LEARN ONE THING
EVERY DAY

JUNE 15 1919     SERIAL NO. 181

THE
MENTOR

AMERICAN
NATURALISTS

By ERNEST INGERSOLL

DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE

VOLUME 7
NUMBER 9

TWENTY CENTS A COPY

FROM A PAINTING BY JOHN WOODHOUSE AUDUBON AND VICTOR GIFFORD AUDUBON.
IN THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, NEW YORK
JOHN J. AUDUBON
BY COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM

“Audubon,” says a recent biographer, Dr. Francis
Hobart Herrick, “did one thing in particular, that
of making known to the world the birds of his
adopted land, and did it so well that his name will
be held in everlasting remembrance.” The father of the future
naturalist was a French seafaring man and merchant-adventurer.
While engaged in the sugar trade
he frequently visited the port of Aux
Cayes, in the island then called Santo
Domingo, but now known as Haiti. As a
dealer in West Indian commodities, Captain
Audubon became a man of fortune.
The son born to him and a lady of French
origin at Aux Cayes, in 1785 (not in
Louisiana in 1780, as some writers give it),
was christened Jean Jacques Fougère. On
being taken by his father to Nantes,
France, when he was four years old, the
little boy was received into the household
of Madame Audubon, his step-mother, and
given the name of his father, Jean Audubon.

Even at this early period of his life young
Audubon forsook his classes at school to
roam the woods searching for birds’ nests.
In his early teens he began to make drawings
of birds that appeared near his home
on the west coast of France. For a short
time he studied in Paris under the famous
artist, Jacques Louis David. At eighteen,
Audubon was sent to America to learn the
English language and the business methods
of the New World. The tall, handsome
boy found much happiness in discovering
the wild denizens of his father’s farm,
“Mill Grove,”—a small estate near Philadelphia
purchased by Captain Audubon
during a visit to the United States. Here
Audubon first had opportunity to study
American bird life. He was a Nature lover,
and he was also a gay young dandy, “notable
for the elegance of his figure and the
beauty of his features.” When he met the
charming Lucy Bakewell, whose father
owned an adjoining estate, he immediately
loved and courted her. It was she who
became the guiding spirit of his life, who
inspired him and, with material assistance,
aided him to achieve his ambitions.
Though engaged in business, the youth’s
heart was in the woods and fields. His
method of posing lifeless subjects was
unique, and his drawings were expertly
done and very natural.

In 1808, Audubon married Lucy Bakewell
and took her to live in the frontier
settlement of Louisville, Kentucky. There
a son was born. With a wife and child to
support, Audubon continued his career as
a merchant, and for several years owned
and operated a store and mill at Henderson,
Kentucky. In 1819 he failed in business,
saving only a few personal possessions,
including his drawings and his gun.
As taxidermist, teacher and artist he
earned a scant living during several disheartening
years. His wife took a position
as governess, and later became mistress of
a private school in the South. The impelling
motive of the naturalist’s life was now
the publication of his “Ornithology,” for
which he continued to make drawings
under the most adverse conditions. Often
he was reduced to painting signs and giving
music and dancing lessons. To earn a
passage on a boat during an exploring tour
he would sometimes offer to do crayon
portraits of the captain and passengers.

Audubon’s genius as a portrayer of
birds was in time recognized by America’s
foremost artists. When he exhibited his
work in England and Scotland in 1826, he
was elected to membership in eminent
societies. He resolved to publish his drawings
under the title, “The Birds of America,”
all to be “engraved on copper, to the
size of life, and colored after the originals.”
The work was eventually issued (1838) in
eighty-seven parts, which contained four
hundred and thirty-five plates depicting
more than a thousand individual birds,
besides trees, flowers and animals native
to the continent of North America. In
America the price of the parts complete
was one thousand dollars. Today a perfect
set is valued at four times the cost of
the original. Many famous men and institutions
were numbered among Audubon’s
subscribers to his various works on birds
and mammals. Sometimes accompanied
by his sons, he traveled from Labrador to
Florida and from Maine almost as far west
as the Rockies, in his search for bird and
animal models.

In 1842, Audubon took possession of a
fine house he had built on an estate overlooking
the Hudson, near what is now
155th Street, New York. Nine years later,
“America’s pioneer naturalist and animal
painter” died here, surrounded by his devoted
family. The house he erected remains
in a fair state of preservation on a
secluded plot of ground below Riverside
Drive, and part of the land owned by him
has been given the name, Audubon Park.
His body rests on the hill above his home,
in Trinity Cemetery, amid friendly trees
that gave shade to the likely spot during
his life time.

Audubon Societies exist in many parts
of America. The National Association of
Audubon Societies for the Protection of
Wild Birds and Animals is an active
monument to the work and ideals of the
great naturalist.

PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 7, No. 9, SERIAL No. 181
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.

FROM A BUST BY W.E. COUPER.
IN THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, NEW YORK
J. LOUIS RODOLPHE AGASSIZ
BY COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM

In a picturesque parsonage on the shore of the Swiss
Lake of Morat, there was born on May 28, 1807, a
child who was baptized Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz.
His mother recognized early in his life the
peculiar attraction of her son to Nature’s creatures. His intuitive
understanding of animals and fishes she carefully nurtured.
With his younger brother, Auguste, the
small Louis delighted to catch the finny
inhabitants of Lake Morat by dexterous
methods of his own invention. He was
taught until he was ten by his father, a
clergyman, and his mother, a woman of
excellent taste and education. At fourteen,
when he was graduated from a boys’
school at Bienne, he defined his aims in
this mature fashion: “I wish to advance
in the sciences. I have resolved, as far as
I am allowed to do so, to become a man of
letters.” In later years he wrote, “At that
age, namely, about fifteen, I spent most of
the time I could spare from classical and
mathematical studies in hunting the
neighboring woods and meadows for birds,
insects, and land and fresh-water shells.
My room became a little menagerie, while
the stone basin under the fountain in our
yard was my reservoir for all the fishes I
could catch.”

At his eager request, Louis was permitted
to spend two years at the College
of Lausanne, Switzerland, where he pursued
with enthusiasm the study of Nature.
He afterwards attended the University of
Zurich and the University of Heidelberg.
At the latter famous seat of learning the
young Swiss naturalist, who intended to
become a physician, pursued the study of
anatomy, and passed hours collecting,
arranging and analyzing plant and mineral
specimens. At the age of twenty he became
a student at the University of
Munich, where he found of the highest
interest the study of the natural history
of the fresh-water fishes of Europe, while
continuing his courses in medicine. The
first work that gave his name distinction
was a description, written in Latin, of a
collection of Brazilian fishes that had been
brought back from South America by the
noted scientists, Martius and Spix. His
profits consisted of only a few copies of the
book, but the results were gratifying, as
his work brought him to the favorable
notice of Cuvier (coo-vee-ay), the renowned
French naturalist, who consulted
the descriptions of Agassiz in writing his
own “History of Fishes.”

