Oh, wake up to the beauty of the common grass, the common flowers, the common trees. Open your eyes to see, open your hearts to feel, cultivate your hunger for these common things and then absorb and assimilate them. But the flowers and trees are but merely a part of the great world of Nature from which one may absorb things beautiful and grand. People who live by the sea or by an inland lake have wonderful opportunities for the observation of grandeur, sublimity, and beauty. Joaquin Miller once stood by the seashore and wrote these words of poetry: The sun lay molten in the sea Of sand, and all the sea was rolled In one broad, bright intensity Of gold and gold and gold and gold. He saw the gold of beauty which in this materialistic age few men deem of value. But when all the gold of commerce has disappeared, the gold of beauty is a treasure stored up in one's soul that will accompany him through all the ages of eternity. The one is ephemeral and useful only to provide the food, clothing, and shelter we need for the body, the other, permanent, enduring, lasting, that clothes the mind with brilliant images and the soul with helpful and stimulating aspirations. It is one of the mistakes of life to overlook the apparently small, trifling and near-by things, in the vain desire to see some great, large, important thing. The things about us are the essential things of our life. Too often we deem them unimportant. We are so accustomed to seeing them that we pay no attention to them, yet these things were worth the thought of the Almighty Creator. Every blade of grass, every leaf of every tree is a revelation of some thought of God, hence can never be beneath the notice of mankind. This careless and unobservant attitude of mind shows our ignorance and our unwisdom. God's mysteries are before us and we refuse to read them. As Walt Whitman says: "Our streets are strewn with leaves from the book of God and we see them not." We pass them by. Let us learn to pick up these divine mysteries and in their sweet, beautiful simplicity read their sublime lessons to our own hearts. Who would think of learning anything from the mists? Yet Joaquin Miller once wrote these words: Behold the silvered mists that rise From all-night toiling in the corn, The mists have duties up the skies, The skies have duties with the morn; While all the world is full of earnest care To make the fair world still more wondrous fair. In one of his poems, one of our great poets tells the story of a number of poor people who came to see their king who was to approach with his gayly dressed bands of music and all the pomp and ceremony attendant upon kingship. The story goes, however, that the Captain of the Province drove the poor people away and refused to allow them to be present when the king passed through. Let the poet now tell his own story: