LITERARY TREATMENT OF NATURE 
toad that stumbles and fumbles along the roadside, 
our sympathies would be touched, and some spark of 
real knowledge imparted. We should not want the 
lives of those humble creatures “interpreted” after 
the manner of our sentimental “School of Nature 
Study,” for that were to lose fact in fable; that 
were to give us a stone when we had asked for 
bread; we should want only a truthful record from 
the point of view of a wise, loving, human eye, such 
a record as, say, Gilbert White or Henry Thoreau 
might have given us. How interesting White makes 
his old turtle, hurrying to shelter when it rains, 
or seeking the shade of a cabbage leaf when the 
sun is too hot, or prancing about the garden on 
tiptoe in the spring by five in the morning, when 
the mating instinct begins to stir within him! Surely 
we may See ourselves in the old tortoise. 
In fact, the problem of the essay-naturalist always 
is to make his subject interesting, and yet keep 
strictly within the bounds of truth. 
It is always an artist’s privilege to heighten or 
deepen natural effects. He may paint us a more 
beautiful woman, or a more beautiful horse, or a 
more beautiful landscape, than we ever saw; we are 
not deceived even though he outdo nature. We 
know where we stand and where he stands; we 
know that this is the power of art. If he is writing 
an animal romance like Kipling’s story of the 
“White Seal, ” or like his “ Jungle Book,” there will 
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