NATURE FOR ITS OWN SAKE 
Delicate 
hees in 
nuture, 
Alternate 
Uht and 
shade. 
of sunset, but he seldom sees the dove-colors 
and steel-blues that lie back of him in the east ; 
he sees a scarlet maple or an orange stain upon 
a hillside meadow in October, but he overlooks 
the silvery sheen of the wind-swept poplar, or 
the cloud-like surface of the Indian grass; he 
is not blind to Niagara and the Alps, and all 
the “‘ big things,” but he has an unhappy way 
of never regarding anything that is not ‘ big,” 
and hence loses a great deal of pleasure in life 
which comes from discovering and enjoying the 
beauty of the so-called commonplace. 
Direct light does not necessarily mean a per- 
fectly clear sky, nor broken light a completely 
clouded one. There are days of alternate sun- 
light and clond light; and indeed, a blue sky 
with drifting clouds is more frequently seen 
than any other. The heavy cumuli that lie 
along the horizon like distant mountain-ranges- 
with snowy summits are not very noticeable as 
makers of shadow, nor are the thin clouds 
stretched in strata across the upper zenith pro- 
ductive of anything but a general veiling of the 
light. It is the thick, ragged, or round cloud, 
drifting across the sky in flocks, that makes the 
sunlight come and go upon the earth. When 
each of these moving clouds is surrounded by a 
