The Missing Tooth 
face. Her smile is ever in the open, her laughter 
quick and contagious. This brave front is no mask. 
It is real. Sunlight, song, color, form, and fragrance 
are real. And so our love and joy in Nature is real. 
Real, also, should be our love and sorrow with Na- 
ture. For do I share fully in as much of her life as 
even the crow lives as long as I think of the creature 
only with admiration for his cunning or with wrath 
for his destruction of my melons and corn? 
A crow has his solemn moments. He frequently 
knows fear, pain, hunger, accident, and disease; he 
knows something very like affection and love. For 
all that, he isa mere crow. But a mere crow is no 
mean thing. Few of us, indeed, are ourselves, and 
as much besides as a mere crow. A real love, how- 
ever, will give us part in all of his existence. We will 
forage and fight with him; we will parley and play; 
and when the keen north winds find him in the 
frozen pines, we will suffer, too. 
With Nature as mere waters, fields, and skies, it is, 
perhaps, impossible for us to sorrow. She is too self- 
sufficient, too impersonal. She asks, or compels, 
everything except tears. But when she becomes 
birds and beasts, —a little world of individuals 
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