Open That Door!

by R. Sturgis Ingersoll

Any book or poem that gives you a keener appreciation of the crimson of the sumach, the whispers of the wild things, the glory of the sunrise or of the all-embracing broadmindness of Nature, will have done its part towards bringing literature into perfect accord with life. If my friend speaks truly in saying that Wordsworth has influenced two nations' outlook upon the world, those poems, laughed at by some for their quiet simplicity, have indeed arisen to the highest realm of literature and have become soul of our soul, mind of our mind, flesh of our flesh.

There are others—Wordsworth is not alone in his glory.

Henry David Thoreau, the perfect child of a cross country ramble, is my favorite. To write immortal words, it is said that a man must have an immortal passion, whether it be for beauty, or his God, his neighbor, his country, his lady, or himself. Thoreau sunk the love of all else in his passionate devotion to Nature. His Journals, kept year by year with ever a spontaneous freshness, are little else than an ecstatic love song dedicated to his mate,—the lake, the woods, the fields, the apple orchards, the winds, the colors, the birds, and all that lived and grew about his haunts near Walden. A lover sees a beauty in his lady's eye to which all the world is blind, and Thoreau senses a magic in an awakening Spring to which the senses of us lesser mortals are comparatively blunt.

His sincerity of appreciation was one with his marvellous power of observation. He did not have the scientific attitude of mind as had that fascinating Frenchman, Fabre, who wrote the biographies of insects in a way that makes you tremble at the wonders that go into the making of the life of a fly. Thoreau would have scorned the aquarium and cage methods of Fabre, not because of the lack of interest in the results, but rather on account of his love of Nature, naked, wild, and free. Upon the shortest ramble he saw myriad happenings, from the unusual frost crystal upon the web of a spider to the most subtle changing with the varying temperature of a bird's note; but it is all discovered without the microscope, without thought of entomological or ornithological records. A man should be afraid to say that the woods are a dreary place in which to walk upon a winter's day—let him read a page from the Winter Journal of our author and he will find that the book of Nature is never closed for him who has an eye in focus for her mystic letterings.

I say that Thoreau is my favorite and how could I deny it, since there is many a winter's day in the city when I am sick of the asphalt and the bricks, and yet unable to leave them, that I can turn to any one of his pages and be carried by his words to my favorite woods or stream, to the longed-for fields and roadways? And in other seasons when time is more prodigal, and nature so bounteous that there seems to be a glut upon the market, my senses, that might grow befogged, are given a tonic in a paragraph that makes the drowsy summer atmosphere seem pregnant with beauty and fascination. If you are cooped among the chimneys and elevated trains, Thoreau will bring you to the country—if in the country, he will multiply the pleasures of your walk, your ride, or fishing trip. He stimulates the best of life that is in you, and that is all we can ask of any literature.

Nature from one point of view or another has always been one of the chief inspirations of the poets. If you examine the literature of the human race since the days when Solomon sang "And the voice of the turtle is heard through the land," you will find the various aspects of the seasons, the songs of the individual birds, the beauty and sentiment of flowers, and even the habits of the different species of fish, continually reflected in prose and verse. America has been especially blest with men we must term literary naturalists. We have spoken of Thoreau, but there are also Audubon, Wilson and our elderly contemporary, John Burroughs.

Wilson and Audubon are especially famous for their magnificent colored plates of the birds of North America, but I ask all nature lovers to go to a public library and secure the prose works of these two great ornithologists. There you will find as interesting reading as will come to your hand in many a day. They were both pioneers in science, art and exploration; both children of nature, more at home in the forest than in the city; both enthusiastic, thrilled worshippers of their feathered friends whom they have so brilliantly preserved in their cherished portfolios. Because their work was accomplished one hundred years ago, before our birds were charted and when journeys of scientific exploration, even into the mountains of Pennsylvania, were made with almost the same difficulty as is now caused in the exploration of the most jungled South American river, the naïve spirit of the explorer, of the elemental pioneer, is in their every page. There is ever the surprise, the uncertainty, the joy of life and study among unknown and untrammelled things. Theirs was the joy of children who for the first time discover a blackbird's nest in the far-off meadow and their joy is communicated to us; we become children of delight, as when lying upon bur backs on the edge of a flowery field of clover we watch with fascination the darts of kingbirds dashing from the top of the nearby chestnut after the myriad insects.

John Burroughs, whose essays have been a joy upon many an evening and a stimulating remembrance upon many a tramp, with a similar freshness and unworldliness carried on the tradition of the earlier men. From his fruit farm upon the Hudson he continually sends us messages to forget our tea parties, our moving pictures, our country clubs, and really to find ourselves in the discoveries of beauties and life in the growing, nesting, and flowering things about us. One of the happy thoughts that we derive from him is the knowledge that to obtain the beneficence to soul and mind we (poor suburbanites tied to the necessity of earning our daily bread in the city) need not follow the "Long Trail" to the ends of the world of the furious globe trotter, Rudyard Kipling, but must only take store of the things at hand, find the same happiness in the quiet, civilized, thoroughbred-cattled meadow as we would hope to find up against a rugged blow in the Northern Seas off the coast of which "you've lost the chart of overside." You do not have to go so far from home to know the world. Thoroughly know the garden that you cultivate, study all that happens along the hedgerow upon the way to the station, and you will be richer than he who has racketed with half blind eyes from the Yukon to Patagonia,

Or East all the way into Mississippi Bay,

Or West to the Golden Gate.

In conjunction with the reflection of nature in books, I mentioned our scaly friends, the fish, without paying due homage to the king of all philosophic fishermen, Izaak Walton. How many devotees of the gentle art of angling have made of their own the wisdom, the beauty, the thoughtful content of the fisherman's classic, "The Compleat Angler"? A man once said to me that the next best thing to taking a walk was to read the accounts of Walt Whitman's rambles upon Timber Creek. I answered that upon the days you could not go a-fishing, you had best read "The Compleat Angler." I hold to this! Will not the men who stand by the trout, the bass, the salmon, the weak fish, or the gallant tuna and tarpon, and the boys who put their faith in the catfish, the sucker, the eel, or the perch, fall in together and be one in believing as the Venerable Izaak believed,