I. E. INFORMAL ESSAY

THE REALM OF THE COMMONPLACE

L. H. BAILEY

THE best possible introduction to nature is that afforded by a sympathetic person who knows some aspect of nature well. You imbibe your friend's enthusiasm at the same time that you learn birds, or plants, or fishes, or the sculpturing of the fields. By enthusiasm I mean never exclamation, but that quiet and persistent zeal that follows a subject to the end for the love of it, even though it take a month. This person need not be a professed "scientist," unless he is also a good teacher and knows what is most important in the subject and most relevant to you. The earlier the child has such a guide — if arrived at the age of reason—the more vital and lasting the effect even one or two excursions afield may change the point of view and open the way for new experiences, although neither the guide nor the child may be aware of it at the time. . . .

That which is worth knowing is that which is nearest at hand. The nearest at hand, in the natural surroundings, is the weather. Every day of our lives, on land or sea, whether we will or no, the air and the clouds and the sky environ us. So variable is this environment, from morning till evening and from evening till morning and from season to season, that we are always conscious of it. It is to the changes in this environment that we apply the folk-word "weather," weather, that is akin to wind.

No man is efficient who is at cross-purposes with the main currents of his life; no man is content and happy who is out of sympathy with the environment in which he is born to live:

From The Outlook to Nature. The Macmillan Company, Revised Edition, 1911. Reprinted by permission.

so the habit of grumbling at the weather is the most senseless and futile of all expenditures of human effort. Day by day we complain and fret at the weather, and when we are done with it we have - the weather. The same amount of energy put into wholesome work would have set civilization far in advance of its present state. Weather is not a human institution, and therefore it cannot be "bad." I have seen bad men, have read bad books, have made bad lectures, have lived two years about Boston, but I have never seen bad weather!

"Bad weather" is mainly the fear of spoiling one's clothes. Fancy clothing is one of the greatest obstacles to a knowledge of nature: in this regard, the farm boy has an immense advantage. It is a misfortune not to have gone barefoot in one's youth. A man cannot be a naturalist in patent-leather shoes. The perfecting of the manufacture of elaborate and fragile fabrics correlates well with our growing habit of living indoors. Our clothing is made chiefly for fair weather; when it becomes worn we use it for stormy weather, although it may be in no respect stormy weather clothing. I am always interested, when abroad with persons, in noting the various mental attitudes toward wind; and it is apparent that most of the displeasure from the wind arises from fear of disarranging the coiffure or from the difficulty of controlling a garment.

If our clothes are not made for the weather, then we have failed to adapt ourselves to our conditions, and we are in worse state than the beasts of the field. Much of our clothing serves neither art nor utility. Nothing can be more prohibitive of an interest in nature than a millinery "hat," even though it be distinguished for its floriculture, landscape gardening, and natural history.

Our estimate of weather is perhaps the best criterion of our outlook on nature and the world. The first fault that I would correct in mankind is that of finding fault with the weather. We should put the child right toward the world in which he is to live. What would you think of the mariner who goes to sea only in fair weather? What have not the weather and the climate done for the steadiness and virility of the people of

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New England? And is this influence working as strongly to-day as in the times when we had learned less how to escape the weather? We must believe in all good physical comfort, — it contributes to the amount of work that we can accomplish; but we have forgotten that it is possible to bear an open storm with equanimity and comfort. The person who has never been caught in rain and enjoyed it has missed a privilege and a blessing.

Give us the rain and the hail and the snow, the mist, the crashing thunder, and the cold biting wind! Let us be men enough to face it, and poets enough to enjoy it. In "bad" weather is the time to go abroad in field and wood. You are fellow then with bird and stream and tree; and you are escaped from the crowd that is forever crying and clanging at your heels.

The first consideration of special study should be the inhabitants of your yard and garden: they are yours; or if they are not yours, you are not living a right life. Do you wish to study botany? There are weeds in your dooryard or trees on your lawn. You say that they are not interesting: that is not their fault.

cases.

