234 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE 



heartily when a washerwoman is por- 

 trayed on the stage as becoming sud- 

 denly rich and entering "sassiety," or 

 when the hodcarrier inherits a hundred 

 thousand from some distant relative, 

 and immediately hires a $150 chauffeur 

 to run his Packard. We feel that some- 

 thing has gone astray. That is a joke. 



Some one has told us that a tobacco 

 dealer and typical old-time tobacco 

 ■chewer has inherited a million, and is 

 ■ambitious to enter "high society." He 

 proposes to have an estate, and to paint 

 a coat of arms on his automobile. He 

 confers with an expert on family crests 

 and seals, and says, "I want a picture 

 put on my automobile door that will be 

 emblamatic of an aristocratic family." 

 It so happened that the expert was not 

 only well versed in the ancient lore of 

 •aristocratic families, but he had an un- 

 dercurrent of humor, and recognized 

 the fact that this tobacco merchant, 

 suddenly transferred to an automobile, 

 would be ridiculous with a false coat 

 of arms, and decided to give him some- 

 thing expressive and classic too. There- 

 fore he suggested. Quid rides, which 

 might mean, "Why do you laugh," or 

 the Quid rides. 



Beauty like happiness, is only an- 

 other form of fitness. The greater the 

 adaptation, the greater the beauty or 

 the happiness. There is, it is true, a 

 fitness in the little child's dancing along 

 by the roadside. We speak of it as 

 the beauty of youth, but there is no less 

 beauty in even the infirmity of age. 

 The artist's eye perceives that as well 

 as the beauty of youth. One likes to 

 study an old man or an old woman as 

 an ideally beautiful form, provided the 

 setting is correct. But is there any- 

 thing more ridiculous than a gray- 

 haired man or woman who assumes 

 the gewgaws of youth, and tries to 

 defer the approach of age by aping the 

 manners of the young ones, insisting 

 that he or she is as young now as ever. 

 If, at my age, I should try to dance, I 

 think I would do it alone in an empty 

 room, and not make myself ridiculous, 

 as some very elderly people do, by try- 

 ing to be as lively and gay as they were 

 sixty years ago. The precocious boy 

 ■or girl is ridiculous, but the youthful 

 octogenarian is more so. 



As we pass along the road of life, let 

 us emulate the chameleon which alters 

 It is color to harmonize with his chang- 



ing surroundmgs. It is only thus that 

 we can avoid the absurdity of incon- 

 gruity. 



Pardon thrse soliloquies, my kind 

 reader ! A naturalist must necessarily 

 Ije a student of beauty. He revels in 

 it, and sees it everywhere in nature, be- 

 cause nature is never incongruous. It 

 is only silly human beings that try to 

 struggle with the passing years. St. 

 Paul was wise when he said that when 

 he was a child he thought as a child, 

 but when he became a man he put away 

 childish things. 



I wish that a greater number of hu- 

 man beings could see beauty in the 

 eternal fitness of things It is only 

 from this point of view that real de- 

 mocracy will be attained, and all class 

 distinction fade away. The man with 

 the hoe is a subject for the best painter 

 or poet of the land. The hodcarrier 

 climbing a ladder with his load of 

 l)ricks is as i)eautiful and noble, provid- 

 ed he is fitted to his surroundings, as 

 is the banker at his desk or the preacher 

 in the pulpit. The little children in 

 their folk dances upon the lawn, or 

 when circling aroimd their Alaypole, 

 are charmingly beautiful, but fully as 

 pleasing or perhaps even more pleasing 

 are those two old Italian women, plain- 

 ly dressed, trudging along the country 

 road and carrying a bundle of sticks 

 on their heads. Appreciation of beauty 

 will attract the artist's brush or the 

 photographer's camera and as agree- 

 ably to the one as to the other. 



In searching for beauty I have for 

 a long time admired an aged basket 

 maker that lives in the northern part 

 of Stamford. He has been pictured in 

 our pages, hut the more I consider his 

 patriarchal, picturesque beauty, the 

 more ha\e I desired to let the reader 

 see him again. The artistic eye of the 

 sculptor, the famous Gutzon Borglum, 

 selected him as the original of The 

 Pioneer in one of his equestrian master- 

 pieces of that name. This has made 

 Mr. Rezzo Waters famous, and he has 

 been sought by merchants everywhere 

 to demonstrate in their show windows 

 the art of basket making. It is not the 

 making of baskets, nor the man that is 

 doing it, that attracts attention, but 

 the unusual portrayal of beauty. 



Human beings are lovers of beauty. 

 Wordsworth, speaking of a charming 

 young girl, said : "Her beauty made 



