140 
THE GUIDE TO NATURE 
of the girl’s self-expression and the 
grace of naturalness, pedagogical 
points of view that have been already 
explained in this magazine. 
He will also have personal care of 
girls who may wish to enter this camp, 
enrolling them and giving them per- 
sonal attention during two weeks in 
August. By appointment he will call 
upon parents in New York City and 
vicinity who wish to send their daugh- 
ters to a near-by seashore camp where 
they will be at all times quickly and 
readily accessible by train or automo- 
bile as well as by easy and inexpensive 
conversation by telephone. Correspon- 
dence invited. Address : Edward F. 
Bigelow, ArcAdiA: Sound Beach, 
Connecticut. 
^ jJc :$c 
Camp Mystic, Mystic, Connecticut. 
New York City. 
Dear Daddy Bigelow: 
I wish to tell you that the ten days 
that you spent at Camp Mystic last 
summer were days of great enjoyment 
for me and for every one associated 
with you in the Camp. Your charm- 
ing manner interested my girls in a 
thousand out-of-door things, and your 
own unselfishness and devotion to the 
welfare of every one in the Camp en- 
deared you to us all. 
It was a great delight to me, know- 
ing you as I have since I was a young 
girl, to have you enter so heartily into 
my enterprise for the welfare and de- 
velopment of young growing girls. In- 
asmuch as you are recognized as an 
expert on the subject of girl psychol- 
ogy, and because of your long associa- 
tion with girls in various schools, I am 
sure that no one could have rendered 
greater service to me and to my happy 
family than you did. Your presenta- 
tion of the great truths of nature and 
your eager desire to help make a sum- 
mer at Camp Mystic an event which 
my girls will long remember produced 
such excellent results that I am more 
than delighted to know that we may 
look forward to your coming again in 
the season of 1921. 
Faithfully yours, 
Mary L. Jobe. 
Camping More Than Country Life. 
In correspondence and conversation 
with parents of boys and girls eligible 
for camp, the editor of this magazine 
is impressed with the erroneous opinion 
that camping as exemplified in a mod- 
ern, well developed camp is nothing 
more than an amplified country home 
or an ordinary sojourn at a country 
hotel. The remark is frequently made 
in substance somewhat like this, “I 
plan to take my children for this sum- 
mer to a home in the country where 
they can get plenty of outdoor life and 
can run all they want to run in the great 
out-of-doors.” 
Such a remark is about equivalent to 
saying, “I am going to New York but 
shall not take my children to a well- 
equipped hotel where there are good 
rooms and good beds and good table 
fare, but I propose to let them run 
every day through the Washington and 
the Fulton markets and visit the large 
manufacturers of furniture and care- 
fully inspect the big factories of the 
Ostermoor Mattress Company.” 
A camp, in the highest and best sense, 
is an institution that puts all the great 
out-of-doors into assimilatory form, 
physical, mental, moral, literary and 
educational. It is almost cruelty to chil- 
dren to take them into this great realm 
where exist a harvest of good physique, 
good mentality and good personal de- 
velopment and not put all of that great 
mass of material into a form that shall 
be available for the child. The trouble 
with these wrong opinions has come 
about through a clinging to the past 
conditions attendant on camping. 
There was a time when a family would 
pack up and go to the seashore for a 
day or two, live in a tent or an old 
barn, stuff themselves with sea food 
and spend about half the time swishing 
around in the water. Nowadays the 
food, the swimming and the entire ath- 
letic and educational regime of a camp 
have been worked out in highly artistic 
manner. It is not even comparable to 
the man’s anticipation of a hunting or 
a fishing trip, and is far from merely 
living on a farm. It is more compar- 
able in the educational aspect to a high 
class boarding school, the one differ- 
ence being that it accomplishes some 
necessary things that the boarding 
school does not accomplish and makes 
the two months in camp of tremendous 
importance and value. 
