The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-11-16

reflection, our ground in the cemetery
obelisks. urns and stone cottages, and
should prefer a great natural reck-one or
the red powders known as the lost rocks
of the prairie-porphyry from the north,
brought down in glacial times, with a small
surface smoothed down, just large enough
to make a tablet, in which should be in
serted the bronze letters of our name-'ln-
gallS'-and nothing else"
1t is not surprising to those who knew
Mr.. ingalls, intimately that his thoughts
should turn to nature when he came face
to face with death. Fate had led him into
the life of a practical politician, but he
was a poet, a dreamer, a naturalist above
all else. His recreation was found in soil
tary walks in the woods or along the
streams, where he built airy castles or
philosophical upon the works of God. His
best writings were those descriptive of the
landscape, the sky, the foliage. The al
most dreary and always commonplace seem
cry of Kansas could be transformed by the
magic of his pen into pictures of alluring
loneliness. We have in mind the opening
paragraphs of his essay on blue Grass,
written in 1872 for the old Kansas maya
zine. in which he etherializeS the poor
bluffs ard ragged valleys which environ the
town of Atchison, and from which we quote
as follows:
Attracted by the bland ~softness of an
afternoon in my primeval winter in Kan
sas, / rode southwark through the dense
forest that then covered the bluffs of the
north fork of Wildcat. The ground was
solder with the ooze of melting snow. The
dripping trees were as motionless as gran
tie. The last years leaves, tenacious linger-
ers. loath to leave the scene of their brief
bravery. adhered to the gray boughs like
fragile bronze.
There were no indications. of life, but
the broad wintry landscape was flooded
with that indescribabie splendor that never
was seen on sea or shore-a purple silken
softness that half yelled, half disclosed. the
alien horizon, the vast curves OF the re-
mote river, the transient architecture of
the clouds. and filed the responsive soul
with a vague tumult of emotions, pensive
and pathetic, in which regret and hope
contended for the mastery. The dead and
silent globe, with all its hidden kingdoms,
seemed swimming like a bubble suspended
in an ethereal solution of amethyst and
silver, compounded of the exhaling white
ness of the snow. the descending glory of
the sky.
"A tropical atmosphere brooded upon the
arctic scene, creating the strange spec
tacle of summer in winter, June in Janu-
airy, peculiar to Kansas, which unseen can
not be imagined, but once seen cannot be
forgotten. A sudden descent into the shell
tered valley revealed ar unexpected cres-
cent of dazzling verdure, unreal as an in
cantation. surprising as the sea to the SOL
shore and shouted "Thalattar 1t was blue
grass. unknown in Eden. the final triumph
of nature, reserved to compensate her IA
vorite offspring in the new Paradise of
Kansas for the loss Of the old upon the
banks of the Tigris and Euphrates.
Next In Importance to the divine pro-
fusion OF water, light and air. those three
great physical facts which render existence
possible, may be reckoned the universal
beneficence of grass. Exaggerated by
tropical heats and vapors to the gigantic
cane congestcd with its saccharine secre-
ton, or dwarfed by polar rigors to the
hbrous hair of northern regions, embrac-
ing between these extremes the maize with
its resolute pennons. the rice plant Of
Southern swamps, the wheat. rye, barley.
oats and other cereals. no less than the
humber verdure OF hillside, pasture and
prairie in the temperate zone-grass is the
most widely distributed of all vegetable
beings. and is at once the type of our life
and the emblem OF our mortality.
Lying in the sunshine among the but
tercups and dandelions Of May, scarcely
higher in intelligence than the minute ten
ants of that mimic wilderness, our earliest
recollections are of grass. and when. the
ftful fever Is ended and the foolish wran-
gle of the market and the forum is closed
grass heals over the scar which our descent
into the bosom Of the earth has made. and
the carpet Of infancy becomes the blanket
of the dead.
..Grass is the forgiveness of n~ature-her
constant benediction. Fields trampled with
ruts Of cannon. grow green again with
grass, and carnage is forgotten.
Streets abandoned by traffic become
grass-grown. like rural lanes. and are for
gotten. Forests decay. harvests perish,
flowers vanish, but grass is immortal.
"Beleaguered by the sullen hosts of win
ter, il withdraws into the impregnable
fortress of its subterranean vitality and
energies upon the first solicitation of
.Sown by the winds and the wandering
birds, p~ropagated by the subtle horticul-
listers and servants. IL softens the rude out