The Mentor: American Naturalists, Vol. 7, Num. 9, Serial No. 181, June 15, 1919
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Title: The Mentor: American Naturalists, Vol. 7, Num. 9, Serial No. 181, June 15, 1919

Author: Ernest Ingersoll

Release date: August 2, 2014 [eBook #46482]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MENTOR: AMERICAN NATURALISTS, VOL. 7, NUM. 9, SERIAL NO. 181, JUNE 15, 1919 ***

LEARN ONE THING
EVERY DAY

JUNE 15 1919     SERIAL NO. 181

THE MENTOR

AMERICAN NATURALISTS
By ERNEST INGERSOLL
DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE

VOLUME 7
NUMBER 9

TWENTY CENTS A COPY

NATURE AND THE POET

There are those who look at Nature from the standpoint of conventional and artificial life—from parlor windows and through gilt-edged poems—the sentimentalists. At the other extreme are those who do not look at Nature at all, but are a grown part of her, and look away from her toward the other class—the backwoodsmen and pioneers, and all rude and simple persons. Then there are those in whom the two are united or merged—the great poets and artists. In them the sentimentalist is corrected and cured, and the hairy and taciturn frontiersman has had experience to some purpose. The true poet knows more about Nature than the naturalist because he carries her open secret in his heart. Eckerman could instruct Goethe in ornithology, but could not Goethe instruct Eckerman in the meaning and mystery of the bird?

It is the soul the poet interprets, not Nature. There is nothing in Nature but what the beholder supplies. Does the sculptor interpret the marble or his own ideal? Is the music in the instrument, or in the soul of the performer? Nature is a dead clod until you have breathed upon it with your own genius. You commence with your own soul, not with woods and waters; they furnish the conditions, and are what you make them. Did Shelley interpret the song of the skylark, or Keats that of the nightingale? They interpreted their own wild, yearning hearts. You cannot find what the poets find in the woods until you take the poet's heart to the woods. He sees Nature through a colored glass, sees it truthfully, but with an indescribable charm added, the aureole of the spirit. A tree, a cloud, a sunset, have no hidden meaning that the art of the poet is to unlock for us. Every poet shall interpret them differently, and interpret them rightly, because the soul is infinite. Nature is all things to men. The "light that never was on sea or land" is what the poet gives us, and is what we mean by the poetic interpretation of Nature.

The poet does not so much read in Nature's book—though he does this too—as write his own thoughts there; Nature is the page and he the type, and she takes the impression he gives. Of course the poet uses the truths of Nature also, and he establishes his right to them by bringing them home to us with a new and peculiar force—a quickening or kindling force. What science gives is melted in the fervent heat of the poet's passion, and comes back supplemented by his quality and genius. He gives more than he takes, always.

JOHN BURROUGHS.

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JUNE 15th, 1919 | VOLUME 7 | NUMBER 9

Entered as second-class matter, March 10, 1913, at the postoffice at New York, N.Y., under the act of March 8, 1879; Copyright, 1919, by The Mentor Association, Inc.

FROM A PAINTING BY JOHN WOODHOUSE AUDUBON AND VICTOR GIFFORD AUDUBON.
IN THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, NEW YORK
JOHN J. AUDUBON
BY COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM

AMERICAN NATURALISTS | John James Audubon
ONE

"Audubon," says a recent biographer, Dr. Francis Hobart Herrick, "did one thing in particular, that of making known to the world the birds of his adopted land, and did it so well that his name will be held in everlasting remembrance." The father of the future naturalist was a French seafaring man and merchant-adventurer. While engaged in the sugar trade he frequently visited the port of Aux Cayes, in the island then called Santo Domingo, but now known as Haiti. As a dealer in West Indian commodities, Captain Audubon became a man of fortune. The son born to him and a lady of French origin at Aux Cayes, in 1785 (not in Louisiana in 1780, as some writers give it), was christened Jean Jacques Fougère. On being taken by his father to Nantes, France, when he was four years old, the little boy was received into the household of Madame Audubon, his step-mother, and given the name of his father, Jean Audubon.

Even at this early period of his life young Audubon forsook his classes at school to roam the woods searching for birds' nests. In his early teens he began to make drawings of birds that appeared near his home on the west coast of France. For a short time he studied in Paris under the famous artist, Jacques Louis David. At eighteen, Audubon was sent to America to learn the English language and the business methods of the New World. The tall, handsome boy found much happiness in discovering the wild denizens of his father's farm, "Mill Grove,"—a small estate near Philadelphia purchased by Captain Audubon during a visit to the United States. Here Audubon first had opportunity to study American bird life. He was a Nature lover, and he was also a gay young dandy, "notable for the elegance of his figure and the beauty of his features." When he met the charming Lucy Bakewell, whose father owned an adjoining estate, he immediately loved and courted her. It was she who became the guiding spirit of his life, who inspired him and, with material assistance, aided him to achieve his ambitions. Though engaged in business, the youth's heart was in the woods and fields. His method of posing lifeless subjects was unique, and his drawings were expertly done and very natural.

In 1808, Audubon married Lucy Bakewell and took her to live in the frontier settlement of Louisville, Kentucky. There a son was born. With a wife and child to support, Audubon continued his career as a merchant, and for several years owned and operated a store and mill at Henderson, Kentucky. In 1819 he failed in business, saving only a few personal possessions, including his drawings and his gun. As taxidermist, teacher and artist he earned a scant living during several disheartening years. His wife took a position as governess, and later became mistress of a private school in the South. The impelling motive of the naturalist's life was now the publication of his "Ornithology," for which he continued to make drawings under the most adverse conditions. Often he was reduced to painting signs and giving music and dancing lessons. To earn a passage on a boat during an exploring tour he would sometimes offer to do crayon portraits of the captain and passengers.

Audubon's genius as a portrayer of birds was in time recognized by America's foremost artists. When he exhibited his work in England and Scotland in 1826, he was elected to membership in eminent societies. He resolved to publish his drawings under the title, "The Birds of America," all to be "engraved on copper, to the size of life, and colored after the originals." The work was eventually issued (1838) in eighty-seven parts, which contained four hundred and thirty-five plates depicting more than a thousand individual birds, besides trees, flowers and animals native to the continent of North America. In America the price of the parts complete was one thousand dollars. Today a perfect set is valued at four times the cost of the original. Many famous men and institutions were numbered among Audubon's subscribers to his various works on birds and mammals. Sometimes accompanied by his sons, he traveled from Labrador to Florida and from Maine almost as far west as the Rockies, in his search for bird and animal models.