In 1830, Agassiz went to Paris, where he
enlisted the friendly help of Cuvier and the
great Alexander Humboldt. It was his
habit to work fifteen hours a day at the
Museum of Natural History. He had only
a small allowance from his father, and he
was often hampered by poverty.

Returning from Paris, Agassiz lectured
on natural history subjects in his native
country. His exceptional ability attracted
the interest of scientific men throughout
Europe and he received many honors and
complimentary invitations. In 1833 he
married the sister of his intimate friend,
Alexander Braun, the botanist. The art
of his wife in drawing and coloring illustrations
for his volumes on fishes was of
the greatest assistance to him. In the
years that immediately followed his marriage,
Agassiz became interested in glacial
research and was an important member of
extended summer explorations in the Alps.
His theories relating to the structure of
glaciers were incorporated in a book entitled
“Système Glaciare.”

Having for some time desired to continue
his researches in the United States,
it was with delight that he received in 1846
an invitation to give a course of lectures
in Boston. As a lecturer he met with such
brilliant success that he was subsequently
appointed professor of natural history at
Harvard. From this time until his death
in 1873, Professor Agassiz was identified
with the cause of science in the United
States. His work as a teacher was supplemented
by repeated excursions to various
parts of the continent with the object of
studying forests, geological formations and
zoology. Though he had views that were
then in opposition to popular opinion, it has
been said that, “everywhere and foremost
a teacher, no educational influence of his
time was so great as that exerted by him.”

The splendid Museum of Comparative
Zoology at Cambridge, Massachusetts, is
a lasting memorial to the ardor and devotion
of Louis Agassiz. A son, who bore his
name, did much to perpetuate the aims of
this institution, besides being a distinguished
investigator on his own account.

A few years after his arrival in America,
his wife having died, Professor Agassiz
married Elizabeth Cabot Carey, a writer
and teacher. She accompanied the Agassiz
expedition to Brazil in 1865, and was
also a member of the Hasler deep-sea
dredging expedition in 1871-1872.

The last enterprise fathered by Agassiz
was the summer school of natural history
that he established on the coast of Massachusetts
a few months before his death, at
the age of sixty-six. His resting-place in
Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, is
marked by a boulder from the Swiss glacier
of the Aar where he pursued his first studies
in glacial science, and the pine trees about
it were taken from Swiss soil. Thus, writes
Mrs. Agassiz, “the land of his birth and the
land of his adoption are united in his
grave.”

FROM THE ROUSE CRAYON PORTRAIT MADE IN 1834.
NOW IN THE CONCORD PUBLIC LIBRARY
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
FROM THE WALDEN EDITION OF THOREAU’S WRITINGS.
BY COURTESY OF HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

The grandfather of America’s first renowned native-born
naturalist emigrated from the Island of Jersey
before the American Revolution. In Boston he
married a Scotchwoman. His son John also married
a lady of Scotch descent, and engaged in the industry of
pencil-making in Concord, Massachusetts. There Henry
Thoreau was born in the month of July,
1817. His mother, a staunch, keen, observant
woman “with a great love of
nature,” used to take her children into the
woods and show them the wonders and
beauties of wild life. Even as a small boy
Henry had opinions and expressed them
with independence, he was honest—”straight
as a furrow”—sensible, good-tempered
and industrious.

The Thoreau family made willing sacrifices
so that Henry, the second son, could
enter Harvard when he was sixteen. When
he was graduated he taught for awhile in
Concord and on Staten Island, but found
the occupation uncongenial, and soon took
to less scholarly ways of making a living.
Nimbly he turned from one trade to another.
He did surveying, or built a neighbor’s
fence, planted a garden, or worked
with his father in the pencil shop. He was
thorough and efficient in all that he did,
but, whatever the means of livelihood, he
pursued it with the single purpose of securing
just enough money to support his frugal
needs while he went off on woodland excursions,
communing, studying, writing.
Simple thrifty neighbors regarded Thoreau
as a visionary and reproached him for his
lack of the practical virtues that they held
in esteem. They called him lazy. Thoreau
(he pronounced it “thorough”), however,
was not wasting time. He kept a
daily journal, from which several characteristic
and delightfully refreshing volumes
were later compiled.

When still a young man, Thoreau resolved
to seek a retreat in the woods
where he could live undisturbed in his
enjoyment of the “indescribable innocence
and beneficence of Nature.” Emerson, a
close friend in whose house he had lived
for a time, granted him the use of some
land near Walden Pond, about a mile and
a half from Concord. Thoreau cleared the
woodland site himself and erected a small
shelter, at whose “raising” a number of
notable literary men were present. Beginning
with the summer of 1845, this philosopher
with the “thin, penetrating, big-nosed
face,” the deep-set eyes and spare,
long-limbed figure, this naturalist who used
neither trap nor gun, lived in his hut, remaining
for about two years. He planted
enough ground to give him food, and often
received his friends, who sincerely loved
him for his unique qualities of mind and
soul.

At Walden Thoreau compiled and wrote
two of his best-known books—”A Week
on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”
and “Walden, or Life in the Woods.” The
latter has gone into many editions in several
languages.

Thoreau avowed, “I went to the woods
because I wished to live deliberately, to
front only the essential facts of life.” So
he lived, a happy stoic, beside his little
lake. “A lake,” said he, “is the landscape’s
most beautiful and expressive feature. It
is the earth’s eye, looking into which the
beholder measures the depth of his own
nature…. It is a mirror which no stone
can crack, whose quicksilver will never
wear off, whose gilding Nature continually
repairs; no storms, no dust, can dim
its surface ever fresh, … swept by the
sun’s hazy brush.” In the solitude of his
days the lake-dweller found himself “no
more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion
in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or
a bumble-bee. I am no more lonely than
the mill brook, or a weathercock, or the
north star, or the south wind, or the first
spider in a new house.” He describes with
affection “the old settler and original proprietor
who is reported to have dug Walden
Pond, and stoned it, and fringed it with
pine woods”; and that “elderly dame” who
lived in his neighborhood, “invisible to
most persons, in whose odorous herb garden
I love to stroll some times, gathering
samples and listening to her fables; for she
has a genius of unequaled fertility. Her
memory runs back farther than mythology,
and she can tell me the original of
every fable, and on what fact everyone is
founded, for the incidents occurred when
she was young. A ruddy and lusty old
dame, who delights in all weathers and
seasons, and is likely to outlive all her
children yet.”

