CHAPTER XXII

BOOKS AND NATURE

Indoor studies and outdoor studies, are they antagonistic or co-operative? They are both, anomalous as it may seem. The same is true in a comparison of city culture and country culture. Sometimes we observe the antagonism in the same person. We may see in our best poets, now the praise of books and now the praise of nature. A double spirit, a mingling in one, comparable to the mingling of the good and the bad of Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." Wordsworth first sounds the praises of books:

"Yet it is just

That here in memory of all books which lay
Their sure foundations in the heart of man,
Whether by native prose, or numerous verse,
That in the name of all inspired souls-

'Tis just that in behalf of these, the works,

*

And of the men that framed them, whether known
Or sleeping nameless in their scattered graves,

That I should here assert their rights, attest

Their honors, and should, once for all, pronounce

Their benediction; speak of them as Powers

Forever to be hallowed, only less,

For what we are and what we may become,

Than Nature's self, which is the breath of God,
Or His pure Word, by miracle revealed."

Then he declaims against books as injurious:

"Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books;
Or surely you'll grow double :

Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?

"Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife;
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,

There's more of wisdom in it."

This double view is likewise shown in Lowell, whom Stedman styles "our representative man of letters," and adds, that "He is regarded as a fine exampler of culture." Lowell, though "the poet of nature," was pre-eminently a man of books. His writings and addresses were chiefly on literary subjects. Yet in a burst of passion for nature, the supremacy of a great surging part of his own character, he counts books and literary culture as of little worth, and in pleonastic verse makes them for the time shrink into nothingness:

"Jes' so with poets: wut they've airly read

Gits kind o' worked into their heart an' head,

So 's 't they can't seem to write but jest on sheers,
With furrin countries or played-out ideers,

Nor hev a feelin', ef it doosn't smack

O' wut some critter chose to feel 'way back;
This makes 'em talk o' daisies, larks, an' things,
Ez though we'd nothin' here that blows and sings,-
(Why, I'd give more for one live bobolink

Than a square mile o' larks in printer's ink).”

Books and Nature are antagonistic and yet they are co-operative. As Hamilton Mabie says:

"Since I turned the key on my study I have almost forgotten the familiar titles on which my eyes rested whenever I took a survey of my book-shelves. Those friends staunch and true, with whom I have held such royal fellowship when skies were chill and winds were cold, will not forget me, nor shall I become unfaithful to them. I have gone abroad that I may return later with renewed zest and deeper insight to my old companionships. Books and nature are never inimical; they mutually speak for and interpret each other; and only he who stands where their double light falls sees things in true perspective and in right relations."

I like that expression, "stands where the double light falls." There is a difference between the compound light and the extreme colors of the spectrum. One needs to know the details; to live and see, in the combination. The poet needs

the eye of the naturalist for his facts, and the naturalist needs "the light that was never on sea or land" for his life.

The quarry is antagonistic to the castle. The one must be depleted for the other. Yet both are co-operative; the first is useless and the second impossible without the other. The mine means something, it has its real value and beauty brought out only in the hands of the assayist. The two are antagonistic, yet co-operative. So you, teacher, must not merely go to nature for things, things, things, nor to books for words, words, words. One part of your mental make-up must be to lay hold of the real things of nature; the other must be to let in the illumination of books. Then only will you see facts in their true relations.

Remember always that the result is not to be naturalists and scientists, nor yet literati, but living men and women.

CHAPTER XXIII

66 HUSH ALL THE CLASSES AND

HUG HIM'

He has a secret; wonderful methods in him; he is, every child, a new style of man; give him time and opportunity. Talk of Columbus and Newton! I tell you the child just born in yonder hovel is the beginning of a revolution as great as theirs. But you must have the believing and prophetic eye. If a child happens to show that he knows any fact about astronomy, or plants, or birds, or rocks, or history, that interests him and you, hush all the classes and encourage him to tell it so that all may hear. Then you have made your school-room like the world. Of course you will insist on modesty in the children, and respect to their teachers, but if the boy stops you in your speech, cries out that you are wrong and sets you right, hug him!

And you, dear Ralph Waldo Emerson, how all child lovers should love you for that wise statement! You have practised what you preach; you have lived true to that other loving statement in your essay on "Education," "rather let us have men whose manhood is only the continuation of their boyhood, natural characters still." You had the boy nature in your heart, and sympathy for the spontaneity of the boy.

"Hush all the classes," and let the individual