In 1842, Audubon took possession of a fine house he had built on an estate overlooking the Hudson, near what is now 155th Street, New York. Nine years later, "America's pioneer naturalist and animal painter" died here, surrounded by his devoted family. The house he erected remains in a fair state of preservation on a secluded plot of ground below Riverside Drive, and part of the land owned by him has been given the name, Audubon Park. His body rests on the hill above his home, in Trinity Cemetery, amid friendly trees that gave shade to the likely spot during his life time.

Audubon Societies exist in many parts of America. The National Association of Audubon Societies for the Protection of Wild Birds and Animals is an active monument to the work and ideals of the great naturalist.

PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 7, No. 9, SERIAL No. 181
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.

FROM A BUST BY W.E. COUPER.
IN THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, NEW YORK
J. LOUIS RODOLPHE AGASSIZ
BY COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM

AMERICAN NATURALISTS | J. Louis Rodolphe Agassiz
TWO

In a picturesque parsonage on the shore of the Swiss Lake of Morat, there was born on May 28, 1807, a child who was baptized Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz. His mother recognized early in his life the peculiar attraction of her son to Nature's creatures. His intuitive understanding of animals and fishes she carefully nurtured. With his younger brother, Auguste, the small Louis delighted to catch the finny inhabitants of Lake Morat by dexterous methods of his own invention. He was taught until he was ten by his father, a clergyman, and his mother, a woman of excellent taste and education. At fourteen, when he was graduated from a boys' school at Bienne, he defined his aims in this mature fashion: "I wish to advance in the sciences. I have resolved, as far as I am allowed to do so, to become a man of letters." In later years he wrote, "At that age, namely, about fifteen, I spent most of the time I could spare from classical and mathematical studies in hunting the neighboring woods and meadows for birds, insects, and land and fresh-water shells. My room became a little menagerie, while the stone basin under the fountain in our yard was my reservoir for all the fishes I could catch."

At his eager request, Louis was permitted to spend two years at the College of Lausanne, Switzerland, where he pursued with enthusiasm the study of Nature. He afterwards attended the University of Zurich and the University of Heidelberg. At the latter famous seat of learning the young Swiss naturalist, who intended to become a physician, pursued the study of anatomy, and passed hours collecting, arranging and analyzing plant and mineral specimens. At the age of twenty he became a student at the University of Munich, where he found of the highest interest the study of the natural history of the fresh-water fishes of Europe, while continuing his courses in medicine. The first work that gave his name distinction was a description, written in Latin, of a collection of Brazilian fishes that had been brought back from South America by the noted scientists, Martius and Spix. His profits consisted of only a few copies of the book, but the results were gratifying, as his work brought him to the favorable notice of Cuvier (coo-vee-ay), the renowned French naturalist, who consulted the descriptions of Agassiz in writing his own "History of Fishes."

In 1830, Agassiz went to Paris, where he enlisted the friendly help of Cuvier and the great Alexander Humboldt. It was his habit to work fifteen hours a day at the Museum of Natural History. He had only a small allowance from his father, and he was often hampered by poverty.

Returning from Paris, Agassiz lectured on natural history subjects in his native country. His exceptional ability attracted the interest of scientific men throughout Europe and he received many honors and complimentary invitations. In 1833 he married the sister of his intimate friend, Alexander Braun, the botanist. The art of his wife in drawing and coloring illustrations for his volumes on fishes was of the greatest assistance to him. In the years that immediately followed his marriage, Agassiz became interested in glacial research and was an important member of extended summer explorations in the Alps. His theories relating to the structure of glaciers were incorporated in a book entitled "Système Glaciare."

Having for some time desired to continue his researches in the United States, it was with delight that he received in 1846 an invitation to give a course of lectures in Boston. As a lecturer he met with such brilliant success that he was subsequently appointed professor of natural history at Harvard. From this time until his death in 1873, Professor Agassiz was identified with the cause of science in the United States. His work as a teacher was supplemented by repeated excursions to various parts of the continent with the object of studying forests, geological formations and zoology. Though he had views that were then in opposition to popular opinion, it has been said that, "everywhere and foremost a teacher, no educational influence of his time was so great as that exerted by him."

The splendid Museum of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a lasting memorial to the ardor and devotion of Louis Agassiz. A son, who bore his name, did much to perpetuate the aims of this institution, besides being a distinguished investigator on his own account.

A few years after his arrival in America, his wife having died, Professor Agassiz married Elizabeth Cabot Carey, a writer and teacher. She accompanied the Agassiz expedition to Brazil in 1865, and was also a member of the Hasler deep-sea dredging expedition in 1871-1872.

The last enterprise fathered by Agassiz was the summer school of natural history that he established on the coast of Massachusetts a few months before his death, at the age of sixty-six. His resting-place in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, is marked by a boulder from the Swiss glacier of the Aar where he pursued his first studies in glacial science, and the pine trees about it were taken from Swiss soil. Thus, writes Mrs. Agassiz, "the land of his birth and the land of his adoption are united in his grave."

FROM THE ROUSE CRAYON PORTRAIT MADE IN 1834.
NOW IN THE CONCORD PUBLIC LIBRARY
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
FROM THE WALDEN EDITION OF THOREAU'S WRITINGS.
BY COURTESY OF HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

AMERICAN NATURALISTS | Henry David Thoreau
THREE

The grandfather of America's first renowned native-born naturalist emigrated from the Island of Jersey before the American Revolution. In Boston he married a Scotchwoman. His son John also married a lady of Scotch descent, and engaged in the industry of pencil-making in Concord, Massachusetts. There Henry Thoreau was born in the month of July, 1817. His mother, a staunch, keen, observant woman "with a great love of nature," used to take her children into the woods and show them the wonders and beauties of wild life. Even as a small boy Henry had opinions and expressed them with independence, he was honest—"straight as a furrow"—sensible, good-tempered and industrious.

The Thoreau family made willing sacrifices so that Henry, the second son, could enter Harvard when he was sixteen. When he was graduated he taught for awhile in Concord and on Staten Island, but found the occupation uncongenial, and soon took to less scholarly ways of making a living. Nimbly he turned from one trade to another. He did surveying, or built a neighbor's fence, planted a garden, or worked with his father in the pencil shop. He was thorough and efficient in all that he did, but, whatever the means of livelihood, he pursued it with the single purpose of securing just enough money to support his frugal needs while he went off on woodland excursions, communing, studying, writing. Simple thrifty neighbors regarded Thoreau as a visionary and reproached him for his lack of the practical virtues that they held in esteem. They called him lazy. Thoreau (he pronounced it "thorough"), however, was not wasting time. He kept a daily journal, from which several characteristic and delightfully refreshing volumes were later compiled.

