64 BIEDS AND POETS 



suggests a high, elastic instep. It is the face of 

 order and proportion. Those arches are the symhols 

 of law and self-control. The point of greatest in- 

 terest is the union of the nose with the brow, — 

 that strong high embankment; it makes the bridge 

 from the ideal to the real sure and easy. All his 

 ideas passed readily into form. In the modern face 

 the arches are more or less crushed, and the nose 

 severed from the brow, — hence the abstract and the 

 analytic ; hence the preponderance of the speculative 

 intellect over creative power. 



XVI 



I have thought that the boy is the only true lover 

 of Nature, and that we, who make such a dead set 

 at studying and admiring her, come very wide of the 

 mark. "The nonchalance of a boy who is sure of 

 his dinner," says our Emerson, "is the healthy atti- 

 tude of humanity. " The boy is a part of Nature ; 

 he is as indifferent, as careless, as vagrant as she. 

 He browses, he digs, he hunts, he climbs, he hal- 

 loes, he feeds on roots and greens and mast. He 

 uses things roughly and without sentiment. The 

 coolness with which boys will drown dogs or cats, 

 or hang them to trees, or murder young birds, or 

 torture frogs or squirrels, is like Nature's own mer- 

 cilessness. 



Certain it is that we often get some of the best 

 touches of nature from children. Childhood is a 

 world by itself, and we listen to children when they 

 frankly speak out of it with a strange interest. 



