did Fate christen thee, child of the
upper air? Hast never seer the beau
tiful sunfower drained of its rosy beau
ty, by ice-dripping tears? Dost thou
not know that the plant of the clouds
has never been transplanted to lower
fields?
The father talked wildly to the way
farers who came now and then to lift
his latch string for a nights shelter by
the cabin fire. He repeated, in wretch
ness, that retribution had overtaken
him. As cruelty as he had fed from
the wife of his youth, his girl had gone
from him. Not all his love or care
could prevent her from giving the blow
which fate had reserved for him. Nut
tering, or silent and glowering, the
weeks and months found him, until at
last he disappeared from his home and
was lost forever to human view.
This is the story the guide told me as
we stood by the ireless hearth of that
deserted home.
She died, poor girl-died of a broken
heart.
For those who dwell in lowlands, the
roses bloom; for creeping things there
are the MOSES and the ~violets. Each
plane in life has its own corresponding,
recommending loneliness. Let him who
lives in rose-thickets be content, nor
seek to pluck the blossoms OF the erags;;
nor he who roams the SHOWS think to
keep in its freshness the rose that nature
left in warmer chimes.
She died, so the story runs, on Christ.
mas Eve. Many years ago at Christmas
time, in the dazzling radiance OF a
moonlight night, wanderers on the
snow slopes saw a phantom gliding on
pearly snowshoes over the glittering
peaks. She was shroudcd in white,
and out o her pale face her eyes CLEAN
ed Like midnight stars. From noun
tain to mountain she wandered, and her
hands were full OF blood-red blossoms,
that she kissed with lips as cold as they.
Every year since her earth life ended
the dead girl r~evisits her early home.
On those fields of snow, fit for an an
gels feet, before the Christmas morn
breaks in the East, this unforgetting
spirit walks on high. Sometimes she is
seen muffied in clouds; sometimes the
blossoms In her hands make rudy
patches in the wintry sky. Her voiceis
heard In the wailing songs of the rest
less winds, and the fall of her snow
shoes echoes like silver sleet down the
mountain side.
That the Divine Jesus, whose birth
day we celebrate, brings holy thoughts
to men by devious means is not unlike.
Whatever makes men lift their eyes
raises the soul; whether the sweep of
wings that startled the shepherds, or
the dying color on the distant cloud.
turns the face upward to the gaze of
God.
Lo, not unmeet is it that at the time
when, of old, the angel-heralded Christ
child came, all along the sides of the
solemn Sierras, the lowly, the lonely,
the wretched. the wicked, gaze upward,
for the form of the nnra maiden. who