THE GOSPEL OF NATURE 
We make ready our garden in a season, and plant 
our seeds and hoe our crops by some sort of system. 
Can any one tell how many hundreds of millions of 
years Nature has been making ready her garden and 
planting her seeds? 
There can be little doubt, I think, but that inter- 
course with Nature and a knowledge of her ways 
tends to simplicity of life. We come more and more 
to see through the follies and vanities of the world 
and to appreciate the real values. We load ourselves 
up with so many false burdens, our complex civiliza- 
tion breeds in us so many false or artificial wants, 
that we become separated from the real sources of 
our strength and health as by a gulf. 
For my part, as I grow older I am more and more 
inclined to reduce my baggage, to lop off superflu- 
ities. I become more and more in love with simple 
things and simple folk — a small house, a hut in the 
woods, a tent on the shore. The show and splendor 
of great houses, elaborate furnishings, stately 
halls, oppress me, impose upon me. They fix the 
attention upon false values, they set up a false 
standard of beauty; they stand between me and the 
real feeders of character and thought. A man needs 
a good roof over his head winter and summer, and a 
good chimney and a big wood-pile in winter. The 
more open his four walls are, the more fresh air he 
will get, and the longer he will live. 
How the contemplation of Nature as a whole does 
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