When still a young man, Thoreau resolved to seek a retreat in the woods where he could live undisturbed in his enjoyment of the "indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature." Emerson, a close friend in whose house he had lived for a time, granted him the use of some land near Walden Pond, about a mile and a half from Concord. Thoreau cleared the woodland site himself and erected a small shelter, at whose "raising" a number of notable literary men were present. Beginning with the summer of 1845, this philosopher with the "thin, penetrating, big-nosed face," the deep-set eyes and spare, long-limbed figure, this naturalist who used neither trap nor gun, lived in his hut, remaining for about two years. He planted enough ground to give him food, and often received his friends, who sincerely loved him for his unique qualities of mind and soul.

At Walden Thoreau compiled and wrote two of his best-known books—"A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers" and "Walden, or Life in the Woods." The latter has gone into many editions in several languages.

Thoreau avowed, "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life." So he lived, a happy stoic, beside his little lake. "A lake," said he, "is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is the earth's eye, looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.... It is a mirror which no stone can crack, whose quicksilver will never wear off, whose gilding Nature continually repairs; no storms, no dust, can dim its surface ever fresh, ... swept by the sun's hazy brush." In the solitude of his days the lake-dweller found himself "no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a bumble-bee. I am no more lonely than the mill brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or the first spider in a new house." He describes with affection "the old settler and original proprietor who is reported to have dug Walden Pond, and stoned it, and fringed it with pine woods"; and that "elderly dame" who lived in his neighborhood, "invisible to most persons, in whose odorous herb garden I love to stroll some times, gathering samples and listening to her fables; for she has a genius of unequaled fertility. Her memory runs back farther than mythology, and she can tell me the original of every fable, and on what fact everyone is founded, for the incidents occurred when she was young. A ruddy and lusty old dame, who delights in all weathers and seasons, and is likely to outlive all her children yet."

Thoreau's vigorous, contented years came to a close in 1862, when he was only forty-five. He sleeps in the burying-ground of his well-loved Concord, from which he rarely strayed far during his lifetime. Said his friend, William Ellery Channing, "His love of wildness was real. This child of an old civilization, this Norman boy with the blue eyes and brown hair, held the Indian's creed, and believed in the essential worth and integrity of plant and animal. This was a religion; to us mythical. So far a recluse as never to seek popular ends, he was yet gifted with the ability and courage to be a captain of men. Heroism he possessed in its highest sense,—the will to use his means to his ends, and these the best."

FROM THE JOHN MUIR MEMORIAL NUMBER OF THE SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN
JOHN MUIR
W.F. DASSONVILLE, PHOTOGRAPHER

AMERICAN NATURALISTS | John Muir
FOUR

In John Muir's own story of his boyhood and youth he declares, "When I was a boy in Scotland I was fond of everything that was wild, and all my life I've been growing fonder and fonder of wild places and wild creatures." Muir was born at Dunbar, on the stormy coast of Scotland, April 21, 1838. From his grandfather he learned his letters, before he was three years old, with the aid of shop signs. His was an adventurous boyhood, punctuated by riotous school fights, hunts for skylark's nests and fox holes, scrambles among the crags of Dunbar Castle, games of running, jumping and wrestling, and repeated chastisements by a father who believed in the efficacy of the rod, and used it to emphasize his disapproval of "shore and field wanderings." A grammar-school reader gave the Scotch lad his first knowledge of the birds and trees of America. Eagerly he read descriptions of the fish hawk and the bald eagle by Alexander Wilson, the Scotch naturalist, and Audubon's wonderful story of the passenger pigeon.

When John Muir was eleven years old he crossed the Atlantic in a sailing-vessel with his father, a sister and a brother. In Wisconsin the father set about preparing a home for the wife and children waiting in Scotland. The future "patriarch of the mountains" spent joyous hours exploring pastures new—looking for songbirds' nests, game haunts and wildflower gardens. At night, when the household slept, he would creep out of bed, though weary after long hours of labor in the fields, and read his treasured books, or work on his inventions. For a few months he worked as assistant to an inventor in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. Longing to resume the education interrupted when he was eleven years old, the youth returned to Madison, where, despite almost insurmountable handicaps, he was able to take a four-year course in the new State University. In vacation time he worked on a farm, cradling four acres of grain a day, then sitting up till midnight to analyze and classify plants native to the region. At the end of four years the embryo naturalist, geologist, explorer, philosopher and protector of Nature left his Alma Mater. In his own words, he was "only leaving one university for another, the Wisconsin University for the University of the Wilderness."

As a young man Muir traveled to the Pacific Coast. There he met Dr. John Strenzel, a Polish revolutionist who had escaped from Siberia, and had gained fame as "the first experimental horticulturist in California after the Mission Fathers." The young Scotch scientist was taken to a hill-top opposite San Francisco to see the Strenzel orchards. On this hill he wooed the darkly beautiful Benicia Strenzel, and here he made her his wife, and lived with her and their children and grandchildren; and here above Suisun Bay, lie John and Benicia Muir in a corner of the orchard where the trees shed their blooms in the springtime.

Dr. Strenzel gave his ranch to his daughter and her husband when they were married. Muir cultivated the fruit trees, the grape vines and grain fields with such skill and diligence that he reaped a goodly fortune. He drove hard Scotch bargains with marketmen—this great-hearted lover of Mother Nature. But the money he earned was for his family, not himself. Says one who knew him well, "He wanted little that money can buy." Of his friend Edward H. Harriman Muir once remarked, "He's not as rich as I am. He has a hundred millions. I have all I want."

While his crops were ripening, this dramatist of the out-of-doors would take himself to the mountains, abide on the flowery uplands, study the ways of birds and squirrels, of Big Trees and cataracts and glaciers. In 1879 he went to Alaska. During his explorations he discovered Glacier Bay and the immense ice field now known to the world as Muir Glacier. For several years he made his summer home in the Yosemite Valley, acquainting himself with its botanical and geological features and making notes for future books. An appeal issued in his name in 1890 led to the creation of the Yosemite Valley and surrounding forests as a national reserve. Muir has been called the pioneer of our system of national parks. In the cause of science he traveled to Siberia, South America, Africa and India. "Tall, lean, craggy,"—a great tree of a man himself, he knew the forests of the world.

