Jasper County Democrat, Volume 7, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 November 1904 — A WALK IN THE WOODS. [ARTICLE]

A WALK IN THE WOODS.

tntnon Says It'a One of the Secret* For Dodging Old Age. Few men know how to take a walk. The qualifications of a professor are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, ail eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much, If a man tells me that he has an intense love of nature, I know, of course, that he has none. Good observers have the manners of trees and animals, tlielr patient good sense, and If they add words 'tjs only when words are better than silence. But a loud singer or a story teller or a vain talker profanes the river and the forest and is nothing like so good company as a dog. When Nero advertised for a new luxury a walk in the woods should have been offered. 'Tis one olf the secrets for dodging old age. for nature makes a like impression on age as on youth. Then I recommend It to people who are growing old against their will. A man In that predicament, if he stands before a mirror or among young people, is made quite too sensible of the fact, but the forest awakes in him the same feeling it did when he was a boy, and he may draw a moral from the fact that 'tis the old trees that have all the beauty and grandeur. I admige the taste which makes the avenue to a house, were the house never so small, through a wood: besides the beauty, it hr.:; a » ositive effect on manners, as it disposes the mind of the inhabitant and of ids guests to the deference due to each. Some English reformers thought tlie cattle made all this wide space necessary between house and house and that if there were no cows to pasture less land would suffice. But a cow does not need so much land as the owner’s‘eyes require between him and bis neighbor.—Ralph Waldo Emerson in Atlantic.