Part 5

We need a love of nature to-day, as we have never needed it before. In the terrific complexity and speed of our external existence we crave the quiet, internal stimulus to meditation and dreams that comes from the Great Mother's intricate, manifold, yet untempestuous method of doing things. From the close hatches of the city where the noise, the smells, and the turmoil seem all man-made, we must get away to the fields and blossoming pastures to find our souls alone with ourselves and the Great God Pan. To those who answer the call of the wild, or even the call of the suburban garden, there come new strength and new conceptions of beauty, to apply to the work of the world to which we have lent our hand. The call is being answered,--man goes back to his own. We see it on every side: no one in any walk of life seems so humble or satisfied not to desire some day to own a farm; most summer resorts where there were formerly many a "flanneled fool" have now become "Adamless Edens," for our young men have answered the call of the Red Gods, and have packed their kits for the trail that leads to the tall timbers of solitude, of balsam, of camp fires and dreams.

Any book or poem that gives you a keener appreciation of the crimson of the sumach, the whispers of the wild things, the glory of the sunrise or of the all-embracing broadmindness of Nature, will have done its part towards bringing literature into perfect accord with life. If my friend speaks truly in saying that Wordsworth has influenced two nations' outlook upon the world, those poems, laughed at by some for their quiet simplicity, have indeed arisen to the highest realm of literature and have become soul of our soul, mind of our mind, flesh of our flesh.

There are others--Wordsworth is not alone in his glory.

Henry David Thoreau, the perfect child of a cross country ramble, is my favorite. To write immortal words, it is said that a man must have an immortal passion, whether it be for beauty, or his God, his neighbor, his country, his lady, or himself. Thoreau sunk the love of all else in his passionate devotion to Nature. His Journals, kept year by year with ever a spontaneous freshness, are little else than an ecstatic love song dedicated to his mate,--the lake, the woods, the fields, the apple orchards, the winds, the colors, the birds, and all that lived and grew about his haunts near Walden. A lover sees a beauty in his lady's eye to which all the world is blind, and Thoreau senses a magic in an awakening Spring to which the senses of us lesser mortals are comparatively blunt.

His sincerity of appreciation was one with his marvellous power of observation. He did not have the scientific attitude of mind as had that fascinating Frenchman, Fabre, who wrote the biographies of insects in a way that makes you tremble at the wonders that go into the making of the life of a fly. Thoreau would have scorned the aquarium and cage methods of Fabre, not because of the lack of interest in the results, but rather on account of his love of Nature, naked, wild, and free. Upon the shortest ramble he saw myriad happenings, from the unusual frost crystal upon the web of a spider to the most subtle changing with the varying temperature of a bird's note; but it is all discovered without the microscope, without thought of entomological or ornithological records. A man should be afraid to say that the woods are a dreary place in which to walk upon a winter's day--let him read a page from the Winter Journal of our author and he will find that the book of Nature is never closed for him who has an eye in focus for her mystic letterings.

I say that Thoreau is my favorite and how could I deny it, since there is many a winter's day in the city when I am sick of the asphalt and the bricks, and yet unable to leave them, that I can turn to any one of his pages and be carried by his words to my favorite woods or stream, to the longed-for fields and roadways? And in other seasons when time is more prodigal, and nature so bounteous that there seems to be a glut upon the market, my senses, that might grow befogged, are given a tonic in a paragraph that makes the drowsy summer atmosphere seem pregnant with beauty and fascination. If you are cooped among the chimneys and elevated trains, Thoreau will bring you to the country--if in the country, he will multiply the pleasures of your walk, your ride, or fishing trip. He stimulates the best of life that is in you, and that is all we can ask of any literature.

