8o 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE 



Much Depends on One's Position in Life. 



YOU MAY TAKE YOUR CHOICE WHEN SITTING FOR A PORTRAIT. 



Who are the Nature Lovers? 



BY THE HON. HORACE W. TOWNES OF IOWA 



IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 



WASHINGTON. 



It is not the athlete or the dilettante 

 who really loves nature. Neither is 

 beauty hunger confined to the rich and 

 cultivated. It is shown in the modest 

 window garden or the broken cups 

 of the poor where a few geranium slips 

 are grown and watched with loving 

 care. It is not because of the demand 

 of the rich that every city in the land 

 is building spacious city parks and bo- 

 tanical gardens. It is because of the 

 demand for fresh air, for the welcome 

 shade, for the green grass and the open 

 spaces, and an uninterrupted view of 

 the sky and the stars, that comes from 



the poor. The nerve-wrecked worker 

 in the clanging factories, the tired and 

 weary seamstress from the tenement 

 shops, the sick and suffering children 

 whose eyes brighten at sight of a 

 flower — these are the real "nature 

 lovers." 



Indeed, not to love the beauty of 

 the sky and sea, of forest and flower, 

 is to be defective or deformed. The 

 highest types of humanity are those 

 who stand nearest nature and love her 

 most, who open their eyes to her 

 beauty and their hearts to her en- 

 nobling influence. It was Emerson 

 who said. "Not in nature, but in man 

 is all the beauty and worth he sees" — 

 that is, the beauty and worth in nature 

 can not be known bv those souls which 



