ANZANITAS! Oh, see the manzanitas! Sierra's sky lines are cleft with radiance, and California's great outdoors is at our feet. Above us the snowdrifts and the blue mountain shadows, the mystery land; below us the misty flower plain. The allbetween is our own, inspiration decked as we follow the trails. We cannot go far without meeting our manzanitas. There they are, white, glistening clouds, pink vapors of fragrance.

Long before the mountain-mother gathers back her white skirts from her foothills to let her flower children creep out, our beauty has ventured. But they are not only of the winter; they hold within their tiny bells last summer's sunshine, sunset skies, the passing cloud, the storm, the whirr of wings, and all that nature's heart can hold, for a manzanita blossom is the cycle of a year. We have watched long for their coming in our year's rambles, and now one whiff from their blossoms is a spring time of promise, brings back a summer of prophecy, and is a year of consummation. To the earth-bound they are of the earth, but to him who treads not the beaten path, they lead far afield with its joys, and, too, into that borderland wherein commingle the past and the present, the known and the unknown: where we feel the "greater things than these." Were we always with them, we would know the year-long undertone of the world's mysteries, time's overtone of world songs.

Oh, my manzanita of the hills, ye have spoken, ye have sung, rung out from thy tiny bells not only the love chime of thy flowers, but a deep note that echoes from another day. The flower symbol, like all true symbols, is a lost chord to the senses, but to catch one æolian note leads from key note to higher creeping overtone of divine unison.

Sit here on this brown warm earth. It is summer. We are in the hills. A bit of the world-book bound in granite and in pine lies before us. Turn the leaves, my nature-lover, and see the etchings in chapparal, manzanita, pine, madrona and the finer soft-drawn lines that pad their footsteps. See the manzanita covering the uplands with its soft grey-leaved beauty, so softly grey that you wonder where the haze of heat begins, and where the manzanita blends into the ever-flattening tone: just the stones, or a lone pine, or the shadow of a hill-shoulder mark the earth steps. In that summer haze and heat, the tiny manzanita buds are hanging. Born just after the blossoming time, while the green. fruits are maturing, these mummy-like buds, enwrapped, bespiced as no mummy ever was, sleep. Did we not know our plant and its ways, we would say that it would blossom again at once. But through the long, hot, rainless summer days they wait-sleep and wait. What herald is to summon them-what Lethe is in the soft summer air-what spell is over them! The heat-waves rise and fall, a lullaby, a cradle song for them. About them the great grey nut-pine like an after-thought of coloring, when the palette was paled

and wan, strides wide-armed and gaunt. Squirrels kindly pile their nut chaff about his feet as a peace offering for their depredations, and, too, lest unimpeded he wraith-like might vanish in the shadows of the coming winter's night while they slept. Standing aloof, alone, above his fellows, he is the minor note of the hillside, but the buds heed not-they sleep. Even the long in and out weaving of the bright milk-weed butterflies, up and down the canyon, as they flutter through the alders, over the mullens, across the hazel and the brook, does not awaken them. Indeed, these butterflies, these "winged flowers," seem drawing the sunshine and shadow threads closer and closer in their wanderings, and the mystery, the spell, seems deeper for their silent motion. Across myriad mystical nature-harps of pine, chapparal, cascara and oak, comes no awakening note. All the long summer days the grasses nod, bend and bow to each ripple of air, and rain down their treasures, more polished and as full of promise as the gold that glistens like a new moon along yon miner's pan. The bumble bee drones over the tar-weed. The vireo says "sweet so sweet," overhead the jay scolds; yet through it all, these quiet buds are nodding, sleeping, dreamingdreaming of their coming day-of ages, lashed by the storms of eons, almost overwhelmed by the slow creep of glacier and the onrush of those up-heavals and erosions that put the ancient canyons and river beds on the summits of our present hills, they hold the secrets of the past.

Think of them there when the lava came. See them clutching for life when the glacier grew, and see them triumphantly growing along its fringes when it drew back the icy fingers. It decked the hillside when the stones were re-made; those hieroglyphics hewn, chiseled, moulded, melted, scored conglomerated. The cuneforms of nature! The large handwriting that none can quite decipher.

Could we unroll and read, in patient unfolding, these scrolls of time, we would find the unity of the wheel of world-fortune; that which seems like a broken spoke or a slowing down would prove but the opportunity for a new impulse on the lines of a new upbuilding.

Gather a handful close to your heart,

dream of the atmosphere of that other day; know that yesterday and to-day are one, that where thought and plan are, time is not!

Listen! Across this canyon and that mountain, with their changed lines and levels echoes the great nature anthem that all down the centuries has rung out. Do you not still hear it come beating, pulsing on across this placid day?

Superior to all accidentals strikes the key-note of divine harmony; we forget the passing discord in the final resolving cadence.

