NATURE AND THE CITY. 



effects of too great ease upon the men of his gener- 

 ation. 



The mediaeval ideal still lingers amongst us. We 

 are afraid of Nature. 1 suppose there are still people 

 who would not care to study the trees and flowers 

 except conventionally, in a city park, and who certainly 

 would not remain long in a woods for fear of some 

 intangible sort of lurking danger. But there is noth- 

 ing to be afraid of in Nature. The ordinary snake is 

 as much afraid of you as you are of him. Yet many 

 city people seem to have really a shrinking fear of 

 Nature and the country. I have seen little boys cry 

 in terror when taken away from the road on a stroll 

 to the fields or woods. A friend of mine, quite an 

 intelligent man upon other matters, was openly much 

 disgusted when I told him one day that I was going to 

 the country with a book, and that I liked to lie among 

 the grasses and read there and think, and sometimes 

 slept beneath the trees. "Why," said he, "you 're 

 crazy; you '11 get bugs and worms in your ears." Yet 

 none ever bothered me, but were rather, what few there 

 were of them, a very interesting study in their curious, 

 beautifully colored forms and evident intelligence; and 

 those that by mishap did crawl upon me scuttled off in 

 short order when they found where they were. 



But, of course, to be in the woods much is to ap- 

 preciate wild life all the more. Then the whole world 

 of Nature seems thoroughly remote from man's do- 

 minion. And everything in Nature is wild. Even the 

 little weed that grows up between the planks of the 

 city street is wild, distinct, different from the city, so 

 separate in its life from man's life, so suggestive of the 



