off into the deep woods alone. They were after new 

 facts, new species. Emerson and Bryant and Thoreau 

 went into the woods, too, but not for facts, nor did they 

 go far, and they invited us to go along. We went, 

 because they got no farther than the back-pasture 

 fence. It was not to the woods they took us, but to 

 nature ; not a-hunting after new species in the name 

 of science, but for new inspirations, new estimates 

 of life, new health for mind and spirit. 



But we were slow to get as far even as their back- 

 pasture fence, slow to find nature in the fields and 

 woods. It was fifty years ago that Emerson tried to 

 take us to nature ; but fifty years ago, how few there 

 were who could make sense out of his invitation, to 

 say nothing of accepting it ! And of Thoreau's first 

 nature book, "A Week on the Concord and Merri- 

 mack Rivers," there were sold, in four years after 

 publication, two hundred and twenty copies. But two 

 hundred and twenty of such books at work in the 

 mind of the country could leaven, in time, a big lump 

 of it. And they did. The out-of-doors, our attitude 

 toward it, and our literature about it have never 

 been the same since. 



Even yet, however, it is the few only who respond 



121 