Nature from one point of view or another has always been one of the chief inspirations of the poets. If you examine the literature of the human race since the days when Solomon sang "And the voice of the turtle is heard through the land," you will find the various aspects of the seasons, the songs of the individual birds, the beauty and sentiment of flowers, and even the habits of the different species of fish, continually reflected in prose and verse. America has been especially blest with men we must term literary naturalists. We have spoken of Thoreau, but there are also Audubon, Wilson and our elderly contemporary, John Burroughs.

Wilson and Audubon are especially famous for their magnificent colored plates of the birds of North America, but I ask all nature lovers to go to a public library and secure the prose works of these two great ornithologists. There you will find as interesting reading as will come to your hand in many a day. They were both pioneers in science, art and exploration; both children of nature, more at home in the forest than in the city; both enthusiastic, thrilled worshippers of their feathered friends whom they have so brilliantly preserved in their cherished portfolios. Because their work was accomplished one hundred years ago, before our birds were charted and when journeys of scientific exploration, even into the mountains of Pennsylvania, were made with almost the same difficulty as is now caused in the exploration of the most jungled South American river, the naive spirit of the explorer, of the elemental pioneer, is in their every page. There is ever the surprise, the uncertainty, the joy of life and study among unknown and untrammelled things. Theirs was the joy of children who for the first time discover a blackbird's nest in the far-off meadow and their joy is communicated to us; we become children of delight, as when lying upon bur backs on the edge of a flowery field of clover we watch with fascination the darts of kingbirds dashing from the top of the nearby chestnut after the myriad insects.

John Burroughs, whose essays have been a joy upon many an evening and a stimulating remembrance upon many a tramp, with a similar freshness and unworldliness carried on the tradition of the earlier men. From his fruit farm upon the Hudson he continually sends us messages to forget our tea parties, our moving pictures, our country clubs, and really to find ourselves in the discoveries of beauties and life in the growing, nesting, and flowering things about us. One of the happy thoughts that we derive from him is the knowledge that to obtain the beneficence to soul and mind we (poor suburbanites tied to the necessity of earning our daily bread in the city) need not follow the "Long Trail" to the ends of the world of the furious globe trotter, Rudyard Kipling, but must only take store of the things at hand, find the same happiness in the quiet, civilized, thoroughbred-cattled meadow as we would hope to find up against a rugged blow in the Northern Seas off the coast of which "you've lost the chart of overside." You do not have to go so far from home to know the world. Thoroughly know the garden that you cultivate, study all that happens along the hedgerow upon the way to the station, and you will be richer than he who has racketed with half blind eyes from the Yukon to Patagonia,

Or East all the way into Mississippi Bay, Or West to the Golden Gate.

In conjunction with the reflection of nature in books, I mentioned our scaly friends, the fish, without paying due homage to the king of all philosophic fishermen, Izaak Walton. How many devotees of the gentle art of angling have made of their own the wisdom, the beauty, the thoughtful content of the fisherman's classic, "The Compleat Angler"? A man once said to me that the next best thing to taking a walk was to read the accounts of Walt Whitman's rambles upon Timber Creek. I answered that upon the days you could not go a-fishing, you had best read "The Compleat Angler." I hold to this! Will not the men who stand by the trout, the bass, the salmon, the weak fish, or the gallant tuna and tarpon, and the boys who put their faith in the catfish, the sucker, the eel, or the perch, fall in together and be one in believing as the Venerable Izaak believed,

O the gallant fisher's life, It is the best of any! 'Tis full of pleasure, void of strife, And 'tis beloved by many; Other joys Are but toys; Only this Lawful is; For our skill Breeds no ill, But content and pleasure.

There is many another writer who opens the door to the traveller who wishes to enrich his enjoyment of Nature as it is to be seen along life's highway. I mention but a few who may give you new worlds for which you would not trade a mint of silver. Have you ever gone with Stevenson upon his walking trips? If not, do so, and perhaps you will agree with him that it is pleasant to have a companion upon your journeys; as Lawrence Sterne expresses it: "Let me have a companion of my way were it but to remark how the shadows lengthen as the sun declines." If you prefer to be alone, Hazlitt will tell you that no companion is necessary, as thoughts need no companions: "I want to see my vague notions float like the down of the thistle before the breeze, and not to have them entangled in the briars and thorns of controversy."

