Nightlight

21 plus.

men do not change it does seem impossible that society could remain unaltered after the surprise its appearance should have caused it as it saw its face in that ruthless mirror we point instead to the fact that swift lost his mind in the end well that is not a matter for surprise such books and france's ile of penguins are not disturbing as bed-books they resolve one's agitated and outraged soul relieving it with some free expression for the accusing and questioning thoughts engendered by the day's affairs but they do not rest immediately to hand in the book-shelf by the bed they depend on the kind of day one has had sterne is closer one would rather be transported as far as possible from all the disturbances of earth's envelope of clouds and tristram shandy is sure to be found in the sun but best of all books for midnight are travel books once i was lost every night for months with doughty in the arabia deserta he is a craggy author a long course of the ordinary facile stuff such as one gets in the press every day thinking it is english sends one thoughtless and headlong among the bitter herbs and stark boulders of doughty's burning and spacious expanse only to get bewildered and the shins broken and a great fatigue at first in a strange land of fierce sun hunger glittering spar ancient plutonic rock and very adam himself but once you are acclimatized and know the language it takes time there is no more london after dark till a wanderer returned from a forgotten land you emerge from the interior of arabia on the red sea coast again feeling as though you had lost touch with the world you used to know and if that doesn't mean good writing i know of no other test because once there was a father whose habit it was to read with his boys nightly some chapters of the bible and cordially they hated that habit of his i have that book too though i fear i have it for no reason that he the rigid old faithful would be pleased to hear about he thought of the future when he read the bible i read it for the past the familiar names the familiar rhythm of its words its wonderful well-remembered stories of things long past like that of esther one of the best in english the eloquent anger of the prophets for the people then who looked as though they were alive but were really dead at heart all is solace and home to me and now i think of it it is our home and solace that we want in a bed book end of bed books and night lights by h m tomlinson read by david wales

bryce canyon national monument from zion national park bryce canyon issued by the union pacific system in nineteen twenty five bryce canyon national monument probably bryce canyon is the most astonishing blend of exquisite beauty and grotesque grandeur that the forces of erosion have ever produced in one aspect it is a gorgeous lacework design of frost and fire the playground of sylphs and fairies in another it is a smouldering inferno habited by goblins and demons again it seems as if some cataclysmic force had shuffled together a dozen oriental cities into one spectacular municipality the joyous prevailing colors of this immense bowl of luminous flickering filigree heaped with the jewels are pink red orange purple yellow and white to these may be added as many other tints and tones as one has patience to distinguish though bryce is immense yet it is intimate presenting to the eye a scintillating coral intaglio of bizarre but definite plan overspread with a halo of lavender mist it is not a canyon but an amphitheatre of horseshoe shape graven one thousand feet deep into the sandstones on the eastern edge of the poncegunt plateau at the headwaters of the paria river it is approximately two miles wide and three miles long and its rim is eight thousand feet in elevation the area of bryce canyon national monument which was created in nineteen twenty three and is administered by the u s department of agriculture is seven thousand four hundred and forty acres in the maze of architecture uprising from bryce's sunken gardens where pine spruce and manzanitas spread their greens there are the styles of china and egypt of the toltecs incas greeks and goths but stronger, perhaps, is the resemblance to those decaying Dravidian temples, bursting with decoration, in the jungles of Burma and Java.

Pagodas, mosques, minarets, kiosks, fairy castles, cathedrals, theatres, flying buttresses and stairways, suspension bridges, niched and fenestrated walls, peristyles, colonnades, lotus columns, leaning towers, slim spires, massive pylons, pyramids, obelisks, pilasters capped by tilted discs cones supporting cones organs shrines and altars all of the architects of antiquity might have drawn their inspiration from the silent cities of bryce and these dream tissue cities in the realm of muted mystery have weird inhabitants statued in variegated stone giants and gnomes popes and queens kneeling penitents companies of marching soldiers gargoyles fauns satyrs nymphs witches horses dogs lizards frogs and turtles figures that seem to move sway in posture in the flashing play of light and shadow the least vivid imagination needs a check-rein in the east on the headland of the table cliffs an outlier of the vast aquarius plateau the mesa rises by ramps and colonnades of pink and buff to a level esplanade where stand a dozen glorified acropolises facades friezes pillars and porticos in ruins of rosy marble There, as everywhere, the marionettes of the sun continually perform their evanescent dances, and this is but a vista chosen at random from a hundred glorious panoramas.