PUBLIC PARKS OF IOWA 249 



great commercialized civilization in Iowa but many of the fairest and 

 rarest of Iowa's treasures have been trodden under foot. 



Civilization in Iowa is on a commercial basis. The aesthetic, the ideal, 

 the beautiful, the elemental has had to give way before commercialism. 

 As a people our character has suffered as a result. We miss from life 

 things that should not be missed. The modern tendency is to disregard 

 everything primitive, everything elemental, as being relics of barbarism. 

 Nevertheless the poet who penned the following lines probably had a 

 deeper insight into life than has any captain of industry: 



They saw the silence 

 Move by and beckon ; saw the forms, 

 The very beards, of burly storms. 

 And heard them talk like sounding seas. 

 They saw the snowy mountains rolled 

 And heaved a!6ng the nameless lands 

 Like mighty billows ; saw the gold 

 Of awful sunsets ; saw the blush 

 Of sudden d.awn, and felt the hush 

 Of heaven when the day sat down 

 And hid his face in dusky hands. 



And Walt Whitman probably was more deeply happy when he wrote 

 the following lines than was ever any man to whom nature means 

 nothing: 



In vain the speeding of shyness, 



In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods . . . 

 Where geese nip their food with short jerks, 

 Where sundown shadows lengthen over the limitless prairie, 



Where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square miles, far and near, 

 Where winter' wolves bark amid wastes of snow and ice-clad trees .... 

 The moose, large as an ox. cornered by hunters, plunging with his forefeet, the 



hoofs as sharp as knives, .... 

 The blazing fire at night, the sweet taste of supper, the talk, the bed of hemlock 



boughs, and the bear skin. 



Indeed so far have commercial ideals governed us that we cannot 

 now produce any literature that will compare with what was written a 

 few generations ago. And this is not an idle statement. It is made de- 

 liberately and for this reason that in the literature of a few genera- 

 tions ago there was a deeper realization of the presence of a creator of 

 the universe in all things and this realization was more especially felt 

 through a love of nature and things elemental and things primitive. For 

 instance Cooper's Leatherstocking in speaking of his religion and of his 

 scorn for books says: 



" 'Tis open before you>r eyes, and he who owns it is not niggard of its 

 use. I have heard it said that there, are men who read in books to 

 convince themselves there is a God. I know not but man may so deform 

 his works in the settlement, as to leave that which is so clear in the 

 wilderness a matter of doubt among traders and priests. If any such 

 there be, and he will follow me from sun to sun, through the windings 

 of the forest, he shall see enough to teach him that he is a, fool, and that 

 the greatest of his folly lies in striving to rise to the level of One he can 

 never equal, be it in goodness, or be it in power." 



Even our religion has come to be largely a matter of form and in it as 



