"Look at the World," is the advice David Grayson gives to those who
follow him in his delightful essays on Great Possessions--possessions
that cannot be measured with a yardstick or entered in the bank book.
This is his cure for all the trials and vexations that come in the
course of a busy life. For how can a man remain unsettled and morose and
distressed when he is gazing at the broad expanse of the sky, studying
the beauty of the trees, or listening to the mellow voices of the birds?
How can the wanderer in field and forest forget that God is love?
Some people think that to drink in the glories of nature they must go to
the mountains, or seek some other far-away spot. Mistake! The place to
enjoy God's world is just where one is, and the time is that very
moment. This was the lesson taught so impressively by Alice Freeman
Palmer, when she described the little dweller in the tenements who
resolved to see something beautiful each day, and who, one day, when
confined to the house, found her something in watching a rain-soaked
sparrow drinking from the gutter on the tin roof. And this was the
thought in the mind of Mr. Grayson when he said:
"I love a sprig of white cedar, especially the spicy, sweet inside bark,
or a pine needle, or the tender, sweet, juicy end of a spike of timothy
grass drawn slowly from its sheath, or a twig of the birch that tastes
like wintergreen."
Hamlin Garland, in "A Son of the Middle Border," has told the story of
his boyhood on an Iowa farm. He knew how to enjoy the sights to which so
many are blind:
"I am reliving days when the warm sun, falling on radiant slopes of
grass, lit the meadow phlox and tall tiger lilies to flaming torches of
color. I think of blackberry thickets and odorous grapevines, and
cherry-trees and the delicious nuts which grew in profusion throughout
the forest to the north. The forest, which seemed endless and was of
enchanted solemnity, served as our wilderness. We explored it at every
opportunity. We loved every day for the color it brought, each season
for the wealth of its experiences, and we welcomed the thought of
spending all our years in this beautiful home where the wood and the
prairie of our song did actually meet and mingle.... I studied the
clouds. I gnawed the beautiful red skin from the seed vessels which hung
upon the wild rose bushes, and I counted the prairie chickens as they
began to come together in winter flocks, running through the stubble in
search of food. I stopped now and again to examine the lizards unhoused
by the shares, ... and I measured the little granaries of wheat which
the mice and gophers had deposited deep under the ground, storehouses
which the plow had violated. My eyes dwelt enviously on the sailing hawk
and on the passing of ducks.... Often of a warm day I heard the
sovereign cry of the sand-hill crane falling from the azure throne, so
high, so far, his form could not be seen, so close to the sun that my
eyes could not detect his solitary, majestic, circling sweep.... His
brazen, reverberating call will forever remain associated in my mind
with mellow, pulsating earth, spring grass and cloudless glorious
May-time skies."
Henry Fawcett lived at about the same period in a rural district in
England. He, too, delighted to ramble in the fields. One day, when he
was out hunting with his father, an accidental gunshot deprived him of
his eyesight. But the boy would not think of shutting himself away from
the joys of nature which meant so much to him. "I very soon came to the
resolution to live, as far as possible, just as I had lived before....
No one can more enjoy catching a salmon in the Tweed of the Spey, or
throwing a fly in some quiet trout stream in Wiltshire or Hampshire."
In the story of the life of John J. Audubon an incident is told that
shows how the greatest joy can be found in what seems like one of the
most ordinary things in the life of the forest--the nesting of the
birds:
"He became interested in a bird, not as large as the wren, of such
peculiar grey plumage that it harmonized with the bark of the trees, and
could scarcely be seen. One night he came home greatly excited, saying
he had found a pair that was evidently preparing to make a nest. The
next morning he went into the woods, taking with him a telescopic
microscope. The scientific instrument he erected under the tree that
gave shelter to the literally invisible inhabitants he was searching
for, and, making a pillow of some moss, he lay upon his back, and
looking through the telescope, day after day, noted the progress of the
little birds, and, after three weeks of such patient labor, felt that he
had been amply rewarded for the toil and the sacrifice by the results he
had obtained."
When a boy David Livingstone laid the foundation for the love of the
open that helped to make his life in Africa a never-ending delight.
"Before he was ten he had wandered all over the Clyde banks about
Blantyre and had begun to collect and wonder at shells and flowers," one
of his biographers says.
Not far away, also in Scotland, Henry Drummond spent his boyhood. He,
too, knew the pleasure of wandering afield. He liked to go to the rock
on which stands grim Stirling Castle, and look away to the windings of
the crooked Forth, the green Ochil Hills, and, farther away, Ben Lomond,
Ben Venue, and Ben Ledi, the guardians of the beautiful Highland lochs.
He was never weary of feasting his eyes on them. In later years he would
go back to the scenes of his boyhood, climb to the Castle, and, looking
out on the beautiful prospect, would say "Man, there's no place like
this; no place like Scotland."
Bayard Taylor first made a name for himself by his ability to see the
things that many people pass by, and to describe them sympathetically.
But he, also, in boyhood days learned the lesson that paved the way for
later achievements. He was not six years old when he used to wander to a
fascinating swamp near his Pennsylvania home. If the child was missed
from the house, the first thing that suggested itself was to climb upon
a mound which overlooked the swamp. Once, from the roof of the house, he
discovered unknown forests and fresh fields which he made up his mind to
explore. Later, in company with a Quaker schoolmaster, he took long
walks, and thus learned many things about the trees and plants. When he
was twelve he began to write out the thoughts that came to him in this
intimate study of nature.
In far-away Norway Ole Bull had a like experience. At an early age he
began to be on familiar terms with the silent things about him. The
quality of his later work was influenced by the grandeur of the scenery
in which he lived. To him trees, rocks, waterfalls, mountains, all spoke
a language which demanded expression through the strings of his violin;
he turned everything into music. His biographer says:
"When, in early childhood, playing alone in the meadow, he saw a
delicate bluebell moving in the breeze, he fancied he heard the bell
ring, and the grass accompanying it with most exceptionally fine
voices."
John Muir, who later wrote of the great Sequoias of California and the
glaciers of Alaska, when a boy of ten found delight in scenes of which
he wrote as follows:
"Oh, that glorious Wisconsin wilderness! Everything new and pure in the
very prime of spring, when nature's pulses were beating highest and
mysteriously keeping tune with our own! Young hearts, young leaves,
flowers, animals, the winds and the streams and the sparkling lake, all
wildly, gladly rejoicing together."
There is something missing in the life of one who cannot enter into the
feelings of a boy like Muir or Taylor or Drummond. And when such a boy
grows up, the gap in the life will be more conspicuous than ever.
Think of the poverty of the stranger to whom a traveler, feeling that he
must give expression to his keen delight in the autumn foliage, said,
"What wonderful coloring!" "Where?" came the reply. "Oh, the trees!
Well, I'm not interested in trees. Talk to me about coal. I know coal."
V