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does the peas you plant, and she will cherish you as 

 she does them. This farm, or haunt, or range, you 

 will come to know intimately: its flowers, birds, 

 walls, streams, trees, — its features large and small, 

 as they appear in June, and as they look in July and 

 in January. 



For the first you will need the how-to-know books, 

 — these while you are getting acquainted ; but soon 

 acquaintance grows into friendship. You -are done 

 naming things. The meanings of things now begin 

 to come home to you. Nature is taking you slowly 

 back to herself. Companionship has begun. 



Many persons of the right mind never know this 

 friendship, because they never realize the necessity 

 of being friendly. They walk through a field as they 

 walk through a crowded street; they go into the 

 country as they go abroad. And the result is that all 

 this talk of the herbalist and birdlorist, to quote the 

 philosopher again, seems "little better than cant 

 and self-deception." 



But let the philosopher cease philosophizing (he 

 was also a hermit), and leave off hermiting; let him 

 live at home with his wife and children, like the rest 

 of us; let him work in the city for his living, hoe in 



72 



