as a business, he begins to lose his spontaneity and 

 originality, and grows prosy and artificial, even 

 plagiaristic. Nature shuns the professional. 

 She makes her happiest visits as short sur- 

 prises, delightful interruptions and diversions 

 in the thick of our earnest business. 



You can take no vacation in the mountains? 

 Then snatch a few minutes before the seven- 

 o'clock whistle blows, or while you hoe, or be- 

 tween office-hours, to look and listen. The 

 glimpses of wild life caught at such times will be 

 flashes of revelation. It may be the instant pic- 

 ture of; a gray fox leaping at a buzzard from 

 behind a bush as the train drives across the wide, 

 blank prairies of southern Kansas ; or a warm 

 time with wasps while mowing in New Jersey ; 

 or the chirp of sparrows in passing King's Chapel 

 Burial-ground when a cold winter twilight is 

 settling over Boston ; or the chance meeting of 

 a wood-pussy on your way home from singing- 

 school in Maine. Whatever the picture, and 

 wherever obtained, coming in this unexpected 

 way, it is sure to be more lasting, meaningful, and 

 happy than volumes of the kind gathered after 

 long days of tramping with gun and glass. 

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