Thoreau’s vigorous, contented years
came to a close in 1862, when he was only
forty-five. He sleeps in the burying-ground
of his well-loved Concord, from
which he rarely strayed far during his
lifetime. Said his friend, William Ellery
Channing, “His love of wildness was real.
This child of an old civilization, this Norman
boy with the blue eyes and brown
hair, held the Indian’s creed, and believed
in the essential worth and integrity of
plant and animal. This was a religion; to
us mythical. So far a recluse as never to
seek popular ends, he was yet gifted with
the ability and courage to be a captain of
men. Heroism he possessed in its highest
sense,—the will to use his means to his
ends, and these the best.”

FROM THE JOHN MUIR MEMORIAL NUMBER OF THE SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN
JOHN MUIR
W.F. DASSONVILLE, PHOTOGRAPHER

In John Muir’s own story of his boyhood and youth
he declares, “When I was a boy in Scotland I was
fond of everything that was wild, and all my life
I’ve been growing fonder and fonder of wild places
and wild creatures.” Muir was born at Dunbar, on the
stormy coast of Scotland, April 21, 1838. From his grandfather
he learned his letters, before he
was three years old, with the aid of shop
signs. His was an adventurous boyhood,
punctuated by riotous school fights, hunts
for skylark’s nests and fox holes, scrambles
among the crags of Dunbar Castle, games
of running, jumping and wrestling, and
repeated chastisements by a father who
believed in the efficacy of the rod, and used
it to emphasize his disapproval of “shore
and field wanderings.” A grammar-school
reader gave the Scotch lad his first knowledge
of the birds and trees of America.
Eagerly he read descriptions of the fish
hawk and the bald eagle by Alexander
Wilson, the Scotch naturalist, and Audubon’s
wonderful story of the passenger
pigeon.

When John Muir was eleven years old
he crossed the Atlantic in a sailing-vessel
with his father, a sister and a brother.
In Wisconsin the father set about preparing
a home for the wife and children
waiting in Scotland. The future “patriarch
of the mountains” spent joyous hours
exploring pastures new—looking for songbirds’
nests, game haunts and wildflower
gardens. At night, when the household
slept, he would creep out of bed, though
weary after long hours of labor in the
fields, and read his treasured books, or
work on his inventions. For a few months
he worked as assistant to an inventor in
Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. Longing to
resume the education interrupted when he
was eleven years old, the youth returned
to Madison, where, despite almost insurmountable
handicaps, he was able to take
a four-year course in the new State University.
In vacation time he worked on a
farm, cradling four acres of grain a day,
then sitting up till midnight to analyze and
classify plants native to the region. At the
end of four years the embryo naturalist,
geologist, explorer, philosopher and protector
of Nature left his Alma Mater. In
his own words, he was “only leaving one university
for another, the Wisconsin University
for the University of the Wilderness.”

As a young man Muir traveled to the
Pacific Coast. There he met Dr. John
Strenzel, a Polish revolutionist who had
escaped from Siberia, and had gained fame
as “the first experimental horticulturist in
California after the Mission Fathers.”
The young Scotch scientist was taken to a
hill-top opposite San Francisco to see the
Strenzel orchards. On this hill he wooed
the darkly beautiful Benicia Strenzel, and
here he made her his wife, and lived with
her and their children and grandchildren;
and here above Suisun Bay, lie John and
Benicia Muir in a corner of the orchard
where the trees shed their blooms in the
springtime.

Dr. Strenzel gave his ranch to his daughter
and her husband when they were married.
Muir cultivated the fruit trees, the
grape vines and grain fields with such skill
and diligence that he reaped a goodly fortune.
He drove hard Scotch bargains with
marketmen—this great-hearted lover of
Mother Nature. But the money he earned
was for his family, not himself. Says one
who knew him well, “He wanted little
that money can buy.” Of his friend Edward
H. Harriman Muir once remarked,
“He’s not as rich as I am. He has a hundred
millions. I have all I want.”

While his crops were ripening, this
dramatist of the out-of-doors would take
himself to the mountains, abide on the
flowery uplands, study the ways of birds
and squirrels, of Big Trees and cataracts
and glaciers. In 1879 he went to Alaska.
During his explorations he discovered
Glacier Bay and the immense ice field now
known to the world as Muir Glacier. For
several years he made his summer home
in the Yosemite Valley, acquainting himself
with its botanical and geological features
and making notes for future books.
An appeal issued in his name in 1890 led to
the creation of the Yosemite Valley and
surrounding forests as a national reserve.
Muir has been called the pioneer of our
system of national parks. In the cause of
science he traveled to Siberia, South
America, Africa and India. “Tall, lean,
craggy,”—a great tree of a man himself,
he knew the forests of the world.

John Muir, “grandest character in
Nature literature,” died at the age of
seventy-six on the day before Christmas,
1914. He was the author of several rare
volumes of essays and reminiscences, most
of which were published after he had
reached the age of seventy. “To read
Muir,” says a critic of American literature,
“is to be with a tempestuous soul whose
units are storms and mountain ranges and
mighty glacial moraines, who cries ‘Come
with me along the glaciers and see God
making landscapes!'” Yet, “Look at that
little muggins of a fir cone!” the interpreter
of titanic symbols would exclaim,
lovingly stroking a brown trophy of his
beloved woods. Said a companion of
Muir’s during a scientific expedition,
“Flakes of snow and crumbs of granite
were to him real life.” His study of the
Water Ouzel is called the “finest bird biography
in existence.” He loved also to tell
of the Douglas squirrel, “whose musical,
piney gossip,” wrote he, “is savory to the
ear as balsam to the palate.”

FROM A BUST BY C.S. PIETRO
IN THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, NEW YORK
JOHN BURROUGHS
BY COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM

From his maternal grandfather, who was American-born
but of Irish ancestry, John Burroughs avers he
gets his “dreamy, lazy, shirking ways.” That
Burroughs, the poet of bee and bird, of flower and
tree, has dreamed to good account, all who read and love him
know. He got his first taste for out-door diversions in the
company of his aged grandparent, as together
they fished the streams of Delaware
County, New York,—the old man mingling
tales of soldier days at Valley Forge
with stories about snakes and birds.

