The Log School-House on the Columbia | Page 2

to the
territory under the missionary agency of the Rev. Jason Lee.
There came a break in the tall, cool pines that lined the trail and that
covered the path with glimmering shadows. Through the opening the
high summits of Mount St. Helens glittered like a city of pearl, far, far
away in the clear, bright air. The girl's blue eyes opened wide, and her
feet stumbled.
"There, there you go again down in the hollow! Haven't you any eyes?
I would think you had by the looks of them. Well, Gretchen, they were
placed right in the front of your head so as to look forward; they would
have been put in the top of your head if it had been meant that you
should look up to the sky in that way. What is it you see?"
"Oh, mother, I wish I was--an author."
"An author! What put that into your simple head? You meant to say
you would like to be a poet, but you didn't dare to, because you know I
don't approve of such things. People who get such flighty ideas into
their loose minds always find the world full of hollows. No, Gretchen, I
am willing you should play on the violin, though some of the Methody
do not approve of that; and that you should finger the musical glasses
in the evening--they have a religious sound and soothe me, like; but the
reading of poetry and novels I never did countenance, except Methody
hymns and the 'Fool of Quality,' and as for the writing of poetry, it is a
Boston notion and an ornary habit. Nature is all full of poetry out here,
and what this country needs is pioneers, not poets."

There came into view another opening among the pines as the two went
on. The sun was ascending a cloudless sky, and far away in the
cerulean arch of glimmering splendors the crystal peaks and domes of
St. Helens appeared again.
The girl stopped.
"What now?" said the woman, testily.
"Look--yonder!"
"Look yonder--what for? That's nothing but a mountain, a great waste
of land all piled up to the sky, and covered with a lot of ice and snow. I
don't see what they were made for, any way--just to make people go
round, I suppose, so that the world will not be too easy for them."
"Oh, mother, I do not see how you can feel so out here! I never
dreamed of anything so beautiful!"
"Feel so out here! What do you mean? Haven't I always been good to
you? Didn't I give you a good home in Lynn after your father and
mother died? Wasn't I a mother to you? Didn't I nurse you through the
fever? Didn't I send for you to come way out here with the immigrants,
and did you ever find a better friend in the world than I have been to
you?"
"Yes, mother, but--"
"And don't I let you play the violin, which the Methody elder didn't
much approve of?"
"Yes, mother, you have always been good to me, and I love you more
than anybody else on earth."
There swept into view a wild valley of giant trees, and rose clear above
it, a scene of overwhelming magnificence.
"Oh, mother, I can hardly look at it--isn't it splendid? It makes me feel
like crying."

The practical, resolute woman was about to say, "Well, look the other
way then," but she checked the rude words. The girl had told her that
she loved her more than any one else in the world, and the confession
had touched her heart.
"Well, Gretchen, that mountain used to make me feel so sometimes
when I first came out here. I always thought that the mountains would
look peakeder than they do. I didn't think that they would take up so
much of the land. I suppose that they are all well enough in their way,
but a pioneer woman has no time for sentiments, except hymns. I don't
feel like you now, and I don't think that I ever did. I couldn't learn to
play the violin and the musical glasses if I were to try, and I am sure
that I should never go out into the woodshed to try to rhyme sun with
_fun_; no, Gretchen, all such follies as these I should shun. What
difference does it make whether a word rhymes with one word or
another?"
To the eye of the poetic and musical German girl the dead volcano,
with its green base and frozen rivers and dark, glimmering lines of
carbon, seemed like a fairy tale, a celestial vision, an ascent to some
city of crystal and pearl in the sky. To her foster mother the stupendous
scene was merely a worthless