THE NATURE-WRITER 



'welling inland, far from those of 

 us who go down to the sea in 

 manuscripts, may be found the 

 reader, no doubt, to whom the title 

 of this essay is not anathema, to 

 whom the word nature still means the real out- 

 doors, as the word culture may still mean things 

 other than " sweetness and light." It is different 

 with us. We shy at the word nature. Good, 

 honest term, it has suffered a sea-change with us; 

 it has become literary. Piety suffers the same 

 change when it becomes professional. There has 

 grown up about nature as a literary term a vo- 

 cabulary of cant, — nature-lover, nature-writer, 



nature Throw the stone for me, you who are 



clean ! Inseparably now these three travel to- 

 gether, arm in arm, like Tom, Dick, and Harry 

 — the world, the flesh, and the devil. Name one, 

 and the other two appear, which is sad enough 

 for the nature-writer, because a word is known 

 by the company it keeps. 



