The Caldwell tribune. [volume] (Caldwell, Idaho Territory [Idaho]) 1883-1928, 1885-02-13
American Skies.


Americans have long been, in q lit
erary way, the vicarious victims, to a
certain extent, of the climate of the
British Isles. The low tones of the at
mosphere of those islands, the shifting
wells of fog and rain rising and falling
over them, the soft gray light filtered
through mist and cloud-all these
have caused the blue skies and
endless sunshine of Italy to seem di-
vlnely fair to visitors from English
shores. And as among these visitors
have come the poets and the romance
writers, this fairness, embalmed in
prose and verse, has taken its place
in literature, has become classic. The
imaginative New World student, eager
to learn, passionately DESTROYS to APP
preciate, has read these pages rever-
emily; he knows them by heart. And
when at last the longed-for day comes
when he too can make his pilgrimage
to these scenes oflegend and romance,
so dominated is he, for the most part,
by the spell of tradition that he does
not even perceive that these long
chanted heavens are no bluer than his
own; or if by chance his eye, accurate
in spite of himself, notes such a posi-
bility, he puts it from him purposely,
preferring the blueness which is his
toric. The heavens lying over Venice
and her palaces are, must be, softer
than those which expand distantly and
impersonally over miles of prairie and
forest; the hue of the sky which bends
over Rome is, must be, of deeper,
richer tint than any which New
World has yet attained. But generally
this preference of the imaginative
American is not a choice, it is an I'M
conscious faith which he has cherished
from childhood, and from which he
would hardly know how to dissent.
He is gazing at these foreign skies
through long, enchanting vista of
history, poetry, and song; he simply
does not remember his own sky at all.
Only recently has he begun to re-
member it, only recently has he begun
to discover that, in the matter of blue
at least, he has been gazing through
glasses adjusted to the scale of Eng
fish atmosphere and English COMPARE
sons, and that, Invested of these aids to
vision, he can find above his own head
and in his own country an azure as
deep as any that the Old World can
show.
Even when this has been discovered
it remains but blue sky. The other
treasure of those old lands beyond the |
sea-their ruins, their art, their an
cient history-these he has not and |
can never have, and these he loves
with tina, deep American worship |
which must seem to those old gods like |
the arrival of Magi from afar, men of
distant birth, sometimes of manners
strange, but bringing costly gifts and
bowling the knee with reverence where
the jewellers in the temple itself have
grown cold.
Compared with those of the British
Isles, all the skies of the United States
are blue. In the North this blue is
clear, strong. bright; in the South,
softness mingles with the brilliancy,
and tempers it to a beauty which is
not surpassed. The sky over the cot
ton lands of South Carolina is as soft
as that of Tuscany; the blue above
the silver beaches of Florida melt as
rs that above Capri's en-
chanted shore.-Frons Constance Feni-
more Wooison's ne,o novel, "East an
gels," in Earrer's Magazine for Fe6ru-
1ry.
Senator Sharon is not alone in the role OF o
e. .