He was born in the sunny Southland, where brooks and rivers run musically through the luxuriant soil; where the magnolia grandiflora like white stars grow in a firmament of green; where crystal lakes dot the greensward and the softest summer breezes dimple the wave-lips into kisses for the lilies on the shore; where the air is resonant with the warbled melody of a thousand sweet-voiced birds and redolent of the perfume of many flowers. This was the beginning. He died in Rawhide, where in the winter the shoulders of the mountains are wrapped in garments of ice and in summer the blistering rays of the sun beat down upon the skeleton ribs of the desert. Is this a picture of universal human life?

Sometimes when I look over the circumstances of human life, a curse rises to my lips, and, if you will allow me, I will say here that I speak from an individual point of view. I cannot express other than my own views. If I run counter to yours, at least give me credit for a desire to be honest.

When I see the ambitions of man defeated; when I see him struggling with mind and body in the only legitimate prayer he can make to accomplish some end; when I see his aim and purpose frustrated by a fortuitous combination of circumstances over which he has no control; when I see the outstretched hand, just about to grasp the flag of victory, take instead the emblem of defeat, I ask: What is life? Dreams, awakening and death; "a pendulum 'twixt a smile and a tear"; "a momentary halt within the waste and then the nothing we set out from"; "a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more"; "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"; a child-blown bubble that but reflects the light and shadow of its environment and is gone; a mockery, a sham, a lie, a fool's vision; its happiness but Dead Sea apples; its pain the crunching of a tyrant's heel. I feel as Omar did when he wrote:

"We are no other than a moving row

Of magic Shadow-shapes that come and go

Round with the Sun-illumined lantern held

In the midnight by the Master of the show.

But helpless pieces of the game He plays

Upon the checker-board of nights and days

And one by one back in the closet lays.

The ball no question makes of Ayes and Noes,

But here and there as strikes the player goes;

And He that tossed you down into the field--

He knows about it all -- He knows -- He knows."

But I don't. This is my mood.



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