Such has been the history of our civilization, and still
is, and must be till the whole earth's surface be conquered for
mankind, embodied in its highest ideals, personal and social. This is
not nature's way, who raises her trophy over the slain; our trophy is
man's laurel upon our grave. So, everywhere except in the physical
sphere of life, if you would find the soul's commands, reverse nature's
will. This superiority to nature, as it seems to me, this living in an
element plainly antithetical to her sphere, is a sign of 'an ampler
ether, a diviner air.'"
So I spoke, as the words came to me, while we were still driving down
the dark valley, in deeper shadows, under higher bluffs, looking out on
a levelled world westward, stretching off with low, white, wreathing
mists and moonlit distances of plains beyond the further bunk. We turned
a great shoulder of the hills, and the moon shone out bright and clear,
riding in heaven; and the southward reach unlocked, and gave itself for
miles to our eyes. At the instant, while the ponies came back upon their
haunches at the drop of the long descent ahead, we both cried out, "the
Looking-glass!" There it was, about a mile away before and below us, as
plain as a pikestaff,--a silvery reach, like a long narrow lake, smooth
as the floor of cloud seen from above among mountains, silent,
motionless,--for all the world like an immense, spectral looking-glass,
set there in the half-darkened waste.
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