The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-03-17
FLYING KITES.

he RODE upon cherub, and did ny; yea, he
did fly upon the wings of the wind.
1t is in March that the wind blows
strongest and steadiest, and it is then that
the kite, most graceful of toys, scars and
futters aloft. 1t is pity that in so-called
civilized countries this delightful sport is
confined to boys. In China and Japan it
is the national pastime of men, and some
of the kites which they fly are wonderful
affairs. Perhaps when those countries
shall become, like the United States and
Europe, plantations of telegraph poles and
decorated with a patchwork of wires, the
glories of e-sailing will depart. Civil
cation has its disadvantages.
There is probably not a grown man
among us who would not like to fly kite
in March if he were brave enough to with
stand the laughter of his neighbors that
is, unless he has kept himself always so
close to the ground that the wings of the
spirit which the Almighty has placed
within him, have become situated by hope
less aspiration or sordid neglect. For even
some of the Oldest of US are inspired by the
sight of kite sailing so freely and gayly
and gracefully aloft, held to the earth by a
tie just sufficiently strong to serve beauti-
full earthly purpose, and yet keeping it
from flying wildly abroad and then dash
ing its life out in a purposeless career. Ii
we are honest with ourselves, we will ad-
NIT our envy of the freedom of the raga-
muffin who, without care, puts his whole
little soul into the toy and sends it upward
toward heaven. 1t does not concern us to
know that it is a very cheap and fiimsy
toy made of slender sticks covered with
fiimsy paper; nor that the tail, which
waves in the most graceful curves imagin-
able, is made up of cast-off rags; nor that
the sudden dartings and divings of the
kite, as it takes on the wild, free spirit of
the wind, would not occur but for the
bond which holds its captive to the earth.
We care to observe only the soaring,
the grace and the freedom, and only to
envy the happy urchin who can send his
heart sailing through the sky.
But we know that civilization has its
drawbacks: that the boy, in order to avoid
the plantation of poles and the patchwork
of wires-those most aggressive evidences
OF our civilization - must. if he would
have his spirit soar in safety, seek
quiet places, where poles and wires
may not hinder his aspirations or
wreck his efforts; must find wide open
fields, where the wind is as strong
and free as his hopes. We observe that
efforts to soar in places where civilization
has planted its poles and strung its wires
have brought to grief those other lads who
have rashly opened the cages of their
hopes III the midst of snares for dangling
from all the wires are broken kite-strings,
swinging ruefuliy in the wind, and on
other wires the gaunt and tattered skele-
tons of innumerable dead kites are hang
ing in dismal wretchedness. If the i'm
pact of our fiimsy but none the less beauti-
full and lofty ambitions cannot sweep aside
the iron net into which they fall, the dis
figuring wreck of their beauty may at least
mar the hard symmetry of the net and
hang aloft therefrom in silent, pitiful pro-
test.
From contemplation of a picture with
contrasts so strange but eloquent, we may
turn to the wiser lads who, if they would
soar freely and hope to be companions of
the sun, seek the wide fields where flowers
grow and the grass is soft and cool under
the feet; where civilization has not woven
an iron web in which to entrap while they
are alive and from which to hang till thew
are dead, the kites on which we mount our
finest aspirations for their flight to the
stars. 1t is only in freedom that we NAV
ride upon cherub or fly upon the wings of
the wind.