The Nature Faker

by Richard Harding Davis



Richard Herrick was a young man with a gentle disposition, much
money, and no sense of humor. His object in life was to marry Miss
Catherweight. For three years she had tried to persuade him this
could not be, and finally, in order to convince him, married some
one else. When the woman he loves marries another man, the rejected
one is popularly supposed to take to drink or to foreign travel.
Statistics show that, instead, he instantly falls in love with the
best friend of the girl who refused him. But, as Herrick truly
loved Miss Catherweight, he could not worship any other woman, and
so he became a lover of nature. Nature, he assured his men friends,
does not disappoint you. The more thought, care, affection you give
to nature, the more she gives you in return, and while, so he
admitted, in wooing nature there are no great moments, there are no
heart-aches. Jackson, one of the men friends, and of a frivolous
disposition, said that he also could admire a landscape, but he
would rather look at the beautiful eyes of a girl he knew than at
the Lakes of Killarney, with a full moon, a setting sun, and the
aurora borealis for a background. Herrick suggested that, while the
beautiful eyes might seek those of another man, the Lakes of
Killarney would always remain where you could find them. Herrick
pursued his new love in Connecticut on an abandoned farm which he
converted into a "model" one. On it he established model dairies
and model incubators. He laid out old-fashioned gardens, sunken
gardens, Italian gardens, landscape gardens, and a game preserve.