To-day's little scrolls keep peeling off, reeling off. Sitting here beside them, with the flush of beauty about us, with closing eyes and inbreath from every leaf and flower, and vibrating life about us, dreamily we feel that, as they hold yesterday's impenetrable shadows, so, too, they hold yesterday's sunshine, its personality, its life, its inspiration. "Tis but a step of retrospection to sit there beside them in that long-gone day. That they were there, that we know them here to-day, gives us a sense of comradeship, and who dare say just where we may have paused and parted

to share this hour!

Across the haze of centuries blurs almost as a memory-image the song-broken quiet of our communing; the consciousness of being, the self, bridging the past, linking you and me in a sympathy wider than days is all there, mirroring our sunshine, our life, its charm, its import.

Silently, even as they have pattered through the years, the scrolls fall. Dream again-the day is long. The mid-day songs are hushed, the heat flutters and vibrates, and even the leaves sleep. Dream on! We scarce dare open to read these new scrolls, but see! trailing out across the future, in inspiration glistens the new path-way, the to-morrow that is to-day, that sleeps. Close to the earth we listen. for the message of the eternal now that holds the prophecy of the awakening, and in the burst of song that comes in the eventide, we find the overtone, the over-soul that unites this day, our personality, creation with yesterday's, to-morrow's lifeonly, just as the buds are sleeping, we sleep to our perfection.

It is autumn. Shoulder to shoulder, closely ranked, stand our manzanitas.

Their funnel-shaped manner of growth, however, leaves them free-footed. They are mazed beneath with footways for for wood-folk, and air-ways of breezes, or the odor from their sandal wood striplings is indeed of a place blest. Their leaves that through the long, hot, rainless days have turned and twisted to present their edges to the sun, are now careless of their poses. Like drops of life-blood oozing from the mahogany red branches, hang the red berries; life indeed to the birds.

The rustle of wings, and the scurry of feet, tell of the feasts. Robins fly back and forth in filmy streaks across the morning and evening sky, going happily, songfully from sleepy-hollow to berrycrowned ridge. The abundance lasts well through the winter; a roadhouse for the migrant, or a store house for the year-long resident.

In those days of garnered strength, of consummation of spring activities visible in fruit and berry, and flutter of newfound wings; in this great pause, in this Nirvana of the year, this brooding spirit. of attainment, our buds are still sleeping. With all their hidden potency they still sleep.

Lo! the turn of the sun on his springward trip. Subtle change of sun-slants too delicately poised to be sensed, perhaps, by a grosser plant, but though 'tis midwinter our buds feel the impulse earlier even than the silk-tassel shrub, that hillclimber of the woods who flaunts his flying tatters to the wind. Slowly, steadily, they lift their drooping bud-heads through storm and sunshine and foretell the coming spring. From that waking moment until their perfection at summer's dawn there is joy to the hill lover, for the season is long.

Trace them over the hill where the forest fire has devastated; you will find a new drove of them out-cropping, covering the stony, seared barrenness like a band of feeding sheep; low-crouching, with rounded backs. A veritable rejuvenator for mother earth, saving the loam and adding to it by their annual shedding.

Wander with the blossoming ones. The soft rotundity and color suggesting carvings of jaspar, marble, daintily tinted shell, chalcedony or cameo; or the stauesque firmness of branch, or Rodin-like

poise of leaf, will crave your heart to be painter, potter or sculptor. Their symmetrical irregularity is a synthesis of being that only the nature master hand could bring to harmony; angularity, rotundity, ruggedness and daintiness, color and flat tone are all there. You feel that you are in the presence of a two-sided nature, but its resolving is as elusive as the honeyed fragrance flung to the varied breeze.

Tramp with them from warm, favored nook to open sweep of hill crest. There will be days and weeks of development, and happy trailings in happy quests.

Seek them from the very edge of the bee gardens to piney hill slopes; there will be months of joy that lead finally along the path of many bird-songs and many nestings, until incense-borne we come to know that flowers are the halos of the life-spirit they hold, and that the "essence of life is divine.”

Banked against the forest green a morning shaft of light-glints across Sierra snows to find in them a replica; cool, quiet, scarce trembling with the oncoming day. At high noon they are bursts of honeved fragrance, the focus of bee life, the very emblem of high noon activity, a sort of apex of energy. At eve, the hour when the low-slipping sun reveals all their wonderful picturesque anatomy is the hour to love them. Then shadows mystical creep from serried shoulder to shoulder, now this one, now that upheld, rounded, blotted ont. As the dusk falls, the long purple shadows rise and fall, glow and sink into the grey that is so fraught with hidden color that it almost seems to

when all is crowned with the marble carving of flower forms-well! have you ever heard the lark sing, and almost seen the notes fall through the sunshine? Have you ever been thrilled by the greatest lines of beauty that art or life have brought you; have you ever known character so fine that through the taut lines of hardship could weave bright silken meshes of loving kindness, patience and nobility? Ah, then you are of the blessed. Then you

can interpret that manzanita perfection. Some day the sculptor will arise who, by subtle balance of line and insight, can embody its entirety; no copying will do. Then we shall know the unseen toward which all art, all science gropes.

