Take my advice: Sleep on it, and drop down on the wings of the morning, while the sun is filling up this marvelous ravine with such lights and shadows as are felt, yet scarcely understood. Refreshed, amazed, bewildered, go down into that solemn place, and see if you are not more saint-like than you dared to think yourself. When the times are out of joint, as they frequently are, come up here, forget men and things; don't imagine we are as bad as we seem, for it is quite certain we might be a great deal worse if we tried. While you bemoan our earthliness, you may not be the one saint among us. Coming down with the evening, I was scarcely at the gates of the inner valley when night was on me. Of this gate, it is formed of a ponderous monument on the right, called Cathedral Rock, and on the left is the one bald spot in the Sierras, the great El Capitan. The arch over this primeval threshold is the astral dome of heaven, and the gates stand ever open. There is no toll taken in any mansion of my Father's House, and this is one of them. Passing to the door of my host, I lifted the latch noiselessly. Before me dawned fresh experiences. At my back Night gathered deeper than ever, and all around I seemed to read the rubric of Life's new lesson. We are a comfort to ourselves--six of us, all told. Summer invites our little company into a breezy hotel, over in the shadow across the valley. Winter suggests a log cabin, an expansive fireplace, plenty of hickory, and as much sunshine as finds its way into our secluded hermitage. So we are done up compactly, in between thick walls, our hard finish being in the shape of mud cakes in the chinks of the logs, and a very hard finish it is; but we take wondrous comfort withal. How do I pass the hours? Leaving my friends, I wander forth, after breakfast, in any direction that pleases me. Take today this sheep path; it leads me to a pebbly beach at a swift turn of the Merced. That clump of trees produces the best harvest of frost-pointed leaves; there are new varieties offered every day at an alarming sacrifice, and I invest largely in these fragile wares. Tomorrow, I shall go yonder across three tumultuous streams, upon three convenient logs, broad and mossy. Some book or other goes with me, and is opened now and then. Such books as Plant Life, The Sexuality of Nature, Studies in Animal Life, suggest themselves. Open these anywhere, and each is annotated and illustrated by the scene before me. Every page is a running text to the hour I glorify.