THE GOSPEL OF NATURE 
with open-air objects; they are quick, delicate, and 
discriminating. When I go to town, my ear suffers 
as well as my nose: the impact of the city upon my 
senses is hard and dissonant; the ear is stunned, the 
nose is outraged, and the eye is confused. When I 
come back, I go to Nature to be soothed and healed, 
and to have my senses put in tune once more. I 
know that, as a rule, country or farming folk are not 
remarkable for the delicacy of their senses, but this 
is owing mainly to the benumbing and brutalizing 
effect of continued hard labor. It is their minds 
more than their bodies that suffer. 
When I have dwelt in “cities the country was 
always near by, and [ used to get a bite of country 
soil at least once a week to keep my system nor- 
mal. 
Emerson says that “the day does not seem wholly 
profanein which we have given heed to some natural 
object.” If Emerson had stopped to qualify his re- 
mark, he would have added, if we give heed to it in 
the right spirit, if we give heed to it as a nature-lover 
and truth-seeker. Nature love as Emerson knew it, 
and as Wordsworth knew it, and as any of the 
choicer spirits of our time have known it, has dis- 
tinctly a religious value. It does not come to a man 
or a woman who is wholly absorbed in selfish or 
worldly or material ends. Except ye become in a 
measure as little children, ye cannot enter the king- 
dom of Nature—as Audubon entered it, as Tho- 
Q45 
