The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-08-29

st. Johns (N. F.) Correspondence of the Detroit News-Tribune.
 MOVEMENT TOWARD NATURE, An Impulse That Affects All Glasses.
 Dallas Lore sharp. writing in the Worlds Work on "Our Uplift Through Outdoor Life, ]" makes these notes upon the increase of interest in nature and the resulting benefits: sThe longest, most far-reaching pause in our eager American life to-day is this halt to look at the out of doors-this attempt to share it's life; and nothing more signi- ficant is being added to our American character than the resulting thought fitness, sympathy and simplicity-the smile on the faces in Boston Common. Whether one will or not, he is caught up by this nature-movement and set adrift in the fields. Most striking, in deed, is the force and largeness of this movement. It is as wide as the coun- try, and includes all the human sorts. IA little five-year-old came over to me in the meadow recently for flowers. If I get new one, Miss Adams puts my name on the board" she said. Then she told me the names of five wild flowers that she had picked in the fields for Miss Adams, her teacher Down in the loneliest marshes of Della ware may, I know a light-keeper and his solitary neighbor, a farmer; both have been touched with this same spir- it; both are interested, informed and sympathetic.
 These are not rare cases. The nature Istudy of the schools is directing every child to the fields; the nature literature, and that perIneated with the nature spirit, filters down into the obscurest, least cultivated of our homes I sub scribe to farm paper (club rates, twenty-five cents a year), and find a page of it given over to Nature Stud ies," while the whole atmosphere of the paper is remarkably fresh and odorous of the fields. pass in the city, on my way to the station, three large book
 stores. Each of them has two show windows, and from March to July one l of each of these double windows is giv- en over almost continuously and com lpletely to nature books. I have before me, from one of these books, a little EeataIogue Of nature books-a s'select Hist for 1904, containing 233 titles, Va- rying all the way from The Trannp's Handbook" to one on The Farlnstead.' Z
 These are all recent, all dfstinctively nature books, as distinguished from un- imaginative, desiccated. scientific trea- | tises.
 1 There are other signs, a multitude of them, that show as clearly as the na- lture books how full and strong is this l tide that sets toward the open fields and woods.
 Less apparent, but no less real or striking than it's largeness, is the genu- lineness of the nature movement lHangers-on there are, of course-the fashionable, the idle, the curious, the Ifaddish-but they are only foam whirl- | ing along the surface of the stream. Ii lis pathetic to see Mature study taught by school-ma ans who never ldid, and who never will, climb a raj Hence; it is sa q (to speak softly) tc
 have the spinners of animal tales begin
 With a declaration of their absolute truth. But fibs and failures and super
 localities aside, there still remains the
 thing itself-the turning to nature, and lthe deep, vital need to turn.
 1 The present outgoing to nature is tc discover her, rather than to commune
 with her-to know her trees, her birds
 liner flowers, her myriad forms. This is
 ,Ie,
 the "how-to-know" books, and the"na-
 ture study of our public schools. And
 this is a necessary preparation. I The inexperienced, the unlSnowing, ltfe minimizing cannot love. One must l Hive until tired, and think until baffied
 before he can know his need of nature; and then he will not know how to ap-
 preach her unless already acquainted
 To expect anything more than seuriosi- | ty and animal delight fin a child is fool l ish, and the attempt to teach him any, thing more at first than to know the
 out-of-doors is equally foolish. Poets
 are born, but not until they are old. ! But if one got no further than his lhow-to-know book would lead hif he Estill would get into the fields, the best
 place for him this side of heaven. II
 means ozone for the lungs, red blood
 sound sleep and health. As a nation we
 had but just begun to get away from
 the farm and out of touch with the soil
 The nature movement is sending us
 back in time. A new move of physica
 soundness is soon to roll in upon us as 1.-the result, accompanied with a ewness lof mind and of morals. +
 For, next to bodily health, the influ- Ience of the4felds makes for the health
 of the spirit. It is easy to be good ir
 a good body and an environment oi
 largeness, beauty and peace. If il Imeans anything to think upon whatso. lever things are good and lovely, then il