The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1902-07-05
AMONG THE BOOKS
Kate Stephens Writes of "Next
to the Ground.
Author Writes of Farm Life OF
Tennessee.
BOOK IS A DELIGHT.
It is Full of Genial, Entertain.
ing knowledge.
Restful as the COuntry-Sunny
as Grass Lands.

Mcclure, Phillips & Co.. Mcmii. Pp-
~ :,
Next to the Ground" is q neat, fat
back book. bound tastefully in buck
ram of a soft ground brown. Chapters
Of its contents are entitled "Ploughing."
The Ragged Month THE Hog"
Shooting" Quail and Partridge"
Might Noises" THE Big Snow 1.-The
Horse" 1.-THE Oaks.'' Fox Hunting"
Insects" and Others as inviting in
heading and fascinating in discourse.
For each chapter is a pleasure whether
one reads it surrounded by the brick,
stone or asphalt of a town, or among
the sights and sounds of the nature it
Understandings and sympathetically
describes.
The country of the author is the grass
land of middle Tennessee, that South
ern countryside lying westward of the
AlleghanieS and eastward of the Mis-
sissippi, nearly midway between the
mountains and the river 1t is the
broad life of a big farm where all hu-
man arts and knowledge come, and in
crease pleasure, and enhance material
prosperity, and laud largeness to hu-
man thinking and feeling-a life In
which one must know woods and fields,
peculiar weeds and useful plants, the
animals men use for the work and for
food and recreation, and all the inti-
mate relations between family cellar
and kitchen and outdoor things. In
such life there is care and work for
hand and brain. but labor does not be-
come drudgery and work does. not
dwarf the spirit through excess Of 1t:
In other words possession is large and
leisure for enjoyment follows In small
er and poorer farms WEAKNESS of hand,
back and leg often forbid the sympa-
thetic Interpretation of nature-other
than that which comes through turn1p
or mutton.
1t is in such conditions as this book
dPaCrihpG that uDAn the poetry
of farming-the ideal human existence
of which poets have sung ever since
Virgil wrote his Georges and Bucolics-
before Virgil in fact, for have we not
Theocritus and others ?-and honest
folk like Cato Major in Italy and Thorn
as Tusser in England have offered pre-
cept and example.
In the rush toward cities which has
marked the population of the world
for the last half Of the century-during
which time the city arts of the masses
have increased, and the country arts OF
the masses have declined-it is very
curious fact that love of nature has had
an expression heretofore unknown. 1t
comes out in books interpreting animals,
plants, sky and flood. 1t comes In
novels of which two thirds are scenery
descriptions. 1t appears in marvellous
portraitures in oil and water colors OF
land and sea in every mood and light
1t is in many poems. SUCH for instance,
as Tennyson's Princess" This new
appreciation is doubtless a result in good
part of the studies and teachings OF the
great school Huxley Darwin and Tyn-
and each one separately to more init
mate understanding of our own brothers
and cousins. the animals and plants OF
our earth. 1t puts upon US tremend-
GUS moral responsibility. and it increases
religious awe and mems self respect.
The future life of our race will I'M
doubtedly be broader and sweeter be
cause of it, both for human beings them
selves and the animals we sometimes
speak Of as lower
The feeling, insight and close and
loving observation born of the modern
scientific spirit are the foundation of
this book. Without such feeling and
knowledge the book could not have been
written. There is all through it a phil
osophizing upon the evolution of this and
that-not heavy but genial, questioning,
the mental movement of an observing
and rejecting person The authors
mind has been sensitive to what was
before her eyes, and her sympathetic in
sight has interpreted meaning it
came to her. A field to her has indi-
viduality, not only in its growths, bu.
In the very soil which has its tastes, it's
humors, its wilfulness. it's nervous
prostration, its sluggishness. its perfect
health.
And if this is true of inert morgan
lied matter what shall we say of the
highly organized birds. rabbits. or Sis
Cow? That they have individuality?
Undoubtedly. And character? Of a GER
tainty, honesty and dishonesty, parental
love, dislike of certain of their kind
vanity, sense of humor, horror of death;
quite like humans in fact in these and
other traits.
The author tells the story of two car
dina1 birds which were saved from
starving during a great snow by con-
finement in a cage. She gives the &C
count charmingly and in detail One of
the birds caught sight of his image in
the lookingglass of a bureau. The tale
must quote in mart. "Ruff1jnO with
fiercely lowered wings and a sibilant
hiss. he rushed at the mirror The i'm
pact was SO violent he was thrown
backward several inches, but in
breath he was again up and at it.
Twice. three times. four times, he
charged this enemy, evidently as eager
and as angry as himself Each time
something cold and hard and smooth
held him back After the fourth failure.
he stood quiet a full minute, with his
head the least bit aside. Evidently he
was in deep thought. AS a result OF it,
he reached to the side of the glass
stretched his neck cautiously and peep
ed behind it. 1t stood perhaps six inch
es from the wall-room enough for a
bird but no bird there. In flash he
was at the other side peeping there
also" And yet with such exhibitions of
the thinking and reasoning power of an
fmals, there are still people who deny
that our brothers of the forest have
mental qualitiesi
The authors fellow-feeling is much
alive in the chapter on the horse and
the account of the mothering-or rather
step-mothering, by mares of young
foals- She preserves for US also a
darkey folk lore account of how Brer
Rabbit got his hare-lip, and also the
sly mana cement of Brer Fox in Kidding
himself of heas. Then there is story
of the homing instinct--how a horse
+ came back from remote and untrace-
able quarters to die at his birthplace, a
poor. half blind. mistreated thing he had
become.
One inhabitant of her latitude she
treats with detailed description-the
possum-his looks. his food, his persim-
mon tree and its fruit, his habits, his
parental instincts, and marsupial Sis
Possum nursery arrangement about her