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weaker blue rays while the stronger red rays have made their way 

 through. Even a cloudless or "plain blue" sky is interesting to 

 such a person. The weaker blue rays always find difficulty in 

 getting through our atmosphere, and when we look up into the sky 

 we look up into these held-back rays and say " The sky is blue." 

 Both types of people enjoy the red sunset, both see the blue sky, 

 . but which gets most out of the experience? Which type would 

 be least bored waiting at a trolley transfer station or least lone- 

 some when alone? Both types might enthuse about such situa- 

 tions—even write a poem about it— but which poem would be 

 more worth reading? It takes more than facts and feelings— 

 more than observations and emotions— it takes thoughts or intel- 

 lectual associations to make life all it should be. 



Dickens, in Our Mutual Friend, says that no person who can 

 read ever looks at even the outside of a book in the same way 

 as a person who can not read. It is just as true of the book of 

 nature. 



Burroughs, in discussing color in birds (reds, yellows and 

 greens as due to pigments, and blues and whites as due to air 

 spaces in the feathers) says that a person who admires color 

 w-ithout some of the intellectual background gets little more en- 

 joyment out of such things than an idiot playing with his jan- 

 gling bits of glass. 



that both are limited to emotional enjoyment only, and tha^ to 

 one whose mind is stimulated, such color associations enrich his 

 experiences many fold. 



That is a little severe, but we must agree 



Fortunately, much of this desirable attitude 



or background 



can be gained through reading. I have seen children of the fifth 

 grades interested in coloring as described in Beebe's book, The 



l^ird, and m John Van Dyke's Nature for Nature's Sake. As 

 an illustration, I selected color as, perhaps, simplest in its 

 appeal, but every homely phase of life has its similar, unsus- 

 pected rewards. We have sometimes smiled— somewhat envi- 

 ously, I imagine— at the extreme versatility ' of Theodore 

 Roosevelt, who could talk or write on any subject ; he was equally 

 at home among the mammals of Africa, amid the unexplored 

 rivers of South America, or hunting birds without a gun in Eng- 

 land. But do you think he was ever bored with life? 