Or have you read the books of the Homer of the Insects, the Frenchman I have mentioned, Fabre? There is a treat ahead of you--he wrote of the crawling, burrowing and flying things of his beloved Provence, and if there is anything in this realm more interesting than his records of observing the daily lives of the House Fly, the Praying Mantis, and many another beetle, cricket and creeper, I have yet to find it. To say that you must immediately line your room with aquariums, jars, and boxes, in which to preserve and watch the births, loves and deaths of all the spiders, whirligigs, and butterflies that come within your reach is relating the result in its mildest form that this author has had upon me. Such books introduce you to a thousandfold intensity of existence, as every great book must.

Intensive agriculture is heralded as the saving factor of human progress. Let us make a plea for truly intensive living. As the crops that come from a rich, well-cultivated soil are bountiful, so is the life that is the product of a fertile mind. A poor crop is a superficial existence of discontented pleasures and shallow unhappiness; a rich crop is a life in which the heart and mind are at least attune to the joy which may be derived from the living of it,--brave when courage is needed, patient when patience is a virtue. The word "culture" is sometimes derided as a synonym for pretentious high-browism, but let us remember that the farmer respects the word "cultivate," as he knows that it is necessary if he wishes to make the harvest a season of happiness and rich reward. A man's harvest season is his every minute of existence--his bounty is the depth and pleasure of that existence. Our future life is or is not a "great perhaps," but our present life is assuredly a reality. It is _here_--what are you going to do with it? If you can make every day a day of intense interest you have won the greatest battle! You have stormed the world's richest citadel! The Children of Pan, who have loved and written of Nature, charm and transport you to a world of infinite interest. They offer rich fertilizer that gives promise of a bumper crop--Open that Door into their Realm.

*CHAPTER VIII*

*MEN BEHIND BOOKS*

Every word man's lips have uttered Echoes in God's Skies. ADELAIDE A. PROCTER

Books contain the accumulated store of human thought and scientific attainment--this is a treasure without which there would be no civilization--yet in addition, we may say that the most potent inheritance, that books vouchsafe, is the personalities of the great authors who have inscribed their souls within them. Personal character affects our lives as does nothing else. In the back of the mind of every one there are men and women who, we appreciate, have been the makers of our souls. Most often it is a mother or a father, sometimes a teacher of our youth, or a friend and fellow worker of whose nature we realize we have absorbed a part. Contact between human personalities is the most profound mover for good and evil. A preacher may declaim against sin for ever and a day, but you know that your great friend who scorns sin has infinitely more influence upon you. The greatest doers of good are men and women who lead others by the examples of their own lives. It is unfortunately not given to many to come into intimate personal contact with the most supreme human souls, but fortunate we are that many have extended their personalities without limit into the future, by truly encasing themselves in books that will remain as the leaven and inspiration of all ages and all peoples.

I have a number of volumes upon my shelves that I choose to consider not as books, but as men. Instead of printed pages, cloth bindings, and labels, they are living personalities with whom I can pass an evening. The reading is over, and I have within me the character of a great human being. As have my Mother and Father and the old fisherman, whose knowledge of the sea and storm beaten coast fed my boyish spirit, they have become part of me. The greatest books are those that present the greatest men. It is not the artistry of telling a story or writing a poem that really counts; the sincerity and intensity with which a man, whom we may call our "guide, philosopher and friend," is revealed forms the most cherished treasure of our bookshelf. In sorrow, in dejection, in need of mental or spiritual sustenance, when the joy of living is blunted, when lazy, discouraged or annoyed, you can go to these great fellows, converse with them and return again to the world with a bird's-eye view, an enlarged vision, a quickened spirit.

