But I have wandered; let us come back to books. If books, even those descriptive of nature, are out of place in the woods, meadows, or by the brook-side, when should they be read? Clearly, when the scenes they treat of are not accessible. Why should we be entertained with a description of a bird or flower, when they are both before us? It seems incredible that any one should be better pleased with another’s impressions, however cunningly told, than with those of his own senses. It is a strange mental condition that can delight in the story of a bird, and yet have no desire to see the creature; to be a witness to all the marvelous cunning that this bird exhibits. Few are those among us whose outings cover a lifetime; and when the happy days of freedom come to us, let books be kept behind, and with untrammeled eyes and ears let us drink in the knowledge that comes to us at no other time. Summer is all too short a season for other occupation than enthusiastic sight-seeing and sound-hearing.
Long before autumn most of us must be back to the busy town. Business demands our work-day hours; and now, during the leisure of long winter evenings, with what delight one may recall vacation-days, reading outdoor books! The library now becomes the mountain, lake, or river. With Thoreau, Burroughs, or Jeffries at hand, one can hear the summer birds in the shrill whistle of the wind, and the babbling of summer brooks in the rattle of icy rain.
For permission to reprint, in this collected form, the brief essays here brought together, the author is indebted to Messrs. Harper & Bros., D. Appleton & Co., the editors of the Christian Union, Christian at Work, and of Garden and Forest, of New York; and to the editor of the American, of Philadelphia Pa.
C. C. A.
Trenton, New Jersey, September 1, 1890.
CONTENTS.
| PART I.—IN WINTER. | |
| PAGE | |
| A Winter Sunrise | [1] |
| Midwinter Minstrelsy | [8] |
| A Cold Wave | [14] |
| The Woods in Winter | [22] |
| Old Almanacs | [29] |
| A Quaker Christmas | [41] |
| A New Place to Loaf | [46] |
| Round about a Spring in Winter | [51] |
| A Bay-Side Outing | [60] |
| Free for the Day | [66] |
| An Open Winter | [82] |
| A Foggy Morning | [89] |
| The Old Farm’s Wood-Pile | [96] |
| PART II.—IN SPRING. | |
| The April Moon | [105] |
| Concerning Small Owls | [111] |
| A Hidden Highway | [117] |
| Weathercocks | [127] |
| Apple-Blossoms | [133] |
| The Building of the Nest | [139] |
| A Meadow Mud-Hole | [147] |
| An Open Well | [164] |
| PART III.—IN SUMMER. | |
| A Noisome Weed | [171] |
| A Wayside Brook | [178] |
| Wayside Trees | [183] |
| Skeleton-Lifting | [186] |
| Why I prefer a Country Life | [190] |
| A Midsummer Outing | [197] |
| A Word about Knowledge | [203] |
| The Night-Side of Nature | [207] |
| The Herbs of the Field | [215] |
| PART IV.—IN AUTUMN. | |
| A Lake-Side Outing | [221] |
| Dew and Frost | [227] |
| A Hermit for the Day | [232] |
| Snow-Birds | [243] |
| Blue Jays | [249] |
| The Growth of Trees | [257] |
| Fossil Man in the Delaware Valley | [260] |
PART I.