How much white people lose by not seeing and knowing the beauty of the early morning hours,--the hours just preceding dawn, and during the first outburst of the sun! A friend and I stood out the other morning before sunrise, looking at the exquisite delicate lights over the mountain peaks, and she gave expression to the above thought, and only a few days before I had said it to a friend as we had wended our way from _El Tovar_ Hotel at the Grand Canyon out to O’Neill Point to see the sunrise. Elisha Safford eloquently speaks as follows of this: BEAUTY OF THE MORNING Oh, the beauty of the morning! It showers its splendors down From the crimson robes of sunrise, the azure mountain’s crown; It smiles amid the waving fields, it dapples in the streams, It breathes its sparkling music through the rapture of our dreams. It floats upon the limpid air in rainbow clouds of mist, It ripples through the glowing skies in pearl and amethyst, It gleams in every burnished pool, it riots through the grass, It splashes waves of glory on the shadows as they pass. It steals among the nodding trees and to the forest croons, In airy note and gentle voice, ’neath waning plenilunes; It calls, and lo! the wooded brakes, the hills and tangled fens-- A world of life and mystery--swarm with its denizens. It trembles in the perfumed breeze, and where its ardor runs, A thousand light-winged choristers pant forth their orisons; A thousand echoes clap their hands, and from their dewy beds, A million scarlet-throated flowers peer forth with startled heads. Oh, the beauty of the morning! It rains upon our ears: The music of the universe, the chiming of the spheres; From cloistered wood and leafy vale, its tuneful medleys throng, Till all the earth is drenched in light and all the world in song! [Illustration: INDIAN BASKET, SHOWING INFLUENCE OF NATURE IN THE DESIGN.] All children, and especially city children, need out-of-door life. Men and women need it too, sadly, but if the elders cannot have it, owing to our perverted social conditions, our law-givers should see to it that the children do better. It is a well-known fact that cities would soon die out if their vast populations were not constantly being replenished by the sons and daughters of the country. So instead of letting our city children grow up to imperfect manhood, let us find some way to get them out of doors and out into the country more and more. Exercise in the open, where pure air penetrates to the full depths of the lungs, personal contact with the soil, and physical work upon it, as well as personal contact with the trees and flowers and all growing things, the animals of the farm and field, the rocks and mountains, the hills and valleys, the waterfalls and streams, the deserts and canyons; all these are to be desired. Who does not wish to sing with Edwin Markham: