A
photographer set up his camera to catch a shadow of the great display.
He stood, sometimes air-bulb in hand, an hour or two, then folded his
camera tent and stole away. Five hours had passed and night was near.
Everybody was gone. I lay down on the ground to convince myself that I
was perfectly patient. I attained so nearly to Nirvana that a little
ground squirrel came and ran over me, kissing my hand in a most
friendly way.
Six hours of waiting were nearly over when, without a single previous
hint of change, one descending spout was met by an ascending one, and a
vast column of hissing water rose, with a sound of continuous thunder,
one hundred feet in air; and stood there like a pillar of cloud in the
desert. The air throbbed as in a cannonade, and the sun brushed away
all clouds as if he could not bear to miss a sight he had seen perhaps
a million times. Then the top of this upward Niagara bent over like
the calyx of a calla, and the downward Niagara covered all that
elevated masonry with a rushing cascade. Shifting my position a
little, I could see that the sun was thrilling the whole glorious
outpour with rainbows. At such times one can neither measure nor
express emotions by words. In the thunder which anyone can hear there
is always, for all who can receive it, the ineffably sweet voice of the
Father saying, "Thou art my beloved son, and all this grand display is
for thy precious sake.
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