FOREWORD 
The publication of this extremely interesting pamphlet may well 
be made very valuable as an inspiration to nature lovers in many 
places to do likewise. While not every village in America has so large 
a group of observant people with time, energy, knowledge, and civic 
spirit sufficient for the conduct of a club like this, and with outside af¬ 
filiations among people of knowledge and means able to help in the 
work, yet there must be many places where these conditions are ap¬ 
proximated. So the distribution of this publication ought to stimulate 
emulation. 
The simplicity of the style gives the tale charm. And the unpre¬ 
tentiousness of the club’s conduct makes the adventure attractive. One 
reflects, " Here is a group of people which grows but does not climb.” 
They have lived and worked for fifteen years without declaring them¬ 
selves a national movement, and hence without endeavoring to organ¬ 
ize everybody on the continent under their leafy banner. They remind 
one of Henry Ward Beecher’s story, ’’The Mother Bird too Wanted to 
Sing, but she had no Time, so she turned her Song into Work.” 
Consider, ye that live in a middle state suburb, are there three or 
four persons in your town who have sufficient real love for real Nature 
to gather together in her name? Could you draw into communion fif¬ 
teen men and twenty-five women, and just go along holding informal 
meetings and paying fifty cents per annum dues, and be happy in 
showing each other bugs, and birds, mosses and ferns, constellations 
and tree leaves, until finally it became necessary to establish head¬ 
quarters at a rent of ten dollars a year? Could you easily and grace¬ 
fully fall into co-operations with your local schools, your state colleges, 
the national government, distinguished summer boarders, and exiled 
sons of your own town, all of whom would willingly contribute to your 
work? And do the native sons and daughters of your village when they 
prosper in distant places remember the old home and endow cozy 
headquarters for your little club when they put up a new Town Hall? 
These things belong to the spirit of New England. And the country in 
which these thing happen has culture. 
Whose children, think you, are likely to grow up with the truest 
culture of this sort —the children of the Metropolitan rich, who are 
