Commonplace Book - Numbered Pages - page 15: "The Various Beauty of Winter" - 2

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Transcription: 

Mighty hunters before the Lord, like Nim-
rod and Ropaleyn Gordon Cuming and
Theodore Roosevelt, have shot elephants
and mammoths -- Nimrod must have known
the mammoth, just as Orion did -- and gem-
bok and Rocky mountain lions and griz-
zlies, guided by such indications. But it
really is not necessary to shoot things in
order to see how wonderful is all this life,
which the men with guns destroy for noth-
ing save the pleasure of killing. Better
to know less about them than to murder.
There is no taint in the air for those who
take the path of sympathy and fellowship
with these wild offspring of God -- going
on in life as man is.

A little while ago on a bright crisp morn-
ing the whole surface of the echoing earth
was splendid with prismatic crystals in
the slight snow that then just overcrusted
the ground. The miracle of the icestorm
in the trees and shrubs and grasses was
then reproduced in miniature. No Kohl-
noors or Regents were among these deli-
cate diamonds, no Victoria rubies in the
display, but rubies and topazes, sapphires,
amethysts, emeralds and aquamarines, were
scattered so plentifully that had all the jew-
elry shops of the world scattered their
treaures, without their settings of gold,
over the earth, they could not have equaled
the display in number, or excelled them in
magnificence. Made by the same law,
emanations of the same glory of divine life,
these splendors sparkled in the glowing sun-
light, and could be possessed by every child;
for between high and low, between fortune
and poverty, as the world goes, there is no
gulf in the gifts of God.

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