We knelt before to read the scrolls, and found that from the scarring of old-world times come the bee-gardens, the goldtreasures of to-day: and the path led on. Now, with uplifted head we catch a gleam from the long ago, shafted along the flower-way that makes us pause before these "lilies of the field," "Lest we forget," lest we be unconscious of our halos. We learn that from our heart scars come our spirit treasures: that we are building day by day, thought by thought, the true flower of our being.

Across the chasms of the yesterdays comes this flower laden with the prophecy of to-day, telling us that within the past was the present, and contains all time: within chaos and struggle is order, and holds all perfection; that from sleep comes awakening, and binding all these like the season's fulfillments is the fine thread of God's plan.

misty paths curve into the twilight of the past, and out again into the new light. Trail them, hill-lovers; they are there for you. Follow their faintest suggestions. In this great out-doors we can pulse into the world-beat.

Listen! Along the curve of that bird song as it falls to earth, among the rustle of the leaves, the creep of zephyr along the pine needles, the drone of bees, the whirr of wings, we can hear the drift of star-mist, know the building of worlds, and know that about us lies the vibrating

unseen.

The powers of heaven are fast becoming the powers of men, and in so much as we learn to be close to the earth, so do we touch the stars.

The lines that now bind are the releasers that swing to the infinite. Inspiration is but the borderland. All life, the universe is in one bird song, the drift of one thistle-down. Naught is so great that it exceeds creation, nor so small but it contains the whole. In that word, "Let there be light!" is contained the ultimate. Each pathway, when we really find it, is illumined. No true pathways are dark, and no great truths but interchange and lead to light. No path lies so surely along illumined ground as this one with the flowers, and the pines, down the canyon, over the heights.

In the long sleeping buds we find the simile of our undevelopment, also our possibilities. Our awakening like theirs trembles at the impulse of the new light that fore-gleams. The new-old race rises from the tatters, the debris of the ages. Their raiment is to be truth. Along the flower-way we find the nature spirit-way that out-fathoms the sea, out-circles a changing, dying world with light, life infinite.

Oh, my manzanitas of the hills, ye have

M

ONEY IS THE greatest factor in the development of civilization. It acts like a vital fluid in its constant service to mankind as a measure of value and medium of exchange. Defective money interrupts prosperity by its instability. But scientific money will release the latent power of sound money and give it free scope to do its perfect work, like heart-beats in its regularity.

The control of money supply (made possible by a defective money measure) is the greatest power in the world. Money is the valuable consideration that completes all transactions, whether great or small, and is generally believed to be a fixed standard of value; but in fact money fluctuates in value with the changes from redundancy to stringency in money supply, which creates or destroys prosperity by making prices of all wealth rise or fall as the manipulators dictate, whether it be for their interest to either buy or sell.

A subtle secret (jealously guarded in the financial holy of holies, and never revealed to any one but the initiated) makes money power invincible. All Governments ignorantly fix the measure in gold, at the dictation of financiers; which they transmute by secret knowledge into omnipotent power, invisible and incomprehensible to all but the initiated. They resort to every art and artifice to guard the secret from all the people. Truth is perverted and falsehood instilled into the public mind by promulgating inspired doctrines of subservient economists "on 'change," in school and out of school, until all recognized precedent and authority sustain them.

Belief in the accepted economic theories is a test of sanity and safety, and to doubt

or question any of these, their fallacious theories would be heretical and unpardonable. "Money is a fixed standard of value." "Fluctuations in value are caused by changes in supply and demand." "The scarcity of gold and its intrinsic value make it the natural money metal.” “And change in the value of money is imperceptible, because the world's stock of gold is approximately a fixed quantity."

Equality and justice have no examplars (like the bee in insect life) either in law or custom, church or State, public or private life. Because money power transcends law, and circumvents justice by evasion, technicality and fraud; supplants emulation by competition, and invests political officers with authority as rulers, instead of public servants, as part of the unlimited machinations making greed supreme, and is responsible for the fact that has no exception, no one is good but God.

The almost omnipotent power wielded by financiers, through the control of the distribution of wealth by money manipulation, perpetuates inequality and injustice, poverty and slavery-withholds from labor the natural opportunities for the production of wealth, and even the possibility of sustaining life. The power of might is the sole arbiter of every final contest, and there is no higher court of appeal. Life and strength are preliminary to all contests, and wealth is necessary to maintain life. The measure of value fixed in gold gives financiers in control of money supply absolute power over the wealth of the world. The Government, like the individual, is helpless without money. And the money king, by his subtle power, can create demands at will exceeding money supply, or he can make money supply so