Burroughs was born in Roxbury, New
York, April 3, 1837. In after years he
wrote, “April is my natal month, and I
am born again into new-delight at each
return of it.” His father was a school
teacher turned farmer. Burroughs’ mother
had little schooling, but, he says, “I owe to
my mother my temperament, my love of
Nature, my brooding, introspective habit
of mind—all those things which in a literary
man help to give atmosphere to his
work. The Celtic element, which I get
mostly from her side, has no doubt played
an important part in my life. My idealism,
my romantic tendencies, are largely
her gift.”

Young John was usually engaged outside
of school hours doing chores in field
and garden, but he was never too busy to
raise his head at the note of a “brown
thrasher,” or stop to inquire into the ways
of a wild flower nodding in his path.
He went hunting, but he used to come
back with little game. He was too intent
on watching the behavior of fox and
pigeon to aim his gun. He says in Dr.
Barrus’ intimate biography, “Our Friend
John Burroughs,” “I knew pretty well the
ways of wild bees and hornets when I was
only a small lad. What, or who, as I grew
up, gave my mind its final push in this direction
would not be easy to name. It is
quite certain that I got it through literature,
and more especially through the works
of Audubon.” He acknowledges, also, the
influence of Thoreau, and of Emerson,
“who kindled the love of Nature in me.”

By doing farm work and by teaching
Burroughs saved enough money to enter
an institute not far from his home. He
returned from his first visit to New York
“with an empty pocket and an empty
stomach, but with a bagful of books.”
All his money had been spent at
second-hand book-stalls. For several
years he taught school, marrying a pupil,
Ursula North, in the meantime. He was
twenty-six when, engaged in teaching
near West Point, he “chanced upon the
works of Audubon” in the library of the
Military Academy. He relates, “It was
like bringing together fire and powder. I
was ripe for the adventure; I had leisure,
I was in a good bird country, and I had
Audubon to stimulate me. How eagerly
and joyously I took up the study! It gave
to my walks a new delight; it made me
look upon every grove and wood as a new
storehouse of possible treasures.” His
earliest contribution to Nature literature,
a paper entitled “The Return of the Birds,”
was completed when he was a clerk in the
office of the Comptroller of the Currency,
in Washington. He held this position for
ten years. In his spare moments he
studied birds and wrote about them, finding
that “he had only to unpack the memories
of the farm boy to get at the main
things about the common ones.” The love
of the great Nature essayist for his native
countryside pervades much that he has
given us. “Take the farm boy out of my
books, and you have robbed them of something
that is vital and fundamental,” he
avows. From the beginning he liked to
write about rustic things—”sugar-making,
cows, haying, stone walls.”

Journeys to England, to the West Indies,
to Alaska with the Harriman Expedition,
to the Grand Canyon and the Yosemite,
which he explored with his friend John
Muir, to the Yellowstone (he visited the
National Park in 1903 as the chosen companion
of President Theodore Roosevelt),
widened the sphere of John Burroughs’
happy bird and flower hunting-grounds.
But he still loves best the scenes of his
boyhood, and he often returns in summer
to the Catskills to revive memories, and
write, and muse on the beauties of the
Delaware County hills and vales. His
home above the Hudson, at Riverby, West
Park, where he has lived for nearly half a
century, and Slabsides, his tree-shaded
chestnut-barked work cabin on a nearby
hill, are places of pilgrimage for children,
poets, wise men. “Nature lovers?” said a
visitor. “Yes, and John Burroughs lovers,
too.”

“The whole gospel of my books,” wrote
the sage of Slabsides, most distinguished
of living American naturalists, “is ‘Stay at
home; see the wonderful and the beautiful
in the simple things all about you; make
the most of the common and the near at
hand.'” Herein we have the keynote of
the enduring charm that distinguishes all
the Burroughs books about bursting buds,
birds, butterflies, leaves, and the seasons’
graces. Said Walt Whitman of a letter
written to him by Mr. Burroughs, “It is a
June letter, worthy of June; written in
John’s best out-door mood. I sit here,
helpless as I am, and breathe it in like
fresh air.”

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY PIRIE MACDONALD NEW YORK
ERNEST THOMPSON SETON
COURTESY OF THE WOODCRAFT LEAGUE

Ernest Thompson Seton, Nature illustrator
and writer, was born in South Shields, England, in
the year 1860. At five years of age his parents
moved to Canada and established a home in the
backwoods. He was educated in the public schools and the
Collegiate Institute of Toronto, and later attended the Royal
Academy in London. On the plains of Manitoba,
Canada, he studied natural history,
and became so efficient that he was appointed
official naturalist to the Government
of Manitoba. Between the years
1886 and 1891 he published two books on
the mammals and birds of the northern
province.

Following a period of art study in Paris,
Mr. Seton became one of the illustrators of
the Century Dictionary. Besides illustrating
many books about birds and animals
and writing the text, he has contributed
numerous articles to leading
magazines, and has delivered more than
three thousand lectures on natural history
subjects. Practically all of this author’s
books are contributions to natural history.
His “Life Histories of Northern Animals”
is a popular treatise on a scientific basis,
of which Theodore Roosevelt said, “I
regard your work as one of the most valuable
contributions any naturalist has made
to the life histories of American mammals.”

The writer made his first popular appeal
in “Wild Animals I Have Known,” which
ran through ten editions in one year and
has now an established place in animal
literature. Mr. Seton is a man of many
sides and sympathies. Probably no one
person has had a more profound influence
on the boys of America than he, for he has
taught the philosophy of out-door life and
has been a pioneer in such work. Someone
has used the term, “Nature Apostle,” to
express the motive of his activity. He has
made the things of the out-of-doors attractively
real to the man in the street, as
well as to the child. Mr. Seton likes the
woods. He likes to make things, to teach
and demonstrate Woodcraft with groups
of boys. He comes to town when he must,
but he is happiest at “Dewinton,” near
Greenwich, Connecticut, where he and his
wife have developed an estate comprising
buildings, gardens, woods, a lake and
bridges of rare interest and charm. All is
unique. Mr. Seton planned the buildings,
wrote the specifications and superintended
the building.

