and wild places. The benedicite of the Druid woods, always appreciated
by the few, like Lowell, is coming to be understood by the many. There
is an increasing desire to get away from the roar and rattle of the
streets, away from even the prim formality of suburban avenues and
artificial bits of landscape gardening into the panorama of woodland,
field, and stream. Men with means are disposing of their palatial
residences in the cities and moving to real homes in the country,
where they can see the sunrise and the death of day, hear the rhythm
of the rain and the murmur of the wind, and watch the unfolding of the
first flowers of spring. Cities are purchasing large parks where the
beauties of nature are merely accentuated, not marred. States and the
nation are setting aside big tracts of wilderness where rock and rill,
waterfall and cañon, mountain and marsh, shell-strewn beach and
starry-blossomed brae, flowerful islets and wondrous wooded hills
welcome the populace, soothe tired nerves and mend the mind and the
morals. These are encouraging signs of the times. At last we are
beginning to understand, with Emerson, that he who knows what sweets
and virtues are in the ground, the waters, the plants, the heavens,
and how to come at these enchantments, is the rich and royal man. It
is as if some new prophet had arisen in the land, crying, "Ho, every
one that is worn and weary, come ye to the woodlands; and he that hath
no money let him feast upon those things which are really rich and
abiding." While we are making New Year resolves let us resolve to
spend less time with shams, more with realities; less with dogma, more
with sermons in stones; less with erotic novels and baneful journals,
more with the books in the running brooks; listening less readily to
gossip and malice, more willingly to the tongues in trees; spending
more pleasureful hours with the music of bird and breeze, rippling
rivers, and laughing leaves; less time with cues and cards and colored
comics, more with cloud and star, fish and field, and forest. "The