We have made the mistake all along of studying only special We seem to have made up our minds that certain features are interesting and that all other features are not. It is no mere accident that many persons like plants and animals but dislike botany and zoölogy. It is more important to study plants than special subjects as exemplified in plants. Why does the weed grow just there? Answer this, and you have put yourself in pertinent relation with the world out-of-doors.

If one is a farmer, he has the basis for his natural history in his own possessions, animals domestic and wild, plants domestic and wild, free soil, pastures and lowlands and woodlands, crops growing and ripening, the daily expression of the moving pageant of nature. Zoological garden and botanical garden are here at his hand and lying under his title-deed, to have and to hold as he will. No other man has such opportunity. I would also call the attention of the townsman to his opportunity. If the range of nature is not his, he still has the wind

and rain, the street trees, the grass of lawns, the weed in its crevice, the town-loving birds, the insects, and I hope that he has his garden. Even the city has its touch of natural history for all things in the end are natural, and we recognize them if we have had the training of a wholesome outlook to the commonplace.

I would preach the surface of the earth, because we walk on it. When a youth, I was told that it was impossible for me to study geology to any purpose, because there were no outcroppings of rocks in my region. So I grew up in ignorance of the fact that every little part of the earth's surface has a history, that there are reasons for sandbanks and for bogs as well as for stratified rocks. This is but another illustration of the old book-slavery, whereby we are confined to certain formal problems, whether or not these problems have any relation to our conditions. I well remember what a great surprise it was to learn that the sculpturing of the fields can be understood, and that the reasons for every bank and swamp and knoll and mud-hole can be worked out.

There was a field back of the barn that contained hundreds of narrow knolls, averaging three to four feet high. At one side of every hummock was a narrow deep pocket that until midsummer was filled with water. The field was so rough that it could not be ploughed, and so it was continuously used as a pasture. It was an Elysian field for a boy. Every pool was a world of life, with strange creatures and mysterious depths, and every knoll was a point of vantage. Near one edge of the field ran a rivulet, and beyond the rivulet were great woods. What was beyond the woods, I could only surmise. I recall how year by year I wondered at this field, until it became a sort of perpetual and compelling mystery, and somehow it came to be woven as a natural part of the fabric of my life. To this day I try once each year to visit this dear old field, even though it is long since levelled. All the sweep of my childhood comes back to me unbidden. The field is still a pasture, and generations of cows have passed on since then. Yet, as much as this field meant to me, I do not remember to have had any distinct feel

We all seemed to have As I think of it now, this

ing that there was any cause for the pools and knolls. My father cut the field from the forest, yet I do not remember that I ever asked him why this field was so; and I never heard any person express any curiosity about it. accepted it, just as we accept the air. field must have been the path of a tornado that turned over the trees; and long before the settlers came, the prostrate trunks had decayed and a second forest had grown. Would that I could have known that simple explanation! One sentence would have given me the clew. How the mystery of the ancient tornado and the rise of another forest would have co jured a new world of marvel and discovery!

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When I had written this sketch of my pasture field, I called in a little schoolgirl and read it to her. I wanted to hear her estimate of it.

"That's a nice story," she said; "but I don't want to study such things in school."

"And why not?" I asked.

"Because they are hard and dry," she said.

Poor child! She was thinking of her books; and I remembered that I also had written books!

I would preach the sky; for the sky compels one to look upward.

When in the open country, we are impressed most with the sense of room and with the sky. City persons have no sky, but only fragments of a leaky roof; for the city is one structure and needs only a cover to make it a single building. They have no free horizon line, no including circle laid on the earth, no welkin. There are no clouds, only an undefined something that portends rain or hides the sun.

One must have free vision if he is to know the sky. He must see the clouds sweep across the firmament, changing and dissolving as they go. He must look deep into the zenith, beyond the highest cirrus. We have almost lost the habit of looking

up:

"Look unto the heavens, and see;

And behold the skies, which are higher than thou."