Much that Seton has written has exploited
the Indian—the ideal Indian—as
the first American, presenting him in the
most attractive fashion, and setting before
the youth of the land the skill of the
Indian in handicrafts and woodcraftsmanship.
He has not only popularized
things that have to do with the open air in
America: he was the first man anywhere
to organize in practical manner a definite
form of out-door activity for boys. This
he did in 1902 when he founded the Woodcraft
Indians. The principles of self-government
with adult guidance, of competition
against time and space, were first
laid down by him in those days. Later he
became Chief Scout of the Boy Scouts of
America. In 1916 he organized the Woodcraft
League of America, to carry out the
general ideals of his early work: “Something
to know, something to do, something
to enjoy in the woods and always with an
eye to character.” Chief of the Woodcraft
League, he says, “Woodcraft is lifecraft.”
This organization admits boys and girls,
men and women, and aims to carry over
into old age the real play spirit on the
playgrounds of Mother Nature. As a boy
he hungered for Nature knowledge, but he
had no books to guide him, and he declared
that if ever he had the opportunity he
would give to children what he did not
have. In the preface of his “Two Little
Savages,” he says, “Because I have known
the torment of thirst I would dig a well
where others may drink.”

Mr. Seton works as hard in building some
simple thing for a game for a boys’ camp
as in seeking facts about Nature or planning
a house. But above all he likes to
personalize the animals, the birds, the
trees, the winds and the seasons with his
pen and in his talks about Nature. And
because he loves and understands them
he makes them real to others, so that they
love them too. Some of the books that
have carried his name wherever Nature
literature has readers are, besides those
already mentioned: “The Biography of a
Grizzly,” “Lobo, Rag and Vixen,” “Lives
of the Hunted,” “Drag and Johnny Bear,”
“Animal Heroes,” “Biography of a Silver
Fox,” “Rolf in the Woods,” and “Wild
Animals at Home.”

1

American Naturalists

By ERNEST INGERSOLL

Author of “Nature’s Calendar,” “Wild Life of Orchard and Field,” “Wild Neighbors,”
“Art of the Wild,” “Animal Competitors,” and other Nature Books.

Photograph by Press Illustrating Service, Inc. JOHN BURROUGHS AT THE DOOR OF “SLABSIDES” His study on the hill above his home at West Park, New York

MENTOR GRAVURES JOHN J. AUDUBON J. LOUIS RODOLPHE AGASSIZ HENRY DAVID THOREAU JOHN MUIR JOHN BURROUGHS ERNEST THOMPSON SETON

In the sense of its attractive description and interpretation,
as distinguished from its coldly scientific study, the literature
of natural history in the United States is a modern development.
Americans were intensely engaged in the earlier years
of their history in practical affairs. A large proportion of them
were pioneers who were too much occupied in subduing the
wilderness and its harmful denizens to civilized purposes to be interested
in its beauties. Undoubtedly there were “Nature lovers” even
then. The poetry of James Hillhouse (1754-1832), and the fact that he
set out the trees that brought New Haven fame as the “Elm City,”
prove him to have been a Nature lover; but the class of readers now
known by that title is, like the phrase itself, of very recent growth.

Entered as second-class matter March 10, 1913, at the post office at New York, N.Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. Copyright,
1919, by The Mentor Association, Inc.

Alexander Wilson

Photograph by courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History, New York
PORTRAIT OF JOHN JAMES AUDUBON
Painted by his son, John Woodhouse Audubon, about 1841

Photograph by courtesy of the American Museum of Natural
History, New York
PORTRAIT OF ALEXANDER WILSON
After a painting made by John Watson
Gordon from an original picture of Wilson
owned by his sister

In Philadelphia, under the inspiration of Franklin, American science
first put forth its budding twigs in the peace that followed the Revolution.
Hither tramped the Scottish weaver-poet, Alexander Wilson, who landed in
2
New York from Paisley in 1794. After many
vicissitudes, he became acquainted with William
Bartram, whose botanical garden was the pride of the town,
and who himself had written a book of travel and observation which
may perhaps be regarded as the earliest production in the field we
are to cover in this article. Through him and other local naturalists,
such as Dr. Barton and the Peales, Wilson became
fascinated with the study of birds. Poor as he was, and untrained
in drawing, he formed a resolution to prepare a work describing all birds
of North America known to him, illustrated by colored plates executed
by himself. “I am entranced,” he wrote in 1804 to Bartram, with quaint
humor, “over the plumage of a lark, or gazing, like a despairing lover, on
the lineaments of an owl.”

There is hardly a greater marvel in literary history than the accomplishment
of the task of publishing nine
volumes of “The American Ornithology”
between 1806 and 1814, the last one a
year after Wilson’s death. As ornithology
(the science of birds) it stands surprisingly
well the test of criticism, and otherwise
it bears the same classic relation to our
literature that Gilbert White’s “Selborne”
does to that of England. Wilson’s style
is clear and free from affectation of any
sort, his diction simple and pure, illumined
by that joy in his subject which was increased
by every new discovery, and
sweetened by poetic appreciation and
genial humor. It is extremely fortunate
that, at the beginning of our out-of-door
literature, so excellent a model existed for
young writers. Every bird lover will enjoy
reading Wilson, and every would-be essayist
ought to study his pages.

3

PORTRAIT BUST OF AUDUBON
By W.E. Couper, in the American Museum
of Natural History, New York

HOME OF AUDUBON BUILT IN 1842
Overlooking the Hudson. From a lithograph made in 1865

THE AUDUBON HOUSE
As it appears to-day, below Riverside Drive, near 155th Street,
New York

John J. Audubon

While Wilson was at work, chance
brought John J. Audubon, a lively young
fellow of eighteen, to reside in a village
near Philadelphia. Audubon, the son of a
French father and a French Creole mother
of San Domingo, was born at Aux Cayes
(owe kei), in that island, April 26, 1785.
Well educated in France, and in easy financial
circumstances, he was fond of gunning
and of painting portraits of the game he
shot. Though Audubon and Wilson met,
the temperaments of the two were antagonistic,
and no acquaintance followed. It
was not until several years later that Audubon’s
own ambitious “Birds of America”
began to see the light after a long period
of wandering and misfortune, in
which nothing but the faithful
support of his talented wife saved
the author from failure.

Audubon’s monumental work,
now brings, in the original edition
with the folio-plates, $3,000
to $4,000 in the book market. It
contains far more material and
better plates than Wilson’s work,
and differs from it strikingly in
a literary way, for Audubon’s
style is characteristically French
in its liveliness, its interjection
of personal incidents, and its
imaginative exaggeration. Audubon’s
fame as an author is based
on the magnificent plates rather
than on the text of his book,
which is rarely quoted by modern
ornithologists, most of whose
writings are, however, far less
entertaining. Audubon, possessing
pleasing social gifts and
4
special opportunities, obtained a contemporary
publicity such as Wilson never enjoyed.