Have you read Walt Whitman? _There_ is a glorious human being--so magnificent, so all-embracing in his love, so turbulent, so large in his personality that to know him, to feed upon him, you must become submerged in his book, his soul,--"The Leaves of Grass." Of this volume containing his poems he himself said,

This is no book; Who touches this, touches a man.

You do indeed touch a man! A great spirit who saw in all things God; a Democrat who saw in all men the spark of the divine; a leader who raced out to the farthest reaches of the soul and beckons and begs you to follow; a lover who embraced all, the prostitute, the poet, the lowly, the exultant, Christ himself, in a spirit of human fellowship; a physical giant who gloried in his sex and makes you consider sacred the relationship of the sexes; a nurse who brought upon himself paralysis by caring for the wounded in the Civil War; a prophet who could no more believe that the spirit of an individual man could die than that it had never been born. Perhaps you think I write extravagantly--I do not--I but attempt to present what the personality of Walt Whitman has meant to me, and to many, many others. I but ask that you go to the "Leaves of Grass," and come in contact with that man to whom so many look and say--"A great part of myself is you, Walt Whitman! My life has been renewed since first I touched your hand."

Tolstoy! There is another one who believed in humanity and God,--there is another who has put a huge, rugged, loving soul within books. Probably no one has so influenced the humanitarianism of our day as did this bearded old warrior from Russia; but it was the deep human sympathy of the actual living Tolstoy that moved the world, not the arguments he deduced nor the warnings he gave. He was always a moralist,--even in his masterpiece "Anna Karenina" it is not the story he tells, but the human love which he reveals that has made the eternal monument. Afraid of nothing,--the Czar, convention, hatred, oppression,--he lived his life according to the dictates of his own conscience, the most punishing conscience that has ever been the attribute of a master soul. If you do not know him, read his short story "Master and Man." There you will find enunciated, in a manner as poignant, as powerful, as even that of the Sermon on the Mount, the doctrine of happiness found in living your life for others. Selfishness, pride, materialism, the sins that spoil the world, cannot stand in the way of the burning words of Tolstoy. Your conscience will receive a stiffening medicine, your sympathies for the sins and sufferings of your neighbors will deepen to bed rock, and your life will become proportionately more true, more happy, more Christian. Six years ago in the lowly hut near the Caucasus, when the mighty soul of Tolstoy left the body, the World missed a leader, a lover, a prophet--but his word still remains, and the doctrine as told by him of universal betterment through love and human sympathy will reach mankind whilst there are men left to read, and to communicate.

We all know the poems of Robert Burns, most of us know something of his life. His life and character are revealed in his poetry. He too was a lover, but a weak rather than a rugged one. We love him for his very weakness. His heart was his strength and his undoing. He loved until his heart would break, ruthlessly and impetuously, and of his sufferings, his remorses, regrets, and forlorn hopes he sang. In this cruel world, where might so often makes right, what a benediction it is to read a poem written from the depth of a simple, sorrowing, yet deeply human heart upon the suffering that he has caused the "wee sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie" in turning up her nest with the plowshare. As with all the personalities that are "great" in the deepest sense, his was one that felt a companionship for all that lives upon the earth, and from his sympathy for the drunken, the heart-broken, and the meadow mice, and his joy in patriotism, true lovers, and beauteous roses, we derive a depth of sentiment that needs must mellow our hearts. A brave spirit in a weak body had Bobbie Burns--he drank and was unfaithful, but he felt deeply. We love him for his depth, we sympathize with him in his weaknesses. As a friend he purifies rather than stimulates our souls, but he is a true friend and a loving one.

