NATURE AND THE CITY. 32 1 



"And this our life, exempt from public haunt, 

 Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 

 Sermons in stones, and good in everything." 



One can not say the same for the city. The beautiful 

 influences of Nature are to be received quite "far from 

 the madding crowd's ignoble strife." 



What a fine thing it is to have violets around you 

 at your work ! Was it William Morris who said that 

 it was a sad contrast between the fields where the beasts 

 live and the cities where men live? Cowper, indeed, 

 spoke the truth, in his well-known line: 



"God made the country, and man made the town.'' 



I can sympathize with Christ when He wept over 

 Jerusalem; but I can not follow Him into the city. 

 It is not for every one to follow Him into the city. 

 Some there are whose greatest joy and service is to live 

 among the slums, and there to show forth the life of 

 Nazareth. I will rather live apart, outside the limits, 

 that so by telling of the sky and the green grass and 

 the trees I may perhaps bring the vision home to those 

 who see it not. 



There are, of course, advantages which one finds 

 in a city and not in the country; but it is not because 

 it is the city that one finds them in. There is no reason 

 why there should not be in the country all the advan- 

 tages that cities have, and more. Most country people 

 look upon cities as a veritable Mecca of all that is de- 

 sirable, an El Dorado of gigantic proportions, in which 

 one is caught into the whirl of all the social and intel- 

 lectual life of the world. Yet good schools abound 

 outside the cities nowadays, and it is possible to have 



