Lucy Larcom.
IN BIRD LAND.
I.
WAYSIDE RAMBLES.
Looking out of my study window one fair spring morning, I noticed a friend—a professional man—walking along the street, evidently taking his “constitutional.” Having reached the end of the brick pavement, he paused, glanced around a moment undecidedly, and then, instead of walking out into the beckoning fields and woods, turned down another street which led into a thickly populated part of the city. Surely, I mused, we are not all cast in the same mould. While he carefully avoided going beyond the suburbs and the beaten paths, as if afraid he might soil his polished shoes, I should have plunged boldly into the country, “across lots,” to find some sequestered nook or grass-grown by-way, “far from human neighborhood,” to hold undisturbed converse with Nature. My friend’s conduct, however, did not put me in a critical mood, but rather stirred some grateful reflections on the wise adaptation of all things in the world of being. How fortunate that men are so variously constituted! If some did not naturally choose the bustle and stir and excitement of the city, where would be our philanthropists, our Howards and Peabodys and Dodges? On the other hand, if others did not voluntarily seek quiet and solitude in Nature’s unfrequented haunts, the world would never have been blessed with a Wordsworth, an Emerson, or a Lowell; and in that case, for some of us at least, life would have been bare and arid.
It is true, we cannot accept Pope’s dictum, “Whatever is, is right.” We know that many things that are, are wrong; but doubtless more things in this paradoxical old world are right than moralists sometimes suppose. To the genuine lover of Nature, and especially to the lover of her unbeaten pathways, the ringing lines of Emerson come home with thrilling power:—
“If I could put my woods in song
And tell what’s there enjoyed,
All men would to my gardens throng,
And leave the cities void.”
Yet I doubt if any spot in Nature’s domain could be made so attractive as to overcome most persons’ natural love of human association. Mayhap even if this could be done, it would not be desirable. Should all men hie to the woods and leave the cities void, it would spoil both the woods and the cities. The charm of the woods is their quiet, their solitude; the enchantment of the city, its thronging life and activity. While I may be lonesome in a crowd, my neighbor is almost sure to feel lonesome in the marsh or the deep ravine. If all men loved Nature with a passion that could not be controlled, much work would be left undone that is indispensable to human life and happiness. I am glad, therefore, that there are many birds of many kinds; glad, too, that there are many men of many minds. The apostle does well to remind his brethren in the church that there are “diversities of gifts” and “diversities of operations,” even if all do spring from “the same Spirit.”