THE AGASSIZ ASSOCIATION. 



107 



prose fitted to urge folk into the open air, 

 and once there to keep them glad they 

 came." We wander below the sun and the 

 cloud, and beside the windy hills, invol- 

 untarily, with the change of a single 

 word, repeating the boy's prayer : — 



God who created me 



Nimble and light of limb. 



In three elements free, 

 To run, to ride, to swim : 

 Not when the sense is dim, 



I hit now from the heart of joy, 

 1 would remember him: 



Take the thanks of a boy. 



In the garden and the orchard there 

 are music and laughter beneath the 

 branches. We meet a little company of 

 good country people, and return with 

 reluctant feet to the noisy town, re- 

 freshed by the ramble and made glad 

 by the remembrance of our experiences. 



Among poems that we are all sup- 

 posed to know and to admire, one of the 

 most pleasing and suggestive is by the 

 anthologist himself. He calls it "Jack." 



Eve/)' village has its Jack, but no vil- 

 lage ever had quite so fine a Jack as 

 ours : — 



So picturesque. 



Versatile, 



Irresponsible, 



Powerful, 



Hedonistic, 



And lovable a Jack as ours. 



How Jack lived none knew, for he 

 rarely did any work . 



True, he set night-lines for eels, and 

 invariably caught one. 



Often two, 



Sometimes three ; 



While very occasionally he had a day's 

 harvesting or hay-making. 



Jack had a big black beard, and a red 

 shirt, which was made for another, 



And no waistcoat. 



His boots were somebody else's ; 



He wore the Doctor's coat, 



And the Vicar's trousers. 



Personally, I gave him a hat, but it 

 was too small. . . . 



Then there came a tempter, with tales 

 of easily acquired wealth, and Jack went 

 away in his company. 



He has never come back. 



And now the village is like a man who 

 has lost an eye. . . . 



For my part, I have hope; and the 

 trousers I discarded last week will not 

 be given away just yet. 



The reviewer has so thoroughly en- 

 joyed the little book, that he must be al- 

 lowed the satisfaction of complaining 

 about something. The paginating 



should have been in the proper place at 

 the to]), not as it is, at the bottom, where 

 it is as irritating as a briar of the wild 

 rose in the thumb. 



A. C. S. 



ife ioN 



SUCCESS IN STUDYING BOTANY. . 



BY DOROTHY A. BALDWIN, WELLESLEY 

 NO. 203O. 



This winter I have been taking a very 

 interesting course in botany. It is dif- 

 ferent from the courses taught in most 

 schools and colleges, and it seems to me 

 to be just the kind of a course the A A 

 would approve of. We have no text- 

 book whatever, and although for the 

 greater part of the year we are assigned 



our work for certain days, we are left to 

 do the studying and the thinking out of 

 the difficult points for ourselves. Then 

 we are sometimes assigned the study of 

 some phase of plant life and are allowed 

 a certain number of weeks to make the 

 study purely from observation. For 



instance, during the winter, germination 

 was studied in this way and this spring 

 the opening of buds and cross pollination. 

 In this way we have gained much more 



