CHAPTER III

TO THE TEACHER

The thought in this chapter is evident, namely, that love for the out of doors is dependent upon knowledge of the out of doors. The more we _know_ and the better we _understand_, the more perfect and marvelous nature seems and the more lovely. The toadfish _looks_ loathly, but upon closer study he becomes very interesting, even admirable--one of the very foundations of real love. So, as a teacher and as a lover of nature, be careful never to use the words “ugly” or “nasty” or “loathly”; never shrink from a toad; never make a wry face at a worm; never show that you are having a nervous fit at a snake; for it all argues a lack of knowledge and understanding. All life, from Man to the Am[oe]ba, is one long series of links in a golden chain, one succession of wonderful life-histories, each vastly important, all making up the divinely beautiful world of life which our lives crown, but of which we are only a part, and, perhaps, no more important a part than the toadfish.

FOR THE PUPIL

The toadfish of this story is _Batrachus tau_, sometimes called oyster-fish or sapo. The fishing-frog or angler is by some called toadfish, as is also the swell-fish or common puffer of the Atlantic Coast.

PAGE 21

_Buzzards Bay_: Where is Buzzards Bay? Do you know Whittier’s beautiful poem, _The Prayer of Agassiz_, which begins:--

“On the isle of Penikese Ringed about by sapphire seas.”

Where is Penikese? What waters are those “sapphire seas,” and what was Agassiz doing there?

PAGE 23

_Davy Jones_: Who is Davy Jones? Look him up under _Jones, Davy_, in your dictionary of _Proper Names_. Get into the “looking up” habit. Never let anything in your reading, that you do not understand, go unlooked up.

_Old Man of the Sea_: Look him up too. Are he and Davy Jones any relation?

_It was really a fish_: What names do you think of that might fit this fish?

PAGE 24

_coarsely marbled with a darker hue_: What is the meaning of _marbled_?

PAGE 25

_covered with water_: The author means that the _rock_ is not always covered with water, not the _hole_ under the rock. Of course the hole is always built so that it is full of water, else the fish would perish at low tide.

PAGE 27

_love the out of doors with all your mind_: Do you know what is meant by loving the out of doors with your mind? Just this: that while you feel (with your heart) the beauty of a star, at the same time you know (with your mind) that that particular star, let us say, is the Pole Star, the guide to the sailors on the seas; that it is also only one of a vast multitude of stars each one of which has its place in the heavens, its circuit or path through the skies, its part in the whole orderly universe--a _thought_ so vast and wonderful that we cannot comprehend it. All this it means to love with our minds. Without minds a star to us is only a point of light, as to Peter Bell

“A primrose by the river’s brim A yellow primrose was to him And it was nothing more.”

Does the toadfish become anything more than a mere toadfish in a shoe before the end of the chapter?

PAGE 28

_in the toadfish’s shoe_: What does the author mean by asking you to put yourself in the toadfish’s shoe? Only this: to try, even with the humblest of creatures, to share sympathetically their lives with them. The best way to do this with man as well as with toadfish is to learn about their lives.