The Nature-Student 
clump of the scraggly pitch pines. Our drive had 
taken us through miles of the common white species. 
Did you ever smell the pitch pines when they are 
thawing out? It is quite as healthful, if not as sci- 
entific, to recognize them by their resinous breath as 
by their needles per bundle. 
I want this small boy some time to know the dif- 
ference between these needle bundles. But I want 
him to learn now, and to remember always, that the 
hard days are sure to soften, and that then there 
oozes from the scraggly pitch pines a balm, a piny, 
penetrating, purifying balm, —a tonic to the lungs, 
a healing to the soul. 
All foolishness? sentiment ? moonshine ?— this 
love for woods and fields, this need I have for com- 
panionship with birds and trees, this longing for 
the feel of grass and the smell of earth? When 
I told my biological friend that these longings were 
real and vital, as vital as the highest problems of the 
stars and the deepest questions of life, he pitied me, 
but made no reply. 
He sees clearly a difference between live and dead 
men, a difference between the pleasure he gets from 
the society of his friends, and the knowledge, inter- 
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