kindled, and the frugal evening meal prepared and eaten; and
when the meal is over, the incidents and adventures of the day
are related, and the prospects for the night and the morrow are
discussed. A number of campfire stories are told,—stories of
the hunt and the trail, of war with its carnage and strife, and of
the peaceful home of boyhood.
Meanwhile, the twilight has changed to inky darkness, the
frowning cliffs, rising a thousand feet on either side, can no
longer be seen, except looking far up, the ragged outline of their
tops is faintly discernible against the clear blue sky where the
watch stars have taken their stand. The travelers are just be
ginning to weary of the conversation, when suddenly and without
warning, the guide has raised a bugle to his lips, and broken the
stillness of the night in a merry burst of sound, a long-drawn,
deep-toned bugle call, increasing in its volume to a climax, then
fading slowly, softly on the air. But hark ! and listen to the
echoes 1 From far and near the notes come bounding back; each
rocky wall and crag repeats the sound; and ever back and forth
across the canyon, the echoes rise and fall until it seems that all
of Nature's voices have joined to sing a joyful chorus song.
The bugle's single voice has aroused a thousand more, each sym
pathetic with the first, yet rounder, sweeter in its tone. They
rise and fan, then echo once again; and as they strike the listen
ing ear, a thousand recollections are sent flashing through the
brain, the fleeting fancy is aroused, the faltering heart beats
quickened, until the imagination reaches out beyond life's sordid
toil to a distant, happy dreamland.
But the echoes become fainter and fainter, farther and farther
away, and one by one they are hushed until, like the last note of
the bugle call, the last faint echo, that seems to come from some
mysterious, boundless void, has sounded on the air and ceased,
and all again is still. Yes, all is still, and the silence, seems even
more hushed than it was before; and yet we know it needs but
the master tone to wake the echoes from their slumber once
again.
So even in this life of ours, each one of us a traveler on the
way, we find our path walled in by circumstance; and as we
journey on, we come to know that there are but a few guides and
a few bugles, and the rest of the noise of the world is merely the
far away echoes mingled with our own small voices murmuring
over our daily task.
VOICES AND ECHOES