New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1879-08-16
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Summer season reaches its height. The world
is literally turned out of doors The columns
of all the daily newspapers this morning
brim over with reports of brilliant hops at
Saratoga. of polo matches at Newport, or OF gay
parties climbing the oft-trodden paths of the
Adlrondacks or Mount Washington. Every
inland town and village has its journal
which records the dOings of its especial
Squire and Judge and " their ladies' at the
neighboring Springs or Mountain House.
Stayers-at-home look after these aristo-
cratic ady,Durers with longing eyes, and
picture each of them the centre of gilt
tering bathrooms. Half of the boy
world has gone out camping this Sum-
mer. The trOut-streams are invaded by
hordes of eminent lawyers and doctors i'll
ragged coats and muddy cOrduroys. New
York politicians, drOnes and bellies whisk
across the continent to the Yosemite or the
Hot Springs of tho Yellowstone. Every
stretch of ocean beach has its crowded sea-
side park, every hill its Prospect House The
few folk condemned to stay at home refuse
to stay III doors. They flood the city parks
and groves about the villages with archery
or croquet parties. The towns, in short, all
over the country are emptied, and hills, fields
and a-beach are populous with one uni
versal joyous picnic.
The odd part of the matter is that not one
man in ten thousand knows any more about
beach or field or mountain when he comes
home in September than when he went. He
finds fresh air or few dead fish or birds, and
that is the whole booty which he brings back
from his Summers raid. He carries his little
world of politics, newspapers and gossip out
there with him. With the awful meanings of
the sea before him, or the solemn recesses of
the forest waiting to be read, he goes on think
ing the same little thoughts which jog through
his brain in the Office or shop. "Will Jones
q meet his payments in September z" and
"Whom will the Democratic State Convention
"nominate n He wraps these old ideas about
him to keep out all others, just as he wears
his waterproof TO defend him from the rain, or
his smoked Eyeglasses to shut out the sun.
Most of our readers will very likely wonder
what else the man can do. Out in the coun-
try what resources are there beyond shooting,
fishing flirting and eating, except waiting for
the mail to hear the foreign or home news,
or watching the trains go pasts the distant
stat;On2 None at all for man educated only
to understand shooting or politics or gossip.
These things belong to the world of town; but
when one-tourth or even one month of the
wear is to be spent in the country, why should
we not educate ourselves to understand the
world out OF town. We are shrewd and GU
rious enough abolt the affairs of every nation
on EARTH even to the Antipodes We dig up
bits of old crockery. in our curiosity about
human affairs ages ago. Yet here is the sea at
our feet populous with peoples whose names
even we do not know. Here are the woods,
every tree volube with myriad tongues.
Nations hem us in, swarm about us silently,
whose habits, domestic life, wars, likes and
dislikes, are every whit as dramatic and in
structive as the doings of our long-dead saw
age ancestors. If you want to solve for your
bow the highest problems of mathematics and
Government, take him TO a hollow tree which
the wild bees have preGmpted and settled.
If YOU want TO fill his mind with the most
forcible idea of inhexible order and system,
show him the ways of the bird on the bush
beside him; of the black beetle rolling its
yellow ball into the sun ut his feet. One
davis study of the citizens of the dead tree
by the well, or the plants which grow not a
ward from the farmhouse door, of the layers
of rock in the railway cutting, will open a
world more wonderful and vast to your own
eyes than any outlook into European dlplo-
macy or American politics.
The general neglect of the teachings of
Nature by our educated classes, who are so
wide awake and eager for every other kind
of teaching, is singular enough, but the most
singular point Is its almost total neglect by
the religious part of the community. Good
church-going people sit at home and pore
over David's Psalms inspired by Gods voice
speaking through the starry heavens, or the
storm-wind rushing through cedars, but to go
out themselves and listen for that voice and
its meaning in storm or starlit heaven would
be pagan profanity in their eyes, The crowd,