THE AGASSIZ ASSOCIATION 



261 



I would go to Sound Beach and spend 

 a long visit in ArcAdiA learning and 

 helping as I might. I should then get 

 well fast. As it is I have to stay shut 

 up in a small shoe store and manage 

 the business for a living for myself and 

 mother. Some of my spare time is 

 spent in reading The Guide to Nature 

 (which is improving all the time) and 

 in studying Gray's Botany. 



I think you are doing a much needed 

 work. Wish I could help you financial- 

 ly. May God bless you all, for even 

 though we are strangers we are one in 

 our interest in nature and in nature's 

 God. 



Sincerely yours, 

 Miss Lora L. Walker. 



There you have it, my friend. There 

 is a good sample of the gold mine. 

 Come and work here with the same 

 zeal ; come by your gifts, come by your 

 good words, come by your contributed 

 articles, and gather to yourself great 

 heaps of riches from the hearts of de- 

 voted nature students all over this 

 world. This is a sample. Yes, the Big- 

 elows are working as if there must be 

 "something in it for them." There is 

 so much in it that this life will not be 

 long enough and these energies not 

 sufficient to exhaust this gold mine. 



Another Devoted Student. 



Woolwine, Virginia. 

 To the Editor: 



I am almost a helpless cripple ; can't 

 walk at all, and haven't for forty years. 

 I am paralyzed from waist down by 

 infantile paralysis in 1876, when five 

 years of age. My feet and legs are 

 little and limber ; I cross my feet and 

 legs and crawl about by the use of arms 

 and hands. I am a great lover of na- 

 ture and from boyhood have greatly 

 loved the little honeybees. I have 

 crawled ofi^ into the mountains near 

 here many times in search of wild 

 bees. I am a stargazer too. Wish I 

 had a glass to view them with. I could 

 pass the time so much better at night 

 looking at those wonderful things 

 above. My thoughts on those things 

 are too deep to express. I see a lone- 

 some time here away off in the moun- 

 tains. Seldom get out to church. Am 

 most of the time by myself in a little 

 log cabin on my father's old run down 



mountain farm that was built thirty- 

 two years ago for a shoe shop. As I 

 could not walk, my father said I might 

 learn to be a shoemaker, but I had a 

 poor chance at this trade away off here 

 in an out-of-the-way place, and no one 

 to teach me. I never went to school 

 Init three days in my life, and that was 

 before I got so I could not walk. I 

 have studied hard at home and have 

 learned to read and write. I now have 

 worked hard and bought me some bees 

 and have a little apairy around this 

 little fourteen by twelve log cabin, but 

 I have a hard way to live selling a lit- 

 tle honey, and leather has got to be 

 so high I cannot buy it and work it and 

 sell my handmade shoes so I can live 

 at it. I wish I could be where I could 

 have a better way to live and have a lit- 

 tle enjoyment while I live. 

 Yours truly, 



Jesse G. Cockram. 

 This earnest student who carries on 

 his studies under evident difficulties 

 has been enrolled free as a member of 

 The Agassiz Association. A micro- 

 scope and some nature literature have 

 been sent him. 



I am deeply interested in the good 

 work of our Association, and ap- 

 preciate the sacrifice and effort of our 

 president and others who have made 

 this work possible. The Guide to Na- 

 ture brings added sunshine into the 

 lives of many a nature lover over the 

 length and breadth of our land, and 

 helps to prove that we Americans are 

 not so mercenary and unappreciative 

 of art and culture, as some of our critics 

 would make vis out. — -William J. Black- 

 burn, Jr., Cohmibus, Ohio, Correspond- 

 ing Member 2252. 



The Witching Out-of-Doors. 



Come, all, and get acquainted 

 With the witching out-of-doors, 



'Tis appealing to your senses, 

 And besieging all your pores. 



The freshness of the morning, 



The glory of the night, 

 The radiance of the hours between, 



Filled with sunshine bright. 



They're better than a tonic. 



They beat the M. D. quite, 

 They'll give you happiness and health, 



The mantle of their might. 



— Emma Peirce. 