Photograph by courtesy of the American Museum of Natural
History, New York
LOUIS AGASSIZ
Demonstrating his favorite subject, Radiates
(corals, jelly fishes, and star-fish
tribe), before a class of pupils

A Group of Early Naturalists

A third important treatise on our birds
was that by Thomas Nuttall, a quaint character
in charge of the Harvard Botanical
Garden, and an original author in botany.
Like his predecessors he gathered his facts
by traveling extensively. His two volumes
are of great value, and peculiarly interesting
in the matter of birds’ songs.

THOMAS NUTTALL

A contemporary of Nuttall’s in Philadelphia was Dr. John
Godman (1794-1830), an eminent physician and anatomist, who
found time to write a charming little book, “Rambles of a Naturalist,”
which was the earliest example of sketches of that kind issued in this country. He
later prepared an illustrated “Natural History.”
This was the first systematic account, with engravings,
of all the American mammals then known, and it contains much enjoyable and
instructive reading, with good pictures.

From “Walden,” by courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Company
VIEW OF WALDEN POND FROM EMERSON’S CLIFF


From “Walden,” by courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Company
WALDEN POND
The cabin site is indicated by the cairn of stones

Audubon, about 1840, projected a more pretentious
work on our mammals than Godman’s, the text of which was to
be prepared by Dr. John Bachman of South Carolina, while Audubon and
his son Victor were to draw the pictures on copper. This plan resulted
in the publication, in 1847, of “Quadrupeds of North America,”—to
this day an important and interesting feature of our scientific libraries.

From “Walden,” by courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Company
THOREAU’S CABIN AT WALDEN
From a drawing by Charles Copeland

During a subsequent short period almost the only name to be mentioned
is that of Henry W. Herbert, a highly cultivated man and the author of
many novels and poems; but these are forgotten, while as “Frank Forester,”
the writer of “My Shooting Box,” “Field Sports,” and other manuals for young
sportsmen, Mr. Herbert
5
lives in the admiring memory of every reading man who enjoys tramping the
autumn woods with gun and dog. His descriptions of field sports and rural
scenes are so elegantly written, and are so instinct with the inspiration of the meadows
and marshes where he loved to roam, that they have rarely been surpassed.

From “Walden,” by courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Company
FURNITURE USED IN THE WALDEN HOUSE, MADE BY
THOREAU

Theodore Winthrop’s
“Life in the Open Air,”
and other books, have a
similar quality; nor must we forget N.P. Willis, T.W. Higginson, Starr
King, and particularly Wilson Flagg, whose
“Forest and Field Studies” came out in 1857.
Flagg added later a delightful book, “Birds
and Seasons in New England,” and had the
singular fortune to popularize for a familiar
sparrow the name “vesper-bird” in place of
its earlier and very commonplace name.

Wilson Flagg was one of that circle of
writers and thinkers who have made New
England, and particularly Concord, so
memorable. All of them felt strongly the
influence of their rural surroundings. Emerson
exhibits it—may be said to have lived
“close to Nature” in the sublimest sense of
the phrase; one realizes it more distinctly,
perhaps, in his poems, but it is to be felt
everywhere in his discourses. The same is
true of Channing, of Hawthorne,
Lowell, and the other essayists and
poets in that brilliant company.
All loved things out of doors, and
communicated to their readers the
gracious inspirations they received.

Henry D. Thoreau

Photograph by George R. King
JOHN MUIR AND A PINE TREE FRIEND

Among these New Englanders
one stands preeminent to our view—Henry
D. Thoreau, whom Channing
so happily called the poet-naturalist.
In him the observation
6
of Nature took the foremost place
as a life-pursuit; but it reflected
more than the science of Nature
alone, though that was there, too,
as it must be to make any out-door
book of real and living interest.
Let some, if they choose,
belittle “solid information,” and
extol “insight”; nevertheless the
inner meaning, the imaginative
perception of the value of a fact,
cannot be expressed in any useful
way unless the fact itself is
truly and accurately stated and
understood, and a reader who trusts altogether to a literary or artistic
presentation of out-door life is likely to get some very distorted notions.

Thoreau’s books stand at the foundation of what we now call American
out-door literature. It is probable that anybody who reads a single one
will be eager to read the others, but this might not happen if he began,
for instance, with the “Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.”
With “Walden” as an introduction to Thoreau, you get the man really in
place, for this is the story of his camp life on the shore of Walden Pond, and
has the least of those eccentric meditations which elsewhere sometimes
puzzle, if they do not bore, the ordinary reader. “Excursions” is somewhat
more discursive but equally delightful. “I wish to speak a word for
Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom
and culture merely civil,” he declares; and these essays are memoranda
of the author’s wonderful walks—wonder-full they were. “It was a pleasure
and a privilege,” wrote Emerson, “to talk with him. He knew the
country like a fox or bird, and passed through it freely by paths of his own.”

Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N.Y.
JOHN MUIR AND JOHN BURROUGHS
Called “John o’ Mountains” and “John o’ Birds” by
their friends

Thoreau died in 1862, having published
only two books, the “Week”
(1849) and “Walden” (1854). After his
death there were printed no less than
ten volumes prepared from his great
accumulation of essays in manuscript,
and notes and diaries. The
four entitled “Spring,” “Summer,”
“Autumn,” and “Winter” are mines
of treasure to the Nature student.
They consist of dated paragraphs
from Thoreau’s voluminous journals,
the selections being mainly notes on
animals and plants seen about Concord
at all seasons of the year, with
7
the queries and musings that occurred to him at the moment. They
are books to be owned and referred to by the naturalist rather than to
be read for entertainment.

The literary magazines now began to print articles of open-air observation,
most of which, then as now, dealt with bird life. This was not only
because birds are singularly attractive, and the most easily studied of all
animal groups, but largely because the United States has been very fortunate
in the ornithologists that first made American birds known to the
people. Instead of beginning with mere classifiers of dull, unimaginative
mind, we were truly blessed in having such pioneers in our ornithology as
Wilson and Audubon—one a true poet, to whom birds were emblems of
the graces, and the other a painter, whose descriptions are imbued with
color and vivacity.

