32 



NATURE FOR ITS OWN SAKE 



of sunset, but he seldom sees the dove-colors 

 and steel-blues that lie back of him in the east ; 

 he sees a scarlet maple or an orange stain upon 

 a hillside meadow in October, but he overlooks 

 the silvery sheen of the wind-swept poplar, or 

 the cloud-like surface of the Indian grass ; he 

 is not blind to Niagara and the Alps, and all 

 the " big things," but he has an unhappy way 

 of never regarding anything that is not " big," 

 and hence loses a great deal of pleasure in life 

 which comes from discovering and enjoying the 

 beauty of the so-called commonplace. 



Direct light does not necessarily mean a per- 

 fectly clear sky, nor broken light a completely 

 clouded one. There are days of alternate sun- 

 light and cloud light ; and indeed, a blue sky 

 with drifting clouds is more frequently seen 

 than any other. The heavy cumuli that lie 

 along the horizon like distant mountain -ranges 

 with snowy summits are not very noticeable as 

 makers of shadow, nor are the thin clouds 

 stretched in strata across the upper zenith pro- 

 ductive of anything but a general veiling of the 

 light. It is the thick, ragged, or round cloud, 

 drifting across the sky in flocks, that makes the 

 sunlight come and go upon the earth. When 

 each of these moving clouds is surrounded by a 



