Living the Radiant Life: A Personal NarrativeJames, George Wharton
Religion
Living the Radiant Life: A Personal Narrative
James, George Wharton
Conduct of life
The out-of-doors, too, is full of beauty of color as well as beauty in
form. Oh, the sunrises and sunsets at sea, and on the desert, and in the
canyons, and on the mountain heights, and on the great plains of Arizona
and New Mexico and Utah. What colorist of earth can ever equal them?
Titian? Tintoretto? Velasquez? Turner? La Farge? Reid? Why waste words
asking the questions? How tame is Titian's greatest color-effects side
by side with a sunrise on the ocean, or a sunset on the desert!
Bostonians are proud of Reid's magnificent paintings in the State House.
I enjoy them myself and do not wonder that visitors are struck by the
powerful color-handling of the interesting historical subjects. But Mr.
Reid himself is not so foolish as to imagine that his greatest paintings
are more than futile attempts to put on canvas the colors his eyes have
seen, his soul has felt, out in the open. So, for color I would radiate
a love for out-of-doors.
And I would radiate a love for all of out-of-doors at all times. Winter,
Summer, Spring, Autumn, in rain and sunshine, in storm and calm, there
is something in every condition, every mood for the men and women who
are receptive. When I see newly born infants shut out from the pure
air, their faces covered, "lest they take cold," I am filled with
amazement at people's fear of out-of-doors. My babies were put to sleep
out-of-doors half an hour after they were born. The latest and most
approved methods of treating tuberculosis is to make those afflicted
with it sleep out of doors. There are camps in Michigan and in the snowy
regions of New York, in the Adirondacks, where, throughout the Winter,
patients sleep out of doors with the best of results. Be not afraid. Go
out of doors as does the Indian. Learn of him and be wise. He is a
believer in the virtue of the outdoor life, not as an occasional thing,
but as his regular, uniform habit. He _lives_ out of doors; and not only
does his body remain in the open, but his mind, his soul, are ever also
there. Except in the very cold weather his house is free to every breeze
that blows. He laughs at "drafts." "Catching cold" is something of which
he knows absolutely nothing. When he learns of white people shutting
themselves up in houses into which the fresh, pure, free air of the
plains and deserts, often laden with the healthful odors of the pines,
firs, and balsams of the forest, cannot come, he shakes his head at the
folly, and feels as one would if he saw a man slamming his door in the
face of his best friend. Virtually he sleeps out of doors, eats out of
doors, works out of doors. When the women make their baskets and
pottery, it is always out of doors, and their best beadwork is always
done in the open. The men make their bows and arrows, dress their
buckskin, make their moccasins and buckskin clothes, and perform nearly
all their ceremonials out-of-doors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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