64 
THE GUIDE TO NATURE 
association with girls that any other 
man has ever had. A man is needed to 
understand a girl, because a man can 
get a better perspective view from the 
vantage point of sex. 
For about the same reason a natural- 
ist will get a better view of the valley 
after he has climbed to the mountain 
top, and a better view of the mountains 
and valleys of the moon than of those 
on the earth, and for the same reason 
that he understands his own youth bet- 
ter in advancing years than he under- 
stood it while he was young. If the 
distance is not so far as to dim the 
vision, the perspective adds to the suc- 
cessful seeing. But too frequently 
adults get so far away from their youth 
that the result is not a better perspec- 
tive but a poorer focus. 
To overcome these self-evident needs 
of the girl all sorts of new-fangled 
pedagogical inventions and contriv- 
ances have been suggested. But the 
girl does not need the application of 
this theory or that, she needs to be free 
and untrammeled, to find herself, to 
express herself through natural meth- 
ods ; she needs to be allowed to grow 
in all that is good and beautiful. Mother 
Nature is preeminently feminine. She 
seeks and cares for her own when she 
and her own are not forcibly separated. 
The girl should be permitted to ex- 
press herself through nature. Per Na- 
turam ad Meum — a parallel of the di- 
vinity of her own right. 
For a decade of years, and more 
strongly in the last three or four, this 
great truth has been impressed on me 
more and more strongly almost in spite 
of myself. Within the last two or three 
years I have gradually come to let an 
understanding and helpful friendliness 
spring up between nature and the girl. 
I have found, both in theory and prac- 
tice, that this method does not apply 
to the boy, for the simple reason that 
East is not in the same direction as the 
West, nor the positive the same as the 
negative. I would not for a moment 
lessen in even the slightest degree the 
value of nature for the boy. One of 
the grandest slogans for modern civil- 
ization is “Back to nature.” But every 
person must seek the joy that he espe- 
cially needs. For the boy there are 
manv values, chiefly physical. For the 
boy 1 sincerely hope that some one, 
and perhaps that some one will be a 
woman, will find an equally efficacious 
but entirely different plan. After a 
long experience I frankly admit that I 
have not been able to find it, but I have 
faith to believe that somewhere, some- 
how, the boy will yet come into his 
highest and best relations to nature. 
\\ hile this confession is somewhat hu- 
miliating, a little consolation is that 
others with an equally extended ex- 
perience in nature have admitted prac- 
tically the same thing. When such 
masters as Henry David Thoreau and 
John Burroughs have shown and to a 
certain extent confessed that the point 
of view of their self-expression through 
nature is essentially feminine, then I 
take heart in acknowledging myself as 
a girl specialist. There are boys who 
are just as lovable as there are girls, 
and are just as good material for per- 
sonal development in self-expression. 
God speed the efforts of the man or 
woman who will find for the boy what 
I have found for the girl. 
I also recognize that there is a limit 
to one’s own personal endeavors. In 
youth all the world in air-castle build- 
ing is to be conquered and such victory 
seems possible. But in later life one 
is forced to recognize the fact that there 
is a limit to one’s endeavors and that 
it is better to do one or a few things 
well than many things badly. 
Again it is true in all thought and 
work that one believes in what one best 
knows. A specialist knows one thing 
well and has sympathy in other pur- 
suits. My own experience with nature 
and with girls has forced me to be a 
specialist with both. I joyously accept 
the position in which heart and circum- 
stances have placed me. 
Never fear for a girl, whatever work 
she undertakes, if you know her to have 
been bred in all high-mindedness, for 
she carries with her in every fibre a 
charm against disaster. On the other 
hand, if she has been bred to follow 
after pleasure and to desire admiration, 
she must be watched at every turn to 
prevent her making a fool of herself. 
— From “Girls” in “The Atlantic 
Monthly.” 
