Evening star., 1936-07-20

The above lines were written by a
in his heart and mind.
If he had been interested in the birds
and the flowers and the trees and the
ferns and the COWS and the pigs and the
squirrels and the dogs and the cats
II he had longed for a microscope, so
that he might view the slipper animal
cules at play, and witnessed the rotiferS
rotating
If he had wondered over the annual
mystery of seeds and bulbs, and tried
to figure out what was the matter with
his delphinium, and why his roses weren't
up to the glowing descriptions
If he had been interested, that is, in
all the natural things, instead of solely
in artificial, man-made things, he never
would have penned those lines, and he
and the world would have been better Off.
~ **
Sometimes we. think that farmers and
other men who work with the soil ought
to be the happieSt men alive, and If they
are not it is probably because part Of
their livelihood depends upon killing
things. They may not realize it, but this
latter infects them, just as war infects
men and leaves soul hurts which do not
heal in lifetime. Maybe another life
time
The man or woman interested in nat
ural things, which are to be found every
where, being a part of everywhere, has
this great advantage over others, that
the inevitable is seen for what it is and
Is accepted as something good
These beautiful bluebirds, carrying the
sky on their wings, are inevitably blue
birds. Give us a bluebird without the
blue, and it no longer is bluebird, but
something else.
Sometimes when we read about evolu-
ton, and think of all the huge time in
which the beautiful bluebird has been
so serenly blue, without a single solitary
change, we wonder about the theory.
We do not worry about the theory.
Nature Is at once the theater and the
actor, the playwright and the play, the
seer and the seen.
Man alone Of her actors here on earth
has the power to see the play somewhat
as given.
He should not miss the opportunity.
The four-legged things, the animals
whose legs have given place TO fins, and
many others, have not the power to see
much. They get peeps only at life, being
relegated mostly to the strange parts
they play without any knowledge of them.
Man alone has the power to both play
a part and to write part, to be in the
play and out of it at the same time, to
direct from the wings and yet to be
actively on the stage.
And this is wonderful, and something
not to be given over lightly, just to be-
come banker, or stock broker, or
clerk, or writer, or a cello player, cG
any one of the hundreds, nay, thousands,
Of ways of earning living.
Let no one get so immersed IN these
things that he has not time for the
natural things, all the tecming thou
sands Of little actors in fur and scales,
or soft greens, or glowing colors, or lights
and shades of life made and in the max
ing, ever changing.
Their lives are inevitable, so are ours,
we see If we watch theirs long enough.
AS it is good with them, so it is good
with us. Time and tide wait for no man.
It is man who waits for them, and finds
them good, If he looks long enough.
Only by finding time and tide in the
buShy-tailed squirrel, and the cicada, and
the rose, will he come at the true
meanings.