The poem itself breathes reverence for “The Master” throughout.  To residents of California, who revel in the outdoor life of her mountains & valleys, the poem has a particular attraction for its camp-fire spirit which to us seems part and parcel of that outdoor life.  It is a far cry, perhaps, from the camp-fires of 1849 to the camp-fires of 1922, but surely the camp-fire spirit is the same with us in our Western wonderland today as it was with those rough old miners who sat around the logs under the pines after a day of arduous and oft disappointing toil.  Surely the visions we see, the lessons we read in the camp-fire glow, are much the same as they were then.  Surely we build the same castles in the air, draw the same inspirations from it.  Biographer Forster pays the poem this tribute: 

“It embodies the same kind of incident which had so affected the master himself in the papers to which I have referred; it shows the gentler influences which, in even those California wilds, can restore outlawed ‘roaring campers’ to silence and humanity; and there is hardly any form of posthumous tribute which I can imagine likely to have better satisfied his desire of fame than one which should thus connect with the special favorite among all his heroines the restraints and authority exerted by his genius over the rudest and least civilized of competitors in that far, fierce race for wealth.”

In the twining of English holly and Western pine upon the great English novelist’s grave the poet expresses a happy thought.  He calls East and West together in common appreciation of one whose influence was not merely local but worldwide.  He invites the old world and the new to kneel together at the altar of sentiment, an appeal to the emotions which never fails to touch a responsive chord in the heart of humanity.

Frederick S. Myrtle

San Francisco, California
April, 1922

* * * * *

[Illustration]

DICKENS in CAMP

* * * * *

Above the pines the moon was slowly drifting,
  The river sang below;
The dim Sierras, far beyond, uplifting
  Their minarets of snow.

The roaring camp-fire, with rude humor, painted
  The ruddy tints of health
On haggard face and form that drooped and fainted
  In the fierce race for wealth;

Till one arose, and from his pack’s scant treasure
  A hoarded volume drew,
And cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure
  To hear the tale anew;

And then, while round them shadows gathered faster,
  And as the firelight fell,
He read aloud the book wherein the Master
  Had writ of “Little Nell.”

Perhaps ’twas boyish fancy,—­for the reader
  Was youngest of them all,—­
But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar
  A silence seemed to fall;