CONCLUSION

The sumac leaves, which through the summer months tapped delicately at my study window, have turned a vivid scarlet, and one by one have fluttered to the ground. Here, by the mysterious process of nature, they will be incorporated with the rich soil, to nourish some other life that will later climb sunward. But in that life no one shall recognize a sumac leaf.

So it seems are the efforts of men. A few years of growth and aspiration--then the fiery bourgeoning to a climax, and, after that, incorporation in the soil of a forgetfulness that seems indifferent alike to their exertions and their ambitions. But the end is not here.

Somewhere, and most certainly in some other form, the effort achieves immortality and rea.s.serts itself, indestructible and eternal. For such are the myriad filaments of existence, and so indissolubly are men linked with each other by invisible chains, that it is but seldom that impulse can be traced back to its birth, or courage to its starting point.

Who then shall determine what is success and what is failure? Does the grandeur of the reward establish the value of the service, or is it not true that, in the mysterious cycle of time, the richest field is not seldom sown by hands that have been without honor or recognition in their season? Does wealth or authority spell success, or is it the meed of those who have given rather than taken, who have toiled on the mountain side rather than sought the peaks of publicity? Clark came to St. Marys a poor man, and he left it no whit the richer. What he made, he spent. And when the day of his departure dawned, he went as one who had attempted and failed, carrying with him the resentment of those who lost, and few thanks from those who profited.

But did Clark actually fail?

To-day the mines of Algoma are supplying steel rails for Asiatic railways; the forests about St. Marys are yielding pulp for Australia, and the great power house is sending carbide to the mines of India.

This and much more is the fruit of vision. What matter that Philadelphia stormed, and that the reins of government were s.n.a.t.c.hed from those masterful hands? The dream has come true.

Consider for a moment this man, who is stranger to most. He desired neither wealth nor ease, being filled with a vast hunger for creation, and to forest, mountain and river he turned with confidence and abiding courage. It was as though nature herself had whispered misty secrets in his ear. Being a prophet, he suffered like a prophet, but the years, rolling on, have enabled him to look back on the later flower of his earlier days, for it was written that he should plow and others reap. And of necessity it was so. Like the prospector who finds gold in the wilderness and straightway shoulders his pack to seek for further treasure, his unwearying soul drove him on in steadfast pursuit of that which lay just over the hill. It was not the thing that lay at his feet which fascinated, but the promise of the morrow, whose dawn already gilded the horizon of his spirit.

Clark, with his impetuous energy, is typical of a country in which few achievements are impossible. He provided his own motive power and used his hypnotic influence only in one direction--that of progress. Ever faithful to his destiny, he was too busy to have time to suffer, too occupied to waste himself in regrets. Like the rapids themselves, his work moves on, and in its deep rumble may be distinguished the confused note of humanity, striving and ever striving.

THE END