Central Park 
Much the same that the shore is to water-waves, the 
ear to atmospheric undulation, and the eye to ether- 
waves, is the human heart to the impressions of nature. 
The deepest, truest beauty there is not objective, self- 
existent ; its forms and even its colors are largely trans- 
muted into beauty by a reaction of the soul ; and that 
reaction or responsiveness is the giving back to scenery 
our thoughts—our anticipations and memories, joys 
and sadnesses, our very moods, which all become inter- 
woven with the scene, and show back to us, from forms 
and colors of the mountains, valleys, trees, and clouds. 
This interblending of nature and ourselves we may be 
well assured of, though it be an unfathomable mystery. 
Thus what we get out of nature is largely what we 
have put into it, and that is why nature becomes more 
and more to us as we grow older. Thechild finds very 
little there, only what appeals to eye and ear, for he has 
put little or nothing into it. Wordsworth sums up the 
matter in a word when he says, 
‘* Minds that have nothing to confer 
Find little to perceive; ”’ 
and what can we confer upon nature except our very 
selves ? 
And this mirror-like quality is the most delightful 
feature of nature, enabling almost every object in it to 
become a centre around which the imagination can play 
interminably. Even an old, dead, wayside post may be 
the garner of pleasant thoughts (else why is it put into 
pictures) ; how much more such living, stately, and 
graceful figures as trees and vines. Where is the soli- 
39 