THE HOUSE OF JOHN MUIR—in California


THE MUIR VINEYARDS AND ORCHARDS
Near Martinez, California

John Burroughs

Of the new writers of the end of the last century, none has become
more deservedly popular and beloved than John Burroughs, who, on April
third, 1919, entered his eighty-third
year. Ever since “Wake
Robin” was issued in 1870, he has
been giving us a succession of
essays, at intervals crystalized into
books, that have seemed like so
many windows opening on ever-new
vistas of a world whose
delight had hardly been suspected
by the general reader. They deal
not only with wild beasts, birds
and flowers, but with the homely
facts of rural life; and they tell of
experiences that make us long to
take to the woods and the streams,
to track the weasel
through the winter
snows, surprise the
secrets of the birds and
the bees, launch our
boat upon river or lake,
and drift or fish, and
then rest through the
long summer nights
upon a couch of boughs
beside a mountain fireplace.
The very titles
of Burroughs’ books are
aromatic with the fragrance
of woods and
8
fields: “Locusts and Wild Honey,”
“Signs and Seasons,” “Winter Sunshine,”
“Birds and Poets.”

As he has advanced in years Mr.
Burroughs has become more and more
of a philosopher, discussing deep
questions with copious information
and illuminating thought.

Popular Nature Writers of Today

Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N.Y.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
In Yosemite National Park. Yosemite Falls in the
background. In a career rich in endeavor and full of
achievement, America’s great citizen spent his first
years and his last years as a naturalist

DR. WILLIAM T. HORNADAY
Director of the New York Zoological
Park since 1896, and author of many
books and articles on natural history

To mention even a quarter of the
Nature books that have appeared during
the past twenty-five years is
impossible in this review. New England
furnished many of note, such as
the gracefully written and informative
books of Bradford Torrey, largely
reprinted from The Atlantic Monthly;
the lively chapters on wild life near
home by Dallas Lore Sharp; and the
useful volumes by E.H. Forbush. From New York’s presses were issued
dozens of untechnical nature-books written by such well-known men as
W.T. Hornaday, Frank Chapman, F.S. Matthews, W.P. Eaton, Ernest
Ingersoll, and the various authors of the “Nature Library.” A special
note must be made of the series from the pen of Dr. C.C. Abbott, who,
like Gilbert White and Thoreau, found on his
farm near Trenton, New Jersey, material for
half a dozen or more books, including “Rambles
of a Naturalist About Home,” “Upland
and Meadow,” and “Wasteland Wanderings.”
Dr. Henry McCook, a Philadelphia clergyman,
wrote in his “Tenants of the Old Farm” a
delightful story of the busy lives of ants
and bees. All are models of the value of close
and continuous observation of what is going
on day by day under our eyes, and should be
in every library.

One conspicuous reason for the rapid modern
growth of the department of Nature literature
was the facility in illustration effected by the
invention of the half-tone and three-color processes
of reproducing photographs and paintings,
accompanied by the steady improvement and
cheapening of the camera in its application to
9
field-study. These inventions enabled publishers to issue books with
accurate and beautiful pictures at a price previously impossible, so
that almost everyone might possess them.

Photograph by Press Illustrating Service Inc.
LUTHER BURBANK
Examining a flowering shrub under a microscope
in his garden in Santa Rosa, California.
He is called “unique in his knowledge
of Nature, and his manipulation and
interpretation of her forces.” The renowned
Dutch botanist, Dr. Hugo de Vries, named
Burbank “the greatest breeder of plants the
world has ever known.” This most beneficent
of naturalists, whose potato, stoneless plum,
spineless cactus and ever-bearing strawberry
have aided beyond all estimate
California industry, was born in Lancaster,
Massachusetts, March 7, 1849

In 1898 a somewhat startling innovation in Nature books appeared
with the publication of Ernest Thompson Seton’s “Wild Animals I Have
Known,” soon followed by others in the same style, such as the “Biography
of a Grizzly,” “The Sandhill Stag,” et cetera.
Mr. Seton is a field naturalist of experience,
and a portrayer of animal life of unique
distinction. His books are embellished with
remarkable drawings, but they are essentially
romances that humanize their animal
heroes. “Because of his remarkably
keen and quaint sense of humor and his
power to draw and write,” says an admirer,
“no other animals are as real and
lovable as his.”

DAN BEARD
National Scout Commander of the Boy Scouts of
America, and beloved by all sportsmen and naturalists

Other clever writers have produced animal
stories, of which the best are those by
Charles G.D. Roberts, the Canadian author.
Imitators appeared and obtained wide popularity
until earnest protests from real naturalists
and educators arose. Some of these
writers
were pronounced
“Nature
fakirs”
and were
discredited.
Mr. Seton has produced in his two
fine volumes, “Northern Mammals,”
the best treatise in existence on the
natural history of our more northern
four-footed beasts. He has also written
a capital book on the scenery,
people and zoology of northern Canada,
entitled “The Arctic Prairies”—a
good example of the many highly
interesting and instructive books of
travel produced within the past few
years by men who may be termed
hunter-naturalists, such as the late
Theodore Roosevelt, Frank Chapman,
10
Caspar Whitney, Dwight Huntington,
Mr. and Mrs. C.W.
Beebe, Enos Mills, William B.
Cabot, Charles Sheldon; and the
authors of reports on various
governmental exploratory expeditions
in Alaska and elsewhere,
especially Andrew J. Stone, E.
W. Nelson, Lieut. Sugden, the
Preble brothers, Wilfred Osgood,
Vernon Bailey, and several Canadian
travelers.

John Muir and Elliott Coues

BRADFORD TORREY Ornithologist and author; editor of Thoreau’s works

DR. ELLIOTT COUES An eminent naturalist distinguished for his researches in ornithology

One man among these explorers
stands out above all
others for his loving appreciation
of Nature in her wild state,
combined with a remarkable power of delineation, and a
gift of carrying to his readers not only the facts that engaged
his attention, but a share of his delight in his experiences
and of the inner meanings of them. This man is John
Muir, whose narratives of discovery in the Western mountains
are an immortal part of American literature. Never
will the present writer forget the inspiration of a day in
the woods with John Muir and John Burroughs! Different
in fields of work, in literary style, and, to a great degree,
diverse in habits of thought and views of life, they were at
one, and beautifully supplementary in their reverential
interpretation of Nature.

ERNEST INGERSOLL
Naturalist, editor and author

The widely awakened attention of Americans to animals
and plants inspired a desire to know them more in
detail, and this brought out from specialists a great number
of what may be classed as guide-books, descriptive of
trees, wildflowers and animals
of various kinds. The aids to bird study are especially
notable, many of them, in addition to their value as reference
books, containing much that is readable. None
exceeds in this respect “The Birds of the Northwest,”
by Dr. Elliott Coues (1842-1899), who, besides being
the foremost scientific ornithologist of his time, was
one of the most brilliant writers America has produced
in the field of prose composition. His “Key” is the
text-book of American ornithology.

