Jeannette Augustus Marks

“ It would be joy to be a sea gull
At dusk, at dawn of day,
And through long sunlit hours.
Sea gulls I saw carrying the night upon their backs,
Wide tail spread crescent for the moon and stars—
The moon a glowing jelly fish,
The stars foam flecks of light;
And I thought
It would be joy to be a sea gull!
How I would dart with them,
Strike storm with coral spur,
Rip whirling spray of angry tides,
Snatch mangled, light-shot offal of the sea,—
Torn, tossed and moving terribly;
And stare for stare answer those myriad eyes
That float and sway, stab, sting and die away! ”

“ If gold is her end, and not the means to a nobler end, then she will find herself constantly sacrificing higher issues to that, and lowering her one-time ideals. Truly the woman who marries solely for the comforts of a home, the woman who teaches, or nurses for "pay" alone, has her reward, and that is in self-destruction. She is a carrier of barbarism, not of culture; of disease, not of health; of tribulation, not of joy. The only real reward there can be lies in the idealism, the joy, the strength of the work done and in a mind and heart conscious of having done their best. ”

“ Yet our lakes have been so abused by this process that fly-fishing is frequently impossible. To sit or stand in a canoe, casting your line, the canoe taking every flex of your wrist; to see the bright flies, Parmachenee Belle or Silver Doctor—or whatever fly suits that part of the country in which you are camping—alight on the surface as if gifted with veritable life, and then to be conscious of the rush, the strike, and to see a rainbow trout whirling off with your silken line, is to experience an incomparable pleasure. ”

“ Geoffrey's imagination was to English story-telling what the sunlight is in making a tulip grow. Story-telling grew out of the Chronicles, the so-called historical literature. The men of Geoffrey's time said that "he had lied saucily and shamelessly." No doubt he had. Yet these same men could not help reading the stories he told, for they were so interesting that all men read them. What he had done was to take several Welsh legends, put them together cleverly, as a carpenter joins a delicate bit of woodwork, translate these Welsh legends into Latin and call the work a Chronicle. ”

“ We wish you to enjoy all the frolics, to feel how jolly it is to be out-of-doors in the woods and fields and lakes, climbing, canoeing, picnicing, and swimming.
But still more, we hope that you will realize that more wonderful than the most wonderful fairy story ever told is the marvel of the created life of these little insects; we want you to come to know something of their joys and troubles; we want you to learn how to be kind to them, and how they may be useful to you; and we want you to find out for yourselves the places they take in the great plan of creation. ”

“ Why should this great silence, this friendly wilderness power be considered anti-social? Really, is it not most social? Does it not bring us all nearer together, sometimes even when we are afraid to be nearer to one another? Does it not make us all equal, making us aware of those profound things in life which we all have in common? Silence can say, can teach, what speech can never, to the end of the world, learn to express. ”

“ The only hope that can last is hope that is not wholly centred in ourselves, but has some thought for others and our service to them. Work devoid of inspiration and ideals, work done merely for one's self, study pursued with only a degree as an end or for the sake of "pay" as a teacher, turns school and college into a market-place, a place of barter, where in exchange for so much energy and so much money we may acquire a certain position and livelihood. Only that work in which one has the consciousness of being, or becoming, useful to others, brings joy that will endure. ”

“ He preferred his breakfast, however, from the clover, for he said that the dew on them was fresher than on the blossoms up by the big house. It made Hummy's beak feel cool and fresh, for all the world like a morning