THe Mature Movement 
that reflects in the least upon its reality and genuine- 
ness, It may be only the appropriation by the com- 
mon people of the world that the scientists have dis- 
covered to us; it may be a popular reaction against 
the conventionality of the eighteenth century; or 
the result of our growing wealth and leisure; or a 
fashion set by Thoreau and Burroughs, — one or all 
of these may account for its origin; but nothing 
can explain the movement away, or hinder us from 
being borne by it out, at least a little way, under 
the open of heaven, to the great good of body and 
soul. 
Among the cultural influences of our times that 
have developed the proportions of a movement, this 
so-called nature movement is peculiarly American. 
No such general, widespread turning to the out-of- 
doors is seen anywhere else; no other such body of 
nature literature as ours; no other people so close 
to nature in sympathy and understanding, because 
there is no other people of the same degree of culture 
living so close to the real, wild out-of-doors. 
The extraordinary interest in the out-of-doors is 
not altogether a recent acquirement. We inherited it. 
Nature study is an American habit. What else had 
lig 
