FOREST SOUNDS. 105 



You are right too in saying that the lot of our city chil- 

 dren is a hard one. To live imprisoned between long rows 

 of brick walls, breathing an atmosphere charged with the 

 exhalations of ten thousand cooking stoves, the dust of 

 forges and the smoke of furnaces, machine shops, gas works, 

 filthy streets, and the thousand other manufactories of 

 villainous smells ; where the summer air has no freshness, 

 no forest odors, or sweetness gathered from fields of grain, 

 the meadows, or the pastures. To tramp only on stone side- 

 walks. To know nothing of the pleasant paths beneath 

 the spreading branches of old primeval trees ; no soft grass 

 for their little feet to press ; never to wander along the 

 streams or the little brooks j to be strangers always to 

 the beautiful things spread out everywhere in the country 

 in the summer time. I always feel sad when I see the pale 

 faces of the little children of the great cities, and marvel 

 how so many of them grow up to be men and women. It 

 is a hard lot to be cooped up in the city, vegitating, as it 

 were, in the shade, where there is no grass for their little 

 feet to press, no fences to climb, or fields to ramble over, or 

 brooks to wade, or running water on which to float chips, 

 and wherein to watch the little chubs and shiners dancing 

 and playing about, or fresh pure air to breathe, or birds to 

 listen to. It is a thousand pities that the cities could not 

 be emptied every summer of their little people into the free 

 and open country, where they could run about, and sport 

 and play, and have free range and plenty of elbow-room. 

 It would make them so much healthier and happier, so much 



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