i7« 
THE GUIDE TO NATURE 
they do not seem to realtize that they 
have something within themselves, and 
do not need to depend wholly upon out- 
side matters for amusement. And a 
person who always has to be amused 
or entertained cannot be happy, for he 
hasn’t the creative spirit. The woman 
who makes a mat for a table and the 
man who uses his hands to make a 
simple thing like a bench, will find in 
that exercise one of the greatest joys 
that God has enabled him to possess.” 
>Jc ?}t 5}C 
Ay, there’s real philosophy for us — 
the gist of much that makes life best 
worth living. In many things we de- 
pend on others. We are social beings. 
But we must also learn to think and to 
do things for ourselves. In my own 
line of life’s work — the study and ap- 
preciation of nature — I find with many 
people this element of nature desecra- 
tion or sacrilegiousness: “Tell us a lot 
of funny and interesting things of na- 
ture; entertain us.” In the modern 
rush and unrest few, oh, so few, seem 
to have the time for the Wordsworth or 
the Thoreau view of nature. It’s “Tell 
about the curious antics of the Hully- 
galub from the Bullybaloo land.” 
Stamford woods and fields seem not en- 
tertaining enough. 
Bradford Torrey tells of a boyhood 
experience with a man who greatly in- 
fluenced him for life. That man sat for 
half an hour “looking at Nat Shaw’s 
haystack and the old barn beyond.” 
Wonder what he saw ! 
I think, Mrs. Hartley, he was doing 
what you so eloquently advise — finding 
something within himself. 
The Difficulty of Comprehending an 
Ideal. 
In an interesting sermon that draws 
a lesson from George Washington and 
his life, preached by the Reverend 
Gerald A. Cunningham of St. John’s 
Episcopal Church, Stamford, the 
speaker dwelt especially upon the diffi- 
culty that Washington had in getting 
people to understand his object and 
purpose. 
Washington wanted to establish a 
new country on the fundamental prin- 
ciples of democracy. It seems simple 
enough to us now. But the eloquent 
speaker brought out with remarkable 
clearness that Washington at the time 
was misunderstood and that not one 
state at the time of his greatest need 
had sent its quota of troops to his 
assistance. “Connecticut was way be- 
hind hers.” 
Mr. Cunningham said that every one 
should read the life of Chief Justice 
John Marshall by Beveridge, who sur- 
prised all his friends and relatives and 
enemies by writing a great book. “He 
brings out that the hardest thing in this 
world is to make folks understand an 
ideal.” 
Aye there you have it, and it is en- 
couraging to us workers of The Agas- 
siz Association. It has been difficult 
to meet expenses, difficult at times even 
to have a home, difficult every month 
to issue a magazine, difficult to meet 
even half of the demands that come to 
us, but all these difficulties fade into 
insignificance in the presence of this 
hardest thing in the world, namely, “to 
make folks understand an ideal.” 
To us here at ArcAdiA our purpose 
seems the simplest proposition in all 
the world— recreation and education in 
nature. “Per Naturam ad Deum.” 
Study nature and from nature rise to 
the worship of nature’s God. But the 
trouble is that many persons stand in 
astonishment and ask, “What does all 
this mean? What do you do? I don’t 
understand it.” 
I am glad we had a Washington’s 
birthday and that the Reverend Mr. 
Cunningham preached that sermon. It 
contained encouraging, cheering words. 
Spring? 
There’s something in the air! 
In woodlands brown and bare, 
In gardens everywhere, 
On all the nearby hills, 
By all the little rills, 
Whose ripple the silence fills; 
O’er rolling meadows wide, 
The banks the road beside, 
And marshes at low tide; 
In fields that wait the ploughs, 
Among the orchard boughs, 
Where, later, bees carouse; 
In every thoroughfare, 
With all the birds that pair, — 
There’s something in the air! 
— Emma Peirce. 
The only active silver mine in New 
England is at Newbury, Massachusetts. 
