GILBERT white's BOOK 167 



was. There is no evidence that he was anything 

 like the petulant recluse and man-hater that our 

 own Thoreau at times was. He had the wide, 

 generous eye, and his love of nature was not in any 

 sense a running away from the world. But he was 

 not the historian of his time, nor even of his own 

 moods and fancies, but the chronicler of the unob- 

 served life of nature about him; and as such he 

 attained a pure result. And this is one secret of 

 his keeping qualities, — a pure result, untainted 

 and unrefracted by any peculiarity of the medium 

 through which it came. Mankind, in the long run, 

 cares less what you think, unless your plummet 

 goes very deep, than what you feel, and are, and 

 experience. "White valued his facts for what they 

 were, not for any double meaning he could wring 

 out of them, or any airy structure he could build 

 upon them. He loved the bird, or the animal, or 

 a walk in the fields, directly and for its own sake, 

 and his book makes a distinct impression, like any 

 of the creatures or any of the phases and products 

 of nature of which it treats. The perennial and 

 antiseptic quality in literature or art is something as 

 simple as water or milk, or as the oxygen of the 

 air: it does not come from afar; it is more common 

 and familiar than we are apt to think. One may 

 not say dogmatically that it is this or that, but I 

 think it safe to say that it is inseparable from per- 

 fect seriousness and singleness of purpose. This 

 singleness and seriousness of purpose White had. 

 He is as honest and direct as the rain or the wind. 



