"Clap their little hands in glee
With one continuous sound."
Yet there is strength in all this calm. "He setteth fast the mountains," is the emblem of Divine omnipotence, "being girded with power." But these mountains are not always set fast. The "everlasting hills do bow." Here, not unfrequently, they tremble and bow. Is it "at the presence of the Lord, of the Lord of the whole earth?" Why not? Is not this as proper a solution of that physical problem as those less spiritual? "For He cometh, He cometh to judge the earth." Does any earth need His coming to judgment more? "He shall judge the people righteously." Even so. "Bend the heavens and come down."
"Earth, tremble on, with all thy sons;"
and may His feet be on the mountains, publishing peace, and giving them, and all that they inhabit, everlasting righteousness and rest.
Our road soon descends again, more rapidly than it went up, though not more easily. It hangs half a thousand feet over a basin edged with a flowing river, skirts the rancho of Sancho (an alliteration not our own), with its tiny field of wheat and plat of gay flowers, and little peach-orchard, with flowers and half-grown fruit on adjoining trees. It is lovely in all save its dogs and their owners. How can nature be so grand and lovely, and man and woman so mean and unlovely?
"Like vermin crawling on a lion's crest,"
said Tom Moore, bitterly and not untruly, of Americans more than a half century ago. It is not untrue of some of these Americans to-day. But Christianity is coming. It has never really got here yet, and we shall see these "vermin" pretty, cleanly, cultured men and women. The girl that gave us a cup of cold water, or as cold as her cabin afforded, and illuminated my mozo with her smile, as well as with her answers to his inquiries, shall not she and her kin, who bow and take off their sombreros and salute us so courteously
