GOING TO BED IN AN ARCADIAN FARMHOUSE 

 I know the beds of Eastern princes, and the luxurious couches of Occidental plutocrats, 

 but under the rafters of a farmhouse, where the mud wasp's nest answers for a Rembrandt 

 and the ccb-web takes the place of a Murillo, there is a feather bed into which one softly 

 sinks until his every inch is soothed and fitted, and settling down and farther down into 

 sweet unconsciousness, while the screech owl is calling from the moonlit oak and frost is 

 falling upon the asters. Stocks may fluctuate and panic seize the town, but there is one 

 man who is in peace. -Robert '/'. Morris in "Hopkins's Pond and Other Sketches." 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE 



EDUCATION AND RECREATION 



VOL. Ill 



SEPTEMBER 1910 



No. 5 



The Nature Work and Recreation 



of a Surgeon 



By EDWARD F. BIGELOW, Arcndia: Sound Beach, Connecticut 



ROBERT Tuttle Morris, 

 M. D., well known as a 

 surgeon and a professor 

 in the New York Post 

 Graduate Medical College, 

 was a country boy — born 

 and reared among the 

 hills and streams of Seymour, Con- 

 necticut. He r s known to the medical 

 profession as a writer of special books 

 and monographic reports, and to na- 

 ture lovers as the author of a charming 

 portrayal of his boyhood, entitled 

 "Hopkins's Pond and other Sketches." 

 That book was reviewed, with heart 

 touching quotations from it, on page 87 

 of The Guide to Nature for June, 1910. 

 Here, as in his surgical works, he evi- 

 dently had in mind, though almost un- 

 consciously so, the members of his own 

 profession, as well as other profes- 



sional men, for he writes in the "Pre- 

 face": 



"Then again there was a feeling that 

 the pappus of the pen might float a 

 tiny bit of germ to some barren office 

 desk, where it would spring into fresh 

 memories for some lover of richer 

 fields, who was chained to the desk." 



In appearance, thought, and work, 

 he is conspicuously typical of the med- 

 ical profession. One would anywhere 

 pick him out as a composite of doctors 

 bred and trained true to the type. 



I have said that he "was" a country 

 boy in Seymour. That statement needs 

 modifying, if it conveys the impres- 

 sion that boyhood has ever been dis- 

 continued. He still goes to nature — 

 most of the time bareheaded, and not 

 infrequently, in the old swimming hole, 

 bare in other respects. He attracts 



Copyright iqio by The Agassiz Association. Arcadia: Sound Beach. Conn. 



