Wentworth Higginson has said, "We strive to picture heaven, when we are barely at the threshold of the inconceivable beauty of earth." If so, it is then that a walk abroad restores us to the heaven of childhood and of youth. All the senses combine to suggest and restore perpetual youth. Walking is the storing of priceless wealth for maturity and old age. It is the link connecting with things eternal, not the eternal things promised in some distant future, but the eternal, priceless things of the present. It gives health of body and wealth of soul, enjoyable for the present and stored for the future.

Walking in the full strength of maturity! Is there any other luxury that can equal it? It puts all earth beneath us and heaven around and above. No toiling horse shall drag us, no freaky bicycle claim our undivided attention, no smoky locomotive shall pull our car, rank with the odor of varnish, except when we cannot have what nature intends us to have, the glorious privilege of walking. Walking brings into play every muscle. It fills the lungs with pure air and the arteries with rich blood. It restores us to ourselves. It gives independence. We do as we please. It may be to saunter leisurely along this road, to climb that

ΙΟ

fence and go down that picturesque path, to rest by the spring, to worship in the forest, to hear the music of the brook, to discover primeval dells and grottos, these are some of the rewards of walking. It takes us to scenes that no vehicle. can reach; it gives us wealth which no money can buy.

Light-hearted to take to the open road,"

and in firm strides go to the top of that hill. There we look across the valley. And Paradise lies over yonder in the blue distance. We rejoice in the possession of vast territory that is ours, for the mere walking to it.

And so we walk on to gain the riches of yonder forest, and still farther on. But even the best is limited in extent, yet the riches of the territory to be obtained by walking are limitless. We find that the distant place, when reached, is no better than that we have left behind. We learn that the actual wealth is not to be obtained by rapid walking but by leisurely sauntering, by making the most of the present. Not least among the values of walking is the lesson of contentment. It is this place, this day, this world here and now, that we are to know, and in which we are so to

live that it may become to us a paradise. Even if there is a better and greater, how shall we comprehend it if we cannot apprehend this? Let us learn to walk well in the paradise which we now possess. Let us heed the great Teacher with whose walks were interwoven lessons from the fields, whose entire ministry was peripatetic. no more Beloved Disciple lament, that "from that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him." But rather,

Let

"He that saith he abideth in him ought himself so to walk, even as he walked."

"Even so we also should walk in newness of life."

Ever new. Ever a walker. The thought of the walk spiritualizes the walk, and that kind of walk spiritualizes the walker.

And every nature-study teacher, every naturestudy pupil should be a walker. The ability to walk, to get enjoyment from it as well as knowledge from the things scen, is worth more to teacher or pupil than to find out what is inside of a caterpillar, or how many rings there are in the abdomen of a dragon-fly.

"Nature Study is studying nature, in its own environment by the natural method, through the self-activity of the child.

"When Nature Study is directed, as by our teachers, the child is impressed with the fact that in order to make the knowledge brought to him through the senses serve him in the best possible way he must train himself to so judge this knowledge, to so compare it and to so arrange it in his mind as to be ready to use it in different forms of thought expression, drawing, modelling, speaking, writing, or to turn it to practical account in the affairs of his life." -MATTIE ROSE CRAWFORD, author of "Guide to Nature Study."

"If nature is to be a resource in a man's life, one's relation to her must not be too exact and formal, but more that of a lover and friend."-JOHN BURROUGHS.

"It is one of the laws of our being that by seeking interests rather than by seeking pleasures we can best encounter the gloom of life.”—LECKY.

CHAPTER XVIII

OUTINGS

"How many pupils do you usually take with you on your outings?" recently inquired a school superintendent.

"I most usually don't take any," was my reply. "Don't take any with you!" he exclaimed. 'Why, I thought you conducted parties of school children on natural history excursions?"

"So, indeed, I do," I replied; "but if I didn't have a love of nature that would take me out alone into the fields and forests many, many times to once that I go with a natural-history party, I am confident that I should not have sufficient love of my own for nature to inspire any of it in others."

And I went on to say to him, as I now say to you, that you cannot give to others what you yourself do not possess. The first essential is to get into harmony with the infinite, into loving intimacy with nature, so that through your influence a responsive chord may be set into vibration within