Francois Villon, the greatest ballad singer of all time, the tavern lover, the vagabond, the heavy-hearted sorrower, the lighted-hearted laugher, the bosom companion of thieves, cut-throats, chattering grisettes, old courtesans, rioters, and brawlers of the narrow streets, Cathedral shadows, Seine banks of mediaeval Paris, was another of those great-hearted human lovers who had the gift of telling his heart secrets in words of wondrous beauty. By twentieth century standards Villon's actions, thieveries, and suspected murder, would have been neither moral nor proper, but by the standard of all ages, in all true hearts, his feelings towards the people among whom he moved will stand the test of the most austere morality. He loved all men and women for the best that was in them, he did not scorn them for the worst. He was unselfish and true to his friends, and more than that we cannot desire. Where there is hypocrisy there is vice; where there is selfishness there is lack of Christianity and humanity; our tavern poet, Francois Villon, had neither of these, and if you want a friend who will make you see the good in the bad, the beautiful in the ugly, go to your bookshelf and become acquainted with the fervid soul of this ancient ballad singer.

When you are too contented, when your mind feels squidgy with good living, or sultry from the summer heat, go to another man,--George Gordon, Lord Byron. They say that Byron (with Scott) is nowadays out of fashion. "They" are mistaken. The author of Childe Harold and Don Juan will never be truly out of fashion, so long as there is a flare in youthful hearts, a discontent in ambitious minds. He is the poet of a great revolt, a kicker at the traces, and then again he is the singer of the bleeding heart, of lost causes; he hurries you across the seas upon his speeding bark; he tops the crags of human loneliness and leaves you desolate. His songs are of the rollicking wine of life with its excitements, its depressions, its sentiments of hatred, beauty, joy. For youth he is the poet of liberty, of intense individualism; for age the poet of thwarted desires, for everyone he has a chestnut burr to put beneath dull content; his mockery is for stupidity, dryness, stagnation. Get under the crust of his effusive egotism and you will meet a sombre, lonely, sensitive individual, who needs you as a friend and who will be to you a hypodermic stimulative.

How different a one from this poet is his contemporary, the essayist, Charles Lamb. The essays we love the best are those that reveal the point of view, the little personalities of the writer, and no man of letters ever had a more magnetic personality, or knew better how to preserve himself in little literary gems, than did the author of "The Essays of Elia." Lamb spent his days in the South Sea Counting House transferring figures from one great ledger to another. But his evenings with his books, his family and his friends! Ah!--there was a companion! A booklover whose enthusiasm, for musty duodecimos has become a classic allusion, a punster whose puns are sometimes good and sometimes bad, but always original, a relisher of good conversation, a man of many petty weaknesses, a lover of good food, with a taste for old wine, and with an infinite appreciation of the fads and foibles of himself and others, he seems to have been altogether the most lovable individual with whom it would be possible to scrape up an acquaintance. Read but one hundred pages of his essays and he becomes your chuckling, appreciative, inimitable companion. Every old book shop, every roast pig, every glass of rich wine, every threadbare clerk stooping over his ledger--these and many such will take on fresh and romantic aspects for the friend of Elia.

Thomas Carlyle was an historian and philosopher who wrote his name over every page of his work. His was the voice and the soul of the Old Testament prophets, who railed at men from the depths of their bitter yet anxious hearts. The Preacher of the Nineteenth Century, when he spoke the world listened! Have you read "Sartor Resartus"? Among his works this is even the most personal. It is rough and jagged in style, turbulent and confused in arrangement, but behind it all, or rather under it all, is revealed the spiritual message to his age. The message is Carlyle's own personality: his bravery, his sincerity, his fine hatred of muddle-headed thinking, of credulity, of cant; his love and admiration for the fundamental greatnesses of human nature, his belief in an omnipotent God. He wished men to believe, and the thunder he bellowed in his endeavor still resounds. His soul was a battery of twelve-inch guns directed against the forces of ignorance and hypocrisy. It is to the reading of "Sartor Resartus" that many men point as the turning stake in their spiritual lives. It was not in the book that they found their spiritual bulwarks, but in the soul of the great Scotchman with whom they came in contact.