OLIVE THORNE MILLER
One of the first American women
to write about Nature

Women Nature Writers

In this group of helpful books are to be found most of
the productions of the women that have turned their literary
talents toward out-door study. Olive Thorne
Miller’s bird books were early in the field; Florence
Merriam Bailey has guided amateurs to the observation
of birds “through an opera-glass,” and has revealed to
the East those of the West, as has Mrs. Wheelock of
California. Mrs. Fanny Eckstrom, Mrs. Mabel Osgood
Wright, Mrs. Doubleday (“Neltje Blanchan”), and Mrs.
11
Porter of “Limberlost” fame are familiar names in this sphere
of Nature lore. To Mrs. Anna B. Comstock we owe the best
manual for teachers of Nature study, and a good little book
on insects; Miss Margaret Morley has instructed us regarding
wasps; Miss Soule tells us how to rear butterflies;
Mrs. Dana leads us to the wildflowers,—and so on.

WALTER PRICHARD EATON
Writer on Nature subjects

Scholar Naturalists

I have said almost nothing about the investigators and
teachers of natural science in the United States and Canada.
One ought to speak of those great botanists, John Torrey
and Asa Gray, the latter the earliest champion in the
United States of the Darwinian view of organic evolution.
And there is Louis Agassiz (ag’-gah-see), who combined with
the intellectual keenness of the investigator wonderful power
of inspiration as a teacher. He it was that first aroused the
educational leaders of the country to the need of scientific
instruction for the masses. He gathered about him in Cambridge
a group of special students just after the close of the Civil War, almost all of
whom became famous for research and as publicists. His seaside school on Penikese
Island, off the Massachusetts coast, in 1873, was the forerunner of all our summer-schools.

FLORENCE MERRIAM BAILEY Author of “Birds Through an Opera Glass,” “Handbook of Birds of Western United States,” et cetera. Mrs. Bailey is the wife of Vernon Bailey, the well-known biologist and explorer

MRS. MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT Author of “Citizen Bird” (with Dr. Coues), “Gray Lady and the Birds,” and similar books

Spencer F. Baird did much the same service at Washington, founding that body of
men who have made history at the Smithsonian Institution, the
Fisheries Bureau, and other scientific agencies of the Government
prolific in research and in practical benefit to mankind.

To these patient, hard-working
men we owe not only precious
additions to original knowledge,
but learned instruction. Most of
them have been teachers in our
colleges and high schools, leading
writers in the best magazines,
lecturers to whom we have listened
with profit, and the authors
of our school books and works
of reference. Without their unselfish
labors in the search for
facts, and the generous gift of
their learning to the public, the
pleasant matter of our Nature
books would rest on the same
fanciful foundation as did the
fables and wonder-tales of the
Middle Ages.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

AUDUBON THE NATURALIST, 2 vols; by Francis Hobart Herrick. LOUIS AGASSIZ, His Life and
Correspondence; by Elizabeth Carey Agassiz. A LIFE OF HENRY D. THOREAU; by F.B. Sanborn. OUR
FRIEND JOHN BURROUGHS; by Dr. Clara Barrus. THE STORY OF MY BOYHOOD AND YOUTH;
by John Muir. JOHN MUIR MEMORIAL NUMBER OF THE SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, vol. X.

⁂ Information concerning the above books may be had on application to the Editor of The Mentor.

12

Some folks living in and near Concord
way back in the ’50’s used to say that
Thoreau was a thriftless individual who
wasted his time in the woods out at Walden
Pond and on the Merrimac River—that
he was of little use in
the world and would not
stick to any job. The world
does not know who the folks
were that said that, and the
world doesn’t care very much
about them. But the world
cares a great deal about
Thoreau, and wants to know
all about him.

HENRY D. THOREAU


Courtesy of Houghton Mifflin & Co. Publishers of Thoreau’s Works.
THOREAU’S FLUTE, SPYGLASS, AND HIS COPY OF
WILSON’S “ORNITHOLOGY”

Why? Because he had a
message for all of us that
love Nature; and, while he
seemed to some of the folks
of his time to be nothing
but a shiftless dreamer and
a shy recluse, he was looking
over the things in
Nature with a very
intelligent eye and
he was writing down
for our benefit a
great deal of valuable
information.
And, more than that,
he was a shrewd
philosopher. He
made clear to us that
there were two ways
of looking at things—one,
ours, of looking
at Nature from
the outside, and the other, his, of looking
from the midst of Nature outward at us.
He set down in his notes a great many wise
things that he had observed in us, viewing
us from the standpoint of the wild woods,
and speaking to us as an inspired denizen
of the wilderness might do. Thoreau
appraised his busy, industrious fellow
men shrewdly and intelligently—and he
appreciated them in his way; but he did
not see why he should find a job among
them and go to work every day, and put
his savings in the bank, and be a citizen
in his town, and run for office, or serve in
any way in civic affairs. For that lack
in him he was sharply criticized by some
people. Well, it’s too bad. I cannot find,
however, that John Muir, John Burroughs,
Galen Clark, or any of those wonderful old
“Sequoia Men” have had the temper or the
disposition to run for civic office or concern
themselves about whether they were in the
line of approved social advancement in any
town or settlement. All they
seemed to be concerned about
was whether they were right
with God and right with themselves,
and were living the way
that their health and reason
dictated; whether they were
finding the simple, fundamental
truths of human life
and nature, and reconciling
them by holding close to
the bosom of mother earth.
The social problems of great
cities did not interest them
greatly. They knew mountains
better than municipalities;
they knew a country’s
trees and trails better than its
treaties; they found
their happiness in
the solitude of the
woods, their joy in
the wilderness: their
incense was the smell
of the hemlock and
pine and the odor of
the smouldering
campfire, not the
scent of heated city
hotels, theaters or
music halls.

And while Thoreau
was pronounced long ago an idle
dreamer, it now seems that his life was
a very active and productive one,
for lo! here are many books written by
one, Henry D. Thoreau, that thousands
nowadays read eagerly and with loving
appreciation. And where are the enduring
products of the thrifty and worthy
souls that found Thoreau wanting in his
day? What have they done that interests
the world now? Only this—they scolded
Thoreau. By virtue of that they are immortalized.
We don’t remember their
names or how many there were of them.
They are simply recorded in history as having
scolded Thoreau. We have no more concern
about them. We
have Thoreau.

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