--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Lambourne, Alfred collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 24 number: 1 published: 1920-11 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Alfred Lambourne, "The Northern Autocrats," *Improvement Era* 24, no. 1 (November 1920): 1.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2401unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera2401unse start_page: 1 end_page: 1 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1920-11) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2401unse publication_year: 1920 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1920, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # The Northern Autocrats The Northern Autocrats This page is not to be a piece of character anal- | 1 ysis, historical data nor summing up of human beings, | | who dominate or once dominated over their fellow | | men in the social, financial, political or the ecclesias- | 1 tical realms. No; we write of very ancient autocrats, § = of those who have held sway over a wide region from 1 | early time, primeval autocrats — we mean The Three | 1 Tetons. § Upon what changes the Tetons have looked down! | 1 "What's in a name?" By what name was that mass | | of stone — the Teton Range — that looks in so cold and | | so threatening a manner upon the surrounding land | 1 once known by the vanished tribes? If the French trap- | 1 pers or the later Anglo-Saxon emigrants ever knew, | it is now forgotten. Those peaks have stood amid seas 1 | of ice, and, upon the far horizon, seen the lurid light of § 1 flames that once issued out of now extinct craters | | from the nether fires. Zoned in the distance by the | pale green of the artemesia covered plains, the Te- | 1 tons, however, are surrounded by their own shadowing | | forests of spruce and pine. Their beauty and majesty 1 | are mirrored in the translucent lakes formed by the | | melting of their own vast fields of snow and the lakes. 1 | themselves are the sources of famous streams. The 1 | Tetons can be seen from portions of Idaho, Wyoming, 1 | Utah and Montana. Tremendous those heights touched | 1 with the silver of dawn, the gold and red of the sunset \ | and the twilight! And when come the storms, the Te- 1 1 tons gather first the robes of cloud, they are the last | 1 to lay them aside. A law unto themselves are the North- 1 | ern Autocrats! | | ALFRED LAMBOURNE. J S,,IIIU immiiiHH iiiiiiiimii miiiimiitiiiifii mm i i urn iimmimmm imiini linn mini Improvement Era Vol. XXIV NOVEMBER, 1920 No. 1