Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1902-11-27

Garden of the Gods is kept open on
Sunday, writes Opie Read in Hearst's
Chicago American.
And in this mysterious place what
iolts there are for the imagination.
in eXaggeratiOn Of fancy it is the
dream of giant.
In its myriad Of animal shapes it is
the menagerie of eternity, petrifed;
and but for it's grandeur it would be
the nightmare of the stone age.
A true escription of it would be a
verbal storm.
1t is earth's most weird emotion
caught and stilled on the verge Of
terrific outbreak.
Millions Satan would have claimed
it for his theater
After beholding the rest of the
world Adam would have stood in sur
prise.
It is sublimity's cloister. From it
Carylyle might have caught the rug
seaness of his style. Profanity would
term it the brick-kiln of hell.
Humor would call it the delirium
t1emens of nature.
But truth proclaims it magnificent
beyond both poet and painter.
ton jS
the sublime. 1t is hushed Wagner,
a tragedy of silent music, a God tune
terrific.
A lion crouches on the roof of the
cathedral; rabbit of gypsum hides
beneath a hedge of sandstone And
everywhere are the aweinspiring feat
ures of the Indian. The grim majesty
of his prehistoric countenance is on
the side of the cliff,by ancient lightning
photographed. The sun smites it and
it smiles in contempt of civilized art
that passes away.
Here you are face to face with the
eternal, and Julius Caesar was mur
dered yesterday. Down the seam
wrinkles of this granite face the rain
tears were courSing when mar -
held the blood of earth's first ira Sedy
And sentinel over all is the fountain
that took it's name from one who stood
not upon it's wind-swen crest.
Yesterday-ah, in comparison with
rock that knows not time, few
seconds ago--Pike looked upward and
said that no man could climb to the
Peak In this morning of 1906 he said
that the Peak was impossible. But
thirteen years later man named Will
son climbed to the top and looked
down upon the wasted world
To the thoughtless Pixies Peak has
become a jest. The saying of the
forty-niner, "Pike's Peak or bust
placed upon this majestic upheaval
cap rang kings fool bell along its
sides. But to the thoughtful it is the
most stupendous sight of lifetime.
Like fringe Of grass TIE pine for
rest creeps upward, hesitates. halts.
Upon it's crest the cloud-ship from the
north is wrecked. and far over the
east there fall the shattered fragments
Of cargo Of rain.
At this, Americas most famous
mountain, the stranger gaZes, never
eye-weary. In this monster mound is
the past and the future. Books have
attempted to picture it, painters have
in despair Of truth clutched at its
dim silken haze; at it's base the God
fearing poet has knelt, but every day
it is new, fresh created with the CON-
ing with each mornings light. An epic
arising above the clouds of criticism,
a completeness beyond mans carping
eye, it stands wonder unto the
children of the plain, majestic ec.
stcay to him who loves the great.
Far away there are other peaks that
are higher, but none so grand in shape
ly lesson of earth's inhabited solitude.
Up it's side a cog-wheel train groans
it's way, but each ascent is fresh dis
covery.
High up within it's shadow Helen
Hunt Jackson was buried. and the pro-
fame world ignorant of her force and
her many virtues, wore pathway in
the rock to gaze upon her resting
place Men who did not know that she
had found the Indians heart and glor:
fed it with her beautiful sympathy.
but who, moved by the impulsive curl,
osity of the tourist. heaped stones
upon her tomb. trod the road Of
thoughtless pilgrimage. SO desecrated
the sepulcher that the near relatives
OF the great woman moved her bones
and huried them in rugged OhScurity