A JOURNEY TO NATURE 



field is not half as nasty as the average vaude 

 ville.&quot; 



&quot;I was thinking,&quot; I said, &quot;that a woman like 

 Griselle might really express in her perfection 

 what inanimate Nature is continually trying to say, 

 and cannot.&quot; 



&quot; There are two Griselles, my boy. One is in 

 Gabe s farmhouse, and the other is in your im 

 agination. There goes an early flock of wild 

 ducks. Listen you can hear the beat of the 

 wings. I suppose, now, John Burroughs could 

 tell us if they are canvasbacks or mallards by the 

 formation of the flying wedge; but I can t.&quot; 



&quot;You see,&quot; I continued, &quot;a man don t know 

 much about a woman until he gets to be forty.&quot; 



The Doctor broke in on my speech with : 



&quot;Wait till you are sixty, my boy. A man 

 really doesn t know much about them at forty. 

 You will allow that the judgment is more secure, 

 less liable to be disturbed by mere amorousness, 

 and better able to estimate the intrinsic qualities 

 and the sterling worth of character when he is 

 sixty. One is not so apt to be moved by a 

 pretty face. He sees the essentials more clearly. 

 Keep your eye on that distant line of hills a 

 moment. Notice how they deepen in colour, if 

 you watch them, when one of those white clouds 

 obscures the light. But they never change their 

 forms. The atmosphere in September is very 

 moody and expresses itself in clouds, much more 

 fantastically than in April. I suppose it is be 

 cause the landscape has more colour in it. Sep- 



178 



