Sometimes you gaze at them, and they lift up your spirit and hold it
aloft in the free air, and send it up, and up, and up, until it reaches
the very blue of heaven, and you know that you are free and powerful
and ennobled, made one with the saints and mighty ones of earth.
The next morning you go forth and look up at those silent granite
heights, and expect them to repeat their miracle. But they will not.
They frown upon you and crush you down into the earth you are made of.
Like an accusing conscience, they lift their stern, forbidding faces
above you on all sides and look you steadily in the eyes with their
insistence upon your unworthiness, until, in despair, you are ready to
shut yourself up to escape their persecutions.
Of course, as I said before, it may not be the cliffs at all. It may
be nothing but nerves. But I think it is the walls of the Valley.
On that particular morning they had made me bite the dust until I could
no longer endure the sight of them. To escape their solemn,
contemptuous faces I ran down a little path which led into a dense
thicket of young pines and cedars.
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