THE GOSPEL OF NATURE 



We make ready our garden in a season, and plant 

 our seeds and hoe our crops by some sort of system. 

 Can any one tell how many hundreds of millions of 

 years Nature has been making ready her garden and 

 planting her seeds? 



There can be little doubt, I think, but that inter- 

 course with Nature and a knowledge of her ways 

 tends to simplicity of life. We come more and more 

 to see through the follies and vanities of the world 

 and to appreciate the real values. We load ourselves 

 up with so many false burdens, our complex civiliza- 

 tion breeds in us so many false or artificial wants, 

 that we become separated from the real sources of 

 our strength and health as by a gulf. 



For my part, as I grow older I am more and more 

 inclined to reduce my baggage, to lop off superflu- 

 ities. I become more and more in love with simple 

 things and simple folk — a small house, a hut in the 

 woods, a tent on the shore. The show and splendor 

 of great houses, elaborate furnishings, stately 

 halls, oppress me, impose upon me. They fix the 

 attention upon false values, they set up a false 

 standard of beauty; they stand between me and the 

 real feeders of character and thought. A man needs 

 a good roof over his head winter and summer, and a 

 good chimney and a big wood-pile in winter. The 

 more open his four walls are, the more fresh air he 

 will get, and the longer he will live. 



How the contemplation of Nature as a whole does 



^Q5 



