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THE GARDENERS' CHRONICLE OF AMERICA. 



HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE 



BEAUTIES OF OUT- '-rowing up where the 



DOORS SEEN AND farm acres stretched widely 

 TOLD BY around, and with the shows 



DANIEL WEBSTER, of nature ni land and sky and 

 atmosphere daily spread before him, Daniel Webster, the 

 bo}-, had the seeing eye and the receptive sense that made 

 these glories his own, as is evident from the frequent 

 vividness with which they reappear in the marvelous elo- 

 quence of the man. 



The classic letter he wrote from Washington to his 

 farmer, quoting at length a "very sensible old author," 

 who turns out to be Virgil, is familiar ; and one who w?as 

 a guest at Marshfield recalled a night when he and his 

 host walked out under the stars and \\'ebster, after being 

 silent a few moments, repeated part of the eighth Psalm 

 — "When 1 consider thy heavens" — leaving his hearer, 

 when the deep, low tones had ceased, feeling as if he had 

 been in a sacred presence. Less well known is a medita- 

 tion upon the sunrise contained in a private letter written 

 from Richmond wdiile visiting there in 1847. 



"It is morning," he writes, "a morning sweet, fresh and 

 delightful. . . . Everybody knows the morning in its 

 metaphorical sense. . . . But the morning itself, few- 

 people, inhabitants of cities, know anything about. . . . 

 With them morning is not a new issuing of light, a new 

 bursting forth of the sun . . . ; it is only a part of 

 the domestic day, belonging to breakfast, to reading the 

 newspapers, answering notes, sending the children to 

 school, and giving orders for dinner. The first faint 

 streak of light, the earliest purpling of the east, which 

 the lark springs up to greet, and the deeper and deeper 

 coloring into orange and red, till at length the 'glorious 

 sun is seen, regent of day'^ — -this they never enjoy, for 

 they never see it. . . . 



"King David speaks of taking to himself the 'wings of 

 the morning." This is highly poetical and beautiful. The 

 wings of the morning are the beams of the rising sun. 

 Rays of light are wings. It is that the sun of righteous- 

 ness shall arise, 'With healing in his wings.' ... I 

 never thought that Adam had much the advantage of us. 

 from having seen the world while it was new. The mani- 

 festations of the power of God, like his mercies, are "new 

 every morning,' and fresh every moment. 



"We see as fine a rising of the sun as even Adam saw, 

 and its risings are as much a miracle now as they were 

 in his day, and I think a good deal more ; because it is now 

 a part of the miracle that for thousands and thousands 

 of years he has come to his appointed time without the 

 variation of a millionth part of a second. Adam could 

 not tell how this might be." — Monitor. 



BLESSED 

 IS HE. 



Blessed is he who has found 

 his work ; let him ask no 

 other blessedness. He has a 

 work, a life purpose : he has 

 found it and will follow it ! Labor is life ; from the in- 

 most heart of the worker rises his God-given force, the 

 sacred celestial life-essence breathed into him by Al- 

 mighty God ; from his inmost heart it awakens him to 

 all nobleness — to all knowledge, "self-knowledge." and 

 much else, so soon as work fitlv begins. — Carh'le. 



No amount of money can 

 THE CARE OF replace the spreading oak or 

 TREES. stately elm that adorns your 



premises, but you may give 

 these veterans a long lease of life and make them well- 

 nigh imperishable by proper care and attention. Many 

 long years have been required to bring such trees to their 

 present state of perfection ; their value cannot be esti- 

 mated in dollars and cents ; then why not give them the 

 care they so urgently need and so richly deserve? 



Under modern conditions it takes interest and brains 

 to make trees live and thrive. One must put intelligent, 

 persistent care into the work of planting, cultivation and 

 protection. A single season's neglect may cause the de- 

 struction of a tree, which it has taken a century or more 

 to grow. — Tree Talk. 



A NEW IDEA IN 



NATURE THAT 



ISN'T "NATURE 



STUDY." 



Many magazines, hundreds 

 of schools and thousands 

 of teachers and parents have 

 tried to instruct children 

 in a knowledge of nature. Yet the really natural child 

 takes to nature for enjoyment like a duck to water. 



\\'hy urge the duck, why compel it to go into the 

 w ater ? When we destroy spontaneity anl liberty, we pre- 

 vent enjoyment and all consequent benefit. "We love the 

 things that love us." 



It is, however, not nature nor even natural science as 

 a matter of instruction, as the adult understands it, that 

 the child wants, but the fun of seeing things. Where is 

 the boy or girl that is not pleased by the sight of an ele- 

 phant or a grasshopper? But when the mammal or that 

 insect must be studied as so much nature or natural sci- 

 ence, then is diminished the satisfaction of the watching, 

 and when the watching is made a matter of study, of 

 literature or of science, it becomes still less pleasing un- 

 less the observer is naturally studious. Compulsion al- 

 ways removes the zest and blunts the edge. We do best 

 the things that we best like to do. This point of view 

 has been strongly emphasized in Edward F. Bigelow's 

 experience during his fourteen years' editorship of the 

 department of "Nature and Science" of St. Nicholas, 

 his correspondence with boys and girls having probably 

 been larger than that of any other editor. He has 

 severed his connection with the St. Nicholas magazine 

 and will establish in The Guide to Nature a department 

 entitled "The Fun of Seeing Things." 



Dr. Bigelow is an amateur naturalist. He revels in 

 nature because he likes nature. He believes that young 

 folks make the best companions when they are free from 

 restrictions imposed by parents or teachers. He enjoys 

 their unrestrained spontaneity. He enjoys their letters 

 when the letters have not been revised and made so cor- 

 rect that they are deprived of all originality and heart. 

 He wants young people as they are, not as some one 

 thinks they should be, as he wants nature as .she is, un- 

 changed by man's meddling. The tangled thicket is more 

 beautiful and instructive than the formally trimmed 

 hedge. The wild grass is far more beautiful than the 

 closely shaven lawn ; a laughing brook in a secluded 

 ravine is far more picturesque than a ditch with concrete 

 banks. 



