XII 
THE GUIDE TO NATURE 
ought to come up and see the funniest 
place she ever saw. She didn't know 
what it was all about, but very inter- 
esting. At any rate you have a beauti- 
ful grove and lots of bees and things. 
So will you please show me around? 
Tell me what it is all about, what you 
are doing. So sorry I didn’t know about 
it before. I am just going back to the 
city. Wish we had got acquainted 
months ago. I know you live an ideal 
life. I would like to know how you get 
so much enjoyment out of your work. 
There isn’t anything I love better in 
all the world than nature. I just adore 
it. I have been interested in it all my 
life” . . . 
I ventured meekly to inquire how it 
was that with her intense interest in 
nature she had never heard of our little 
natural history institution. She ex- 
plained that although she had been 
through ArcAdiA Road many a time 
(on her way to the golf links, I in- 
ferred) she had never noticed the build- 
ings nor the trees until that woman told 
her about them. 
I will not take the space nor the time 
to continue an account of this enter- 
taining monologue, nor cite instances 
of other people who have just heard of 
ArcAdiA and want to know what we 
are doing. 
What is ArcAdiA for? The trouble 
is in the “for.” The mind that thinks 
only in terms of utility will not find in 
the dictionary a definition of that word 
“for.” Such a mind will give it up as 
hopeless. But by those who believe 
that life, this life, the life that we are 
living here and now. is worth living in 
all its heavenly possibilities, in all the 
heights of spiritual aspirations as an 
end in themselves regardless of any re- 
ward that may come in the future, then 
by such persons ArcAdiA is rightly 
understood. 
It is for those who believe that life is 
more than corn crops and “punkins” 
and raspberry vines, that the develop- 
ment of a human being, who shall go 
through life looking at God’s work by 
the wayside, is worth more than to rush 
onward intent only on social or any 
other little circle of ideas. We believe 
in broad, sympathetic interests. The 
study of nature does not forbid the pur- 
suit of corn crops nor the training of 
“punkin” vines, nor the sight of the 
stars ; does not look exclusively at the 
money that comes from garden prod- 
ucts, but knows that the best crop of 
the garden does not come out of the 
garden. The fun of doing it is worth 
more than eating the products. 
What is ArcAdiA for? For? To 
prevent us from rushing over the road 
of life, not merely for a few months but 
for threescore years and ten or more ; 
to help us to see some of the things by 
the wayside. For? To help us to live, 
to help us to die, to help us to help the 
other fellow when we find him stum- 
bling along the road. For? I wonder 
what. 
The greater part of life must be 
workaday, must be utilitarian, but as 
we journey along the road let us take 
time to live. It is a delight to be social 
but at the best or the worst life must 
be lived alone. It is well to be called 
the brightest, the best looking or the 
best dressed member of a social group, 
but it is better to have resources in 
one’s self, to see and to think and to 
live with the best company in all the 
world, one’s own cultured, intelligent 
self. What is ArcAdiA for? ArcAdiA 
is to teach and to help us to realize that 
life is worth living, and worthless un- 
less we know how to live. It tries to 
take people out of a circumscribed shell 
or a little rut in their own round of 
eternal utility, to broaden them, to 
make them more charitable, to incite in 
them a kindly feeling for the other fel- 
low. to look above and to gain inspira- 
tion from looking up ; to be pure, to 
render a helping hand. ArcAdiA is to 
solve the problems of the present time 
which are all out of human selfishness. 
The great war, Bolshevism, the strug- 
gle of capital with labor, the increasing 
power of money and the greater diffi- 
culties of making a living are all 
the outcome of tangled selfishnesses 
coupled with an idea that money is the 
whole thing, or that to raise more corn 
is the sole object of life. 
We are carrying on work at this in- 
stitution not with the intention to show 
the entertaining things of nature, but 
the nature that transmutes itself into 
a broader and better human life. We 
believe that the lovely, the pure, the 
beautiful are worth while in them- 
selves. These are what the visitor will 
find at ArcAdiA. 
What is ArcAdiA for? 
For you. 
