THE GOSPEL OF NATURE 



with open-air objects; they are quick, delicate, and 

 discriminating. When I go to town, my ear suffers 

 as well as my nose: the impact of the city upon my 

 senses is hard and dissonant; the ear is stunned, the 

 nose is outraged, and the eye is confused. When I 

 come back, I go to Nature to be soothed and healed, 

 and to have my senses put in tune once more. I 

 know that, as a rule, country or farming folk are not 

 remarkable for the delicacy of their senses, but this 

 is owing mainly to the benumbing and brutalizing 

 effect of continued hard labor. It is their minds 

 more than their bodies that suffer. 



When I have dwelt in 'cities the country was 

 always near by, and I used to get a bite of country 

 soil at least once a week to keep my system nor- 

 mal. 



Emerson says that "the day does not seem wholly 

 profane in which we have given heed to some natural 

 object." If Emerson had stopped to qualify his re- 

 mark, he would have added, if we give heed to it in 

 the right spirit, if we give heed to it as a nature-lover 

 and truth-seeker. Nature love as Emerson knew it, 

 and as Wordsworth knew it, and as any of the 

 choicer spirits of our time have known it, has dis- 

 tinctly a religious value. It does not come to a man 

 or a woman who is wholly absorbed in selfish or 

 worldly or material ends. Except ye become in a 

 measure as little children, ye cannot enter the king- 

 dom of Nature — as Audubon entered it, as Tho- 



245 



