Prairie Smoke (Classic Reprint) - Tapa dura

Excerpt from Prairie Smoke

Many persons are ever seeking outside of themselves and in some distant place or time for interest and cheer.. They are always dis contented and complaining. They fancy if they were but in some other place or other circumstances they would be happy. But this is a vain fancy. Each of us carries with him the germs of happiness or of unhappiness. Those of unhappy disposition will be unhappy wherever they may be. Cheer is not in environment, but in the individual. One who is of a cheerful, understanding disposition will find interest and cheer wherever he may be.

Robert Louis Stevenson well said The world is so full of a number of things I' think we should all be as happy as kings. When there are so many interesting things in the world, so many in any given place, so many more than one can ever fully know or enjoy in the short Span of human lifetime, how can one ever be overtaken by dullness? If dullness seem to enfold us, be sure it is we that are dull; it is because our minds are lazy and our eyes unseeing. There is enough of interest about us wherever we may be to engage our attention if we open our eyes 5 to it. If we have initiative and independence of mind we shall find inter est everywhere; but if we depend upon others or neglect what is about us in desire for what is distant we shall never be content. One greater than Robert Louis Stevenson said The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.

It is with the purpose of calling attention to some of the many fascinatingly interesting things which we have all about us \ou the prairie plains and in the hills and valleys of our own state, and perhaps in our own neighborhood, that this volume is produced. The myths which pertain to the hills, valleys, springs and streams in our own state and in our own neighborhood must be of interest to us when we look with our own eyes upon the actual places to which these myths pertain. And these myths of. The country in which we live are at least equal in beauty and interest to the myths of the Greeks, and to the old Teutonic myths of Thor, Odin, and Freya; or even to our own old British myths which we have from our Druidic ancestors. And however beautiful and interesting in itself a native tree or flower or other plant may be, however engaging to the attention may be a native bird or beast, how much more so when we think of what this bird or beast or flower or tree has been in the lives of generations of Our fellow creatures who have lived here and loved this land and its teeming native life long before we ever saw it.

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