84 WINTER 



meadow. Only strength and craft may win ; only / 

 those who have all of their teeth. The muskrat \ 

 with a single missing tooth never enters the real race ;', 

 of life at all. He slinks from some abandoned bur- "' 

 row, and, if the owl and mink are not watching, he 

 dies alone in the grass, and we rarely know. 



I shall never forget the impression made upon me 

 by those quiet bones. It was like that made by my 

 first visit to a great city hospital out of the busy, 

 cheerful street into a surgical ward, where the ! 

 sick and injured lay in long white lines. We tramp 

 the woods and meadows and never step from the 

 sweet air and the pure sunlight of health into a hos- I 

 pital. But that is not because no sick, ill-formed, or / 

 injured are there. The proportion is smaller than i 

 among us humans, and for very good reasons, yet[/ 



I there is much real suffering, and to come upon it, ( 

 as we will, now and then, must certainly quicken 



I our understanding and deepen our sympathy with j 



' the life out of doors. 



No sensible person could for a moment believe 5 

 the animals capable of suffering as a human being ^ * 

 can suffer; nor that there is any such call for our I 



| sympathy from them as from our human neighbors. 



\ But an unselfish sharing of the life of the fields! 



i demands that we take part in all of it. 



Nature wears a brave face. Her smile is ever in ) 



I the open, her laughter quick and contagious. This 



1 brave front is no mask. It is real. Sunlight, song, 



7 



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