John Muir, "grandest character in Nature literature," died at the age of seventy-six on the day before Christmas, 1914. He was the author of several rare volumes of essays and reminiscences, most of which were published after he had reached the age of seventy. "To read Muir," says a critic of American literature, "is to be with a tempestuous soul whose units are storms and mountain ranges and mighty glacial moraines, who cries 'Come with me along the glaciers and see God making landscapes!'" Yet, "Look at that little muggins of a fir cone!" the interpreter of titanic symbols would exclaim, lovingly stroking a brown trophy of his beloved woods. Said a companion of Muir's during a scientific expedition, "Flakes of snow and crumbs of granite were to him real life." His study of the Water Ouzel is called the "finest bird biography in existence." He loved also to tell of the Douglas squirrel, "whose musical, piney gossip," wrote he, "is savory to the ear as balsam to the palate."

FROM A BUST BY C.S. PIETRO
IN THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, NEW YORK
JOHN BURROUGHS
BY COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM

AMERICAN NATURALISTS | John Burroughs
FIVE

From his maternal grandfather, who was American-born but of Irish ancestry, John Burroughs avers he gets his "dreamy, lazy, shirking ways." That Burroughs, the poet of bee and bird, of flower and tree, has dreamed to good account, all who read and love him know. He got his first taste for out-door diversions in the company of his aged grandparent, as together they fished the streams of Delaware County, New York,—the old man mingling tales of soldier days at Valley Forge with stories about snakes and birds.

Burroughs was born in Roxbury, New York, April 3, 1837. In after years he wrote, "April is my natal month, and I am born again into new-delight at each return of it." His father was a school teacher turned farmer. Burroughs' mother had little schooling, but, he says, "I owe to my mother my temperament, my love of Nature, my brooding, introspective habit of mind—all those things which in a literary man help to give atmosphere to his work. The Celtic element, which I get mostly from her side, has no doubt played an important part in my life. My idealism, my romantic tendencies, are largely her gift."

Young John was usually engaged outside of school hours doing chores in field and garden, but he was never too busy to raise his head at the note of a "brown thrasher," or stop to inquire into the ways of a wild flower nodding in his path. He went hunting, but he used to come back with little game. He was too intent on watching the behavior of fox and pigeon to aim his gun. He says in Dr. Barrus' intimate biography, "Our Friend John Burroughs," "I knew pretty well the ways of wild bees and hornets when I was only a small lad. What, or who, as I grew up, gave my mind its final push in this direction would not be easy to name. It is quite certain that I got it through literature, and more especially through the works of Audubon." He acknowledges, also, the influence of Thoreau, and of Emerson, "who kindled the love of Nature in me."

By doing farm work and by teaching Burroughs saved enough money to enter an institute not far from his home. He returned from his first visit to New York "with an empty pocket and an empty stomach, but with a bagful of books." All his money had been spent at second-hand book-stalls. For several years he taught school, marrying a pupil, Ursula North, in the meantime. He was twenty-six when, engaged in teaching near West Point, he "chanced upon the works of Audubon" in the library of the Military Academy. He relates, "It was like bringing together fire and powder. I was ripe for the adventure; I had leisure, I was in a good bird country, and I had Audubon to stimulate me. How eagerly and joyously I took up the study! It gave to my walks a new delight; it made me look upon every grove and wood as a new storehouse of possible treasures." His earliest contribution to Nature literature, a paper entitled "The Return of the Birds," was completed when he was a clerk in the office of the Comptroller of the Currency, in Washington. He held this position for ten years. In his spare moments he studied birds and wrote about them, finding that "he had only to unpack the memories of the farm boy to get at the main things about the common ones." The love of the great Nature essayist for his native countryside pervades much that he has given us. "Take the farm boy out of my books, and you have robbed them of something that is vital and fundamental," he avows. From the beginning he liked to write about rustic things—"sugar-making, cows, haying, stone walls."

Journeys to England, to the West Indies, to Alaska with the Harriman Expedition, to the Grand Canyon and the Yosemite, which he explored with his friend John Muir, to the Yellowstone (he visited the National Park in 1903 as the chosen companion of President Theodore Roosevelt), widened the sphere of John Burroughs' happy bird and flower hunting-grounds. But he still loves best the scenes of his boyhood, and he often returns in summer to the Catskills to revive memories, and write, and muse on the beauties of the Delaware County hills and vales. His home above the Hudson, at Riverby, West Park, where he has lived for nearly half a century, and Slabsides, his tree-shaded chestnut-barked work cabin on a nearby hill, are places of pilgrimage for children, poets, wise men. "Nature lovers?" said a visitor. "Yes, and John Burroughs lovers, too."

"The whole gospel of my books," wrote the sage of Slabsides, most distinguished of living American naturalists, "is 'Stay at home; see the wonderful and the beautiful in the simple things all about you; make the most of the common and the near at hand.'" Herein we have the keynote of the enduring charm that distinguishes all the Burroughs books about bursting buds, birds, butterflies, leaves, and the seasons' graces. Said Walt Whitman of a letter written to him by Mr. Burroughs, "It is a June letter, worthy of June; written in John's best out-door mood. I sit here, helpless as I am, and breathe it in like fresh air."

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY PIRIE MACDONALD NEW YORK
ERNEST THOMPSON SETON
COURTESY OF THE WOODCRAFT LEAGUE

AMERICAN NATURALISTS | Ernest Thompson Seton
SIX

Ernest Thompson Seton, Nature illustrator and writer, was born in South Shields, England, in the year 1860. At five years of age his parents moved to Canada and established a home in the backwoods. He was educated in the public schools and the Collegiate Institute of Toronto, and later attended the Royal Academy in London. On the plains of Manitoba, Canada, he studied natural history, and became so efficient that he was appointed official naturalist to the Government of Manitoba. Between the years 1886 and 1891 he published two books on the mammals and birds of the northern province.

Following a period of art study in Paris, Mr. Seton became one of the illustrators of the Century Dictionary. Besides illustrating many books about birds and animals and writing the text, he has contributed numerous articles to leading magazines, and has delivered more than three thousand lectures on natural history subjects. Practically all of this author's books are contributions to natural history. His "Life Histories of Northern Animals" is a popular treatise on a scientific basis, of which Theodore Roosevelt said, "I regard your work as one of the most valuable contributions any naturalist has made to the life histories of American mammals."

The writer made his first popular appeal in "Wild Animals I Have Known," which ran through ten editions in one year and has now an established place in animal literature. Mr. Seton is a man of many sides and sympathies. Probably no one person has had a more profound influence on the boys of America than he, for he has taught the philosophy of out-door life and has been a pioneer in such work. Someone has used the term, "Nature Apostle," to express the motive of his activity. He has made the things of the out-of-doors attractively real to the man in the street, as well as to the child. Mr. Seton likes the woods. He likes to make things, to teach and demonstrate Woodcraft with groups of boys. He comes to town when he must, but he is happiest at "Dewinton," near Greenwich, Connecticut, where he and his wife have developed an estate comprising buildings, gardens, woods, a lake and bridges of rare interest and charm. All is unique. Mr. Seton planned the buildings, wrote the specifications and superintended the building.

Much that Seton has written has exploited the Indian—the ideal Indian—as the first American, presenting him in the most attractive fashion, and setting before the youth of the land the skill of the Indian in handicrafts and woodcraftsmanship. He has not only popularized things that have to do with the open air in America: he was the first man anywhere to organize in practical manner a definite form of out-door activity for boys. This he did in 1902 when he founded the Woodcraft Indians. The principles of self-government with adult guidance, of competition against time and space, were first laid down by him in those days. Later he became Chief Scout of the Boy Scouts of America. In 1916 he organized the Woodcraft League of America, to carry out the general ideals of his early work: "Something to know, something to do, something to enjoy in the woods and always with an eye to character." Chief of the Woodcraft League, he says, "Woodcraft is lifecraft." This organization admits boys and girls, men and women, and aims to carry over into old age the real play spirit on the playgrounds of Mother Nature. As a boy he hungered for Nature knowledge, but he had no books to guide him, and he declared that if ever he had the opportunity he would give to children what he did not have. In the preface of his "Two Little Savages," he says, "Because I have known the torment of thirst I would dig a well where others may drink."

Mr. Seton works as hard in building some simple thing for a game for a boys' camp as in seeking facts about Nature or planning a house. But above all he likes to personalize the animals, the birds, the trees, the winds and the seasons with his pen and in his talks about Nature. And because he loves and understands them he makes them real to others, so that they love them too. Some of the books that have carried his name wherever Nature literature has readers are, besides those already mentioned: "The Biography of a Grizzly," "Lobo, Rag and Vixen," "Lives of the Hunted," "Drag and Johnny Bear," "Animal Heroes," "Biography of a Silver Fox," "Rolf in the Woods," and "Wild Animals at Home."

THE MENTOR   ·   DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE
SERIAL NUMBER 181

American Naturalists

By ERNEST INGERSOLL

Author of "Nature's Calendar," "Wild Life of Orchard and Field," "Wild Neighbors,"
"Art of the Wild," "Animal Competitors," and other Nature Books.

Photograph by Press Illustrating Service, Inc.

JOHN BURROUGHS AT THE DOOR OF "SLABSIDES"
His study on the hill above his home at West Park, New York

MENTOR GRAVURES

JOHN J. AUDUBON

J. LOUIS RODOLPHE AGASSIZ

HENRY DAVID THOREAU

JOHN MUIR

JOHN BURROUGHS

ERNEST THOMPSON SETON

In the sense of its attractive description and interpretation, as distinguished from its coldly scientific study, the literature of natural history in the United States is a modern development. Americans were intensely engaged in the earlier years of their history in practical affairs. A large proportion of them were pioneers who were too much occupied in subduing the wilderness and its harmful denizens to civilized purposes to be interested in its beauties. Undoubtedly there were "Nature lovers" even then. The poetry of James Hillhouse (1754-1832), and the fact that he set out the trees that brought New Haven fame as the "Elm City," prove him to have been a Nature lover; but the class of readers now known by that title is, like the phrase itself, of very recent growth.

Entered as second-class matter March 10, 1913, at the post office at New York, N.Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. Copyright, 1919, by The Mentor Association, Inc.

Alexander Wilson

Photograph by courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History, New York
PORTRAIT OF JOHN JAMES AUDUBON
Painted by his son, John Woodhouse Audubon, about 1841

Photograph by courtesy of the American Museum of Natural
History, New York
PORTRAIT OF ALEXANDER WILSON
After a painting made by John Watson
Gordon from an original picture of Wilson
owned by his sister

In Philadelphia, under the inspiration of Franklin, American science first put forth its budding twigs in the peace that followed the Revolution. Hither tramped the Scottish weaver-poet, Alexander Wilson, who landed in New York from Paisley in 1794. After many vicissitudes, he became acquainted with William Bartram, whose botanical garden was the pride of the town, and who himself had written a book of travel and observation which may perhaps be regarded as the earliest production in the field we are to cover in this article. Through him and other local naturalists, such as Dr. Barton and the Peales, Wilson became fascinated with the study of birds. Poor as he was, and untrained in drawing, he formed a resolution to prepare a work describing all birds of North America known to him, illustrated by colored plates executed by himself. "I am entranced," he wrote in 1804 to Bartram, with quaint humor, "over the plumage of a lark, or gazing, like a despairing lover, on the lineaments of an owl."

There is hardly a greater marvel in literary history than the accomplishment of the task of publishing nine volumes of "The American Ornithology" between 1806 and 1814, the last one a year after Wilson's death. As ornithology (the science of birds) it stands surprisingly well the test of criticism, and otherwise it bears the same classic relation to our literature that Gilbert White's "Selborne" does to that of England. Wilson's style is clear and free from affectation of any sort, his diction simple and pure, illumined by that joy in his subject which was increased by every new discovery, and sweetened by poetic appreciation and genial humor. It is extremely fortunate that, at the beginning of our out-of-door literature, so excellent a model existed for young writers. Every bird lover will enjoy reading Wilson, and every would-be essayist ought to study his pages.

PORTRAIT BUST OF AUDUBON
By W.E. Couper, in the American Museum
of Natural History, New York

HOME OF AUDUBON BUILT IN 1842
Overlooking the Hudson. From a lithograph made in 1865

THE AUDUBON HOUSE
As it appears to-day, below Riverside Drive, near 155th Street,
New York

John J. Audubon

While Wilson was at work, chance brought John J. Audubon, a lively young fellow of eighteen, to reside in a village near Philadelphia. Audubon, the son of a French father and a French Creole mother of San Domingo, was born at Aux Cayes (owe kei), in that island, April 26, 1785. Well educated in France, and in easy financial circumstances, he was fond of gunning and of painting portraits of the game he shot. Though Audubon and Wilson met, the temperaments of the two were antagonistic, and no acquaintance followed. It was not until several years later that Audubon's own ambitious "Birds of America" began to see the light after a long period of wandering and misfortune, in which nothing but the faithful support of his talented wife saved the author from failure.

Audubon's monumental work, now brings, in the original edition with the folio-plates, $3,000 to $4,000 in the book market. It contains far more material and better plates than Wilson's work, and differs from it strikingly in a literary way, for Audubon's style is characteristically French in its liveliness, its interjection of personal incidents, and its imaginative exaggeration. Audubon's fame as an author is based on the magnificent plates rather than on the text of his book, which is rarely quoted by modern ornithologists, most of whose writings are, however, far less entertaining. Audubon, possessing pleasing social gifts and special opportunities, obtained a contemporary publicity such as Wilson never enjoyed.

Photograph by courtesy of the American Museum of Natural
History, New York
LOUIS AGASSIZ
Demonstrating his favorite subject, Radiates
(corals, jelly fishes, and star-fish
tribe), before a class of pupils

A Group of Early Naturalists

A third important treatise on our birds was that by Thomas Nuttall, a quaint character in charge of the Harvard Botanical Garden, and an original author in botany. Like his predecessors he gathered his facts by traveling extensively. His two volumes are of great value, and peculiarly interesting in the matter of birds' songs.

THOMAS NUTTALL

A contemporary of Nuttall's in Philadelphia was Dr. John Godman (1794-1830), an eminent physician and anatomist, who found time to write a charming little book, "Rambles of a Naturalist," which was the earliest example of sketches of that kind issued in this country. He later prepared an illustrated "Natural History." This was the first systematic account, with engravings, of all the American mammals then known, and it contains much enjoyable and instructive reading, with good pictures.

From "Walden," by courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Company
VIEW OF WALDEN POND FROM EMERSON'S CLIFF

From "Walden," by courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Company
WALDEN POND
The cabin site is indicated by the cairn of stones

Audubon, about 1840, projected a more pretentious work on our mammals than Godman's, the text of which was to be prepared by Dr. John Bachman of South Carolina, while Audubon and his son Victor were to draw the pictures on copper. This plan resulted in the publication, in 1847, of "Quadrupeds of North America,"—to this day an important and interesting feature of our scientific libraries.

From "Walden," by courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Company
THOREAU'S CABIN AT WALDEN
From a drawing by Charles Copeland

During a subsequent short period almost the only name to be mentioned is that of Henry W. Herbert, a highly cultivated man and the author of many novels and poems; but these are forgotten, while as "Frank Forester," the writer of "My Shooting Box," "Field Sports," and other manuals for young sportsmen, Mr. Herbert lives in the admiring memory of every reading man who enjoys tramping the autumn woods with gun and dog. His descriptions of field sports and rural scenes are so elegantly written, and are so instinct with the inspiration of the meadows and marshes where he loved to roam, that they have rarely been surpassed.

From "Walden," by courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Company
FURNITURE USED IN THE WALDEN HOUSE, MADE BY
THOREAU

Theodore Winthrop's "Life in the Open Air," and other books, have a similar quality; nor must we forget N.P. Willis, T.W. Higginson, Starr King, and particularly Wilson Flagg, whose "Forest and Field Studies" came out in 1857. Flagg added later a delightful book, "Birds and Seasons in New England," and had the singular fortune to popularize for a familiar sparrow the name "vesper-bird" in place of its earlier and very commonplace name.

Wilson Flagg was one of that circle of writers and thinkers who have made New England, and particularly Concord, so memorable. All of them felt strongly the influence of their rural surroundings. Emerson exhibits it—may be said to have lived "close to Nature" in the sublimest sense of the phrase; one realizes it more distinctly, perhaps, in his poems, but it is to be felt everywhere in his discourses. The same is true of Channing, of Hawthorne, Lowell, and the other essayists and poets in that brilliant company. All loved things out of doors, and communicated to their readers the gracious inspirations they received.

Henry D. Thoreau

Photograph by George R. King
JOHN MUIR AND A PINE TREE FRIEND

Among these New Englanders one stands preeminent to our view—Henry D. Thoreau, whom Channing so happily called the poet-naturalist. In him the observation of Nature took the foremost place as a life-pursuit; but it reflected more than the science of Nature alone, though that was there, too, as it must be to make any out-door book of real and living interest. Let some, if they choose, belittle "solid information," and extol "insight"; nevertheless the inner meaning, the imaginative perception of the value of a fact, cannot be expressed in any useful way unless the fact itself is truly and accurately stated and understood, and a reader who trusts altogether to a literary or artistic presentation of out-door life is likely to get some very distorted notions.

Thoreau's books stand at the foundation of what we now call American out-door literature. It is probable that anybody who reads a single one will be eager to read the others, but this might not happen if he began, for instance, with the "Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers." With "Walden" as an introduction to Thoreau, you get the man really in place, for this is the story of his camp life on the shore of Walden Pond, and has the least of those eccentric meditations which elsewhere sometimes puzzle, if they do not bore, the ordinary reader. "Excursions" is somewhat more discursive but equally delightful. "I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil," he declares; and these essays are memoranda of the author's wonderful walks—wonder-full they were. "It was a pleasure and a privilege," wrote Emerson, "to talk with him. He knew the country like a fox or bird, and passed through it freely by paths of his own."

Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N.Y.
JOHN MUIR AND JOHN BURROUGHS
Called "John o' Mountains" and "John o' Birds" by
their friends

Thoreau died in 1862, having published only two books, the "Week" (1849) and "Walden" (1854). After his death there were printed no less than ten volumes prepared from his great accumulation of essays in manuscript, and notes and diaries. The four entitled "Spring," "Summer," "Autumn," and "Winter" are mines of treasure to the Nature student. They consist of dated paragraphs from Thoreau's voluminous journals, the selections being mainly notes on animals and plants seen about Concord at all seasons of the year, with the queries and musings that occurred to him at the moment. They are books to be owned and referred to by the naturalist rather than to be read for entertainment.

The literary magazines now began to print articles of open-air observation, most of which, then as now, dealt with bird life. This was not only because birds are singularly attractive, and the most easily studied of all animal groups, but largely because the United States has been very fortunate in the ornithologists that first made American birds known to the people. Instead of beginning with mere classifiers of dull, unimaginative mind, we were truly blessed in having such pioneers in our ornithology as Wilson and Audubon—one a true poet, to whom birds were emblems of the graces, and the other a painter, whose descriptions are imbued with color and vivacity.

THE HOUSE OF JOHN MUIR—in California

THE MUIR VINEYARDS AND ORCHARDS
Near Martinez, California

John Burroughs

Of the new writers of the end of the last century, none has become more deservedly popular and beloved than John Burroughs, who, on April third, 1919, entered his eighty-third year. Ever since "Wake Robin" was issued in 1870, he has been giving us a succession of essays, at intervals crystalized into books, that have seemed like so many windows opening on ever-new vistas of a world whose delight had hardly been suspected by the general reader. They deal not only with wild beasts, birds and flowers, but with the homely facts of rural life; and they tell of experiences that make us long to take to the woods and the streams, to track the weasel through the winter snows, surprise the secrets of the birds and the bees, launch our boat upon river or lake, and drift or fish, and then rest through the long summer nights upon a couch of boughs beside a mountain fireplace. The very titles of Burroughs' books are aromatic with the fragrance of woods and fields: "Locusts and Wild Honey," "Signs and Seasons," "Winter Sunshine," "Birds and Poets."

As he has advanced in years Mr. Burroughs has become more and more of a philosopher, discussing deep questions with copious information and illuminating thought.

Popular Nature Writers of Today

Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N.Y.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
In Yosemite National Park. Yosemite Falls in the
background. In a career rich in endeavor and full of
achievement, America's great citizen spent his first
years and his last years as a naturalist

DR. WILLIAM T. HORNADAY
Director of the New York Zoological
Park since 1896, and author of many
books and articles on natural history

To mention even a quarter of the Nature books that have appeared during the past twenty-five years is impossible in this review. New England furnished many of note, such as the gracefully written and informative books of Bradford Torrey, largely reprinted from The Atlantic Monthly; the lively chapters on wild life near home by Dallas Lore Sharp; and the useful volumes by E.H. Forbush. From New York's presses were issued dozens of untechnical nature-books written by such well-known men as W.T. Hornaday, Frank Chapman, F.S. Matthews, W.P. Eaton, Ernest Ingersoll, and the various authors of the "Nature Library." A special note must be made of the series from the pen of Dr. C.C. Abbott, who, like Gilbert White and Thoreau, found on his farm near Trenton, New Jersey, material for half a dozen or more books, including "Rambles of a Naturalist About Home," "Upland and Meadow," and "Wasteland Wanderings." Dr. Henry McCook, a Philadelphia clergyman, wrote in his "Tenants of the Old Farm" a delightful story of the busy lives of ants and bees. All are models of the value of close and continuous observation of what is going on day by day under our eyes, and should be in every library.

One conspicuous reason for the rapid modern growth of the department of Nature literature was the facility in illustration effected by the invention of the half-tone and three-color processes of reproducing photographs and paintings, accompanied by the steady improvement and cheapening of the camera in its application to field-study. These inventions enabled publishers to issue books with accurate and beautiful pictures at a price previously impossible, so that almost everyone might possess them.

Photograph by Press Illustrating Service Inc.
LUTHER BURBANK
Examining a flowering shrub under a microscope
in his garden in Santa Rosa, California.
He is called "unique in his knowledge
of Nature, and his manipulation and
interpretation of her forces." The renowned
Dutch botanist, Dr. Hugo de Vries, named
Burbank "the greatest breeder of plants the
world has ever known." This most beneficent
of naturalists, whose potato, stoneless plum,
spineless cactus and ever-bearing strawberry
have aided beyond all estimate
California industry, was born in Lancaster,
Massachusetts, March 7, 1849

In 1898 a somewhat startling innovation in Nature books appeared with the publication of Ernest Thompson Seton's "Wild Animals I Have Known," soon followed by others in the same style, such as the "Biography of a Grizzly," "The Sandhill Stag," et cetera. Mr. Seton is a field naturalist of experience, and a portrayer of animal life of unique distinction. His books are embellished with remarkable drawings, but they are essentially romances that humanize their animal heroes. "Because of his remarkably keen and quaint sense of humor and his power to draw and write," says an admirer, "no other animals are as real and lovable as his."

DAN BEARD
National Scout Commander of the Boy Scouts of
America, and beloved by all sportsmen and naturalists

Other clever writers have produced animal stories, of which the best are those by Charles G.D. Roberts, the Canadian author. Imitators appeared and obtained wide popularity until earnest protests from real naturalists and educators arose. Some of these writers were pronounced "Nature fakirs" and were discredited. Mr. Seton has produced in his two fine volumes, "Northern Mammals," the best treatise in existence on the natural history of our more northern four-footed beasts. He has also written a capital book on the scenery, people and zoology of northern Canada, entitled "The Arctic Prairies"—a good example of the many highly interesting and instructive books of travel produced within the past few years by men who may be termed hunter-naturalists, such as the late Theodore Roosevelt, Frank Chapman, Caspar Whitney, Dwight Huntington, Mr. and Mrs. C.W. Beebe, Enos Mills, William B. Cabot, Charles Sheldon; and the authors of reports on various governmental exploratory expeditions in Alaska and elsewhere, especially Andrew J. Stone, E. W. Nelson, Lieut. Sugden, the Preble brothers, Wilfred Osgood, Vernon Bailey, and several Canadian travelers.

John Muir and Elliott Coues

BRADFORD TORREY
Ornithologist and author;
editor of Thoreau's works

DR. ELLIOTT COUES
An eminent naturalist distinguished
for his researches in
ornithology

One man among these explorers stands out above all others for his loving appreciation of Nature in her wild state, combined with a remarkable power of delineation, and a gift of carrying to his readers not only the facts that engaged his attention, but a share of his delight in his experiences and of the inner meanings of them. This man is John Muir, whose narratives of discovery in the Western mountains are an immortal part of American literature. Never will the present writer forget the inspiration of a day in the woods with John Muir and John Burroughs! Different in fields of work, in literary style, and, to a great degree, diverse in habits of thought and views of life, they were at one, and beautifully supplementary in their reverential interpretation of Nature.

ERNEST INGERSOLL
Naturalist, editor and author

The widely awakened attention of Americans to animals and plants inspired a desire to know them more in detail, and this brought out from specialists a great number of what may be classed as guide-books, descriptive of trees, wildflowers and animals of various kinds. The aids to bird study are especially notable, many of them, in addition to their value as reference books, containing much that is readable. None exceeds in this respect "The Birds of the Northwest," by Dr. Elliott Coues (1842-1899), who, besides being the foremost scientific ornithologist of his time, was one of the most brilliant writers America has produced in the field of prose composition. His "Key" is the text-book of American ornithology.

OLIVE THORNE MILLER
One of the first American women
to write about Nature

Women Nature Writers

In this group of helpful books are to be found most of the productions of the women that have turned their literary talents toward out-door study. Olive Thorne Miller's bird books were early in the field; Florence Merriam Bailey has guided amateurs to the observation of birds "through an opera-glass," and has revealed to the East those of the West, as has Mrs. Wheelock of California. Mrs. Fanny Eckstrom, Mrs. Mabel Osgood Wright, Mrs. Doubleday ("Neltje Blanchan"), and Mrs. Porter of "Limberlost" fame are familiar names in this sphere of Nature lore. To Mrs. Anna B. Comstock we owe the best manual for teachers of Nature study, and a good little book on insects; Miss Margaret Morley has instructed us regarding wasps; Miss Soule tells us how to rear butterflies; Mrs. Dana leads us to the wildflowers,—and so on.

WALTER PRICHARD EATON
Writer on Nature subjects

Scholar Naturalists

I have said almost nothing about the investigators and teachers of natural science in the United States and Canada. One ought to speak of those great botanists, John Torrey and Asa Gray, the latter the earliest champion in the United States of the Darwinian view of organic evolution. And there is Louis Agassiz (ag'-gah-see), who combined with the intellectual keenness of the investigator wonderful power of inspiration as a teacher. He it was that first aroused the educational leaders of the country to the need of scientific instruction for the masses. He gathered about him in Cambridge a group of special students just after the close of the Civil War, almost all of whom became famous for research and as publicists. His seaside school on Penikese Island, off the Massachusetts coast, in 1873, was the forerunner of all our summer-schools.

FLORENCE MERRIAM BAILEY
Author of "Birds Through an
Opera Glass," "Handbook of
Birds of Western United States,"
et cetera. Mrs. Bailey is the
wife of Vernon Bailey, the well-known
biologist and explorer

MRS. MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT
Author of "Citizen Bird" (with
Dr. Coues), "Gray Lady and the
Birds," and similar books

Spencer F. Baird did much the same service at Washington, founding that body of men who have made history at the Smithsonian Institution, the Fisheries Bureau, and other scientific agencies of the Government prolific in research and in practical benefit to mankind.

To these patient, hard-working men we owe not only precious additions to original knowledge, but learned instruction. Most of them have been teachers in our colleges and high schools, leading writers in the best magazines, lecturers to whom we have listened with profit, and the authors of our school books and works of reference. Without their unselfish labors in the search for facts, and the generous gift of their learning to the public, the pleasant matter of our Nature books would rest on the same fanciful foundation as did the fables and wonder-tales of the Middle Ages.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

AUDUBON THE NATURALIST, 2 vols; by Francis Hobart Herrick. LOUIS AGASSIZ, His Life and Correspondence; by Elizabeth Carey Agassiz. A LIFE OF HENRY D. THOREAU; by F.B. Sanborn. OUR FRIEND JOHN BURROUGHS; by Dr. Clara Barrus. THE STORY OF MY BOYHOOD AND YOUTH; by John Muir. JOHN MUIR MEMORIAL NUMBER OF THE SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, vol. X.

⁂ Information concerning the above books may be had on application to the Editor of The Mentor.

THE OPEN LETTER

Some folks living in and near Concord way back in the '50's used to say that Thoreau was a thriftless individual who wasted his time in the woods out at Walden Pond and on the Merrimac River—that he was of little use in the world and would not stick to any job. The world does not know who the folks were that said that, and the world doesn't care very much about them. But the world cares a great deal about Thoreau, and wants to know all about him.

HENRY D. THOREAU

Courtesy of Houghton Mifflin & Co. Publishers of Thoreau's Works.
THOREAU'S FLUTE, SPYGLASS, AND HIS COPY OF
WILSON'S "ORNITHOLOGY"

Why? Because he had a message for all of us that love Nature; and, while he seemed to some of the folks of his time to be nothing but a shiftless dreamer and a shy recluse, he was looking over the things in Nature with a very intelligent eye and he was writing down for our benefit a great deal of valuable information. And, more than that, he was a shrewd philosopher. He made clear to us that there were two ways of looking at things—one, ours, of looking at Nature from the outside, and the other, his, of looking from the midst of Nature outward at us. He set down in his notes a great many wise things that he had observed in us, viewing us from the standpoint of the wild woods, and speaking to us as an inspired denizen of the wilderness might do. Thoreau appraised his busy, industrious fellow men shrewdly and intelligently—and he appreciated them in his way; but he did not see why he should find a job among them and go to work every day, and put his savings in the bank, and be a citizen in his town, and run for office, or serve in any way in civic affairs. For that lack in him he was sharply criticized by some people. Well, it's too bad. I cannot find, however, that John Muir, John Burroughs, Galen Clark, or any of those wonderful old "Sequoia Men" have had the temper or the disposition to run for civic office or concern themselves about whether they were in the line of approved social advancement in any town or settlement. All they seemed to be concerned about was whether they were right with God and right with themselves, and were living the way that their health and reason dictated; whether they were finding the simple, fundamental truths of human life and nature, and reconciling them by holding close to the bosom of mother earth. The social problems of great cities did not interest them greatly. They knew mountains better than municipalities; they knew a country's trees and trails better than its treaties; they found their happiness in the solitude of the woods, their joy in the wilderness: their incense was the smell of the hemlock and pine and the odor of the smouldering campfire, not the scent of heated city hotels, theaters or music halls.

And while Thoreau was pronounced long ago an idle dreamer, it now seems that his life was a very active and productive one, for lo! here are many books written by one, Henry D. Thoreau, that thousands nowadays read eagerly and with loving appreciation. And where are the enduring products of the thrifty and worthy souls that found Thoreau wanting in his day? What have they done that interests the world now? Only this—they scolded Thoreau. By virtue of that they are immortalized. We don't remember their names or how many there were of them. They are simply recorded in history as having scolded Thoreau. We have no more concern about them. We have Thoreau.

Thoreau at Walden Pond

I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveler's wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and those seasons were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most part, I minded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light some work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished. Instead of singing like the birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune. As the sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so had I my chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my nest. My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that "for yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow they have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward for yesterday, forward for to-morrow, and overhead for the passing day." This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself.

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Table of Contents

- THE MENTOR
- NATURE AND THE POET
- American Naturalists
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE