10 IN BIRD LAND. 
the world of being. How fortunate that men are 
so variously constituted! If some did not naturally 
choose the bustle and stir and excitement of the 
city, where would be our philanthropists, our How- 
ards and Peabodys and Dodges? On the other 
hand, if others did not voluntarily seek quiet and 
solitude in Nature’s unfrequented haunts, the world 
would never have been blessed with a Wordsworth, 
an Emerson, or a Lowell; and in that case, for some 
of us at least, life would have been bare and arid. 
It is true, we cannot accept Pope’s dictum, “‘ What- 
ever is, is right.” We know that many things that 
are, are wrong; but doubtless more things in this 
paradoxical old world are right than moralists some- 
times suppose. To the genuine lover of Nature, and 
especially to the lover of her unbeaten pathways, 
the ringing lines of Emerson come home with 
thrilling power: — 
“If I could put my woods in song 
And tell what ’s there enjoyed, 
All men would to my gardens throng, 
And leave the cities void.” 
Yet I doubt if any spot in Nature’s domain could 
be made so attractive as to overcome most persons’ 
natural love of human association. Mayhap even 
if this could be done, it would not be desirable. 
Should all men hie to the woods and leave the 
cities void, it would spoil both the woods and the 
cities. The charm of the woods is their quiet, 
their solitude; the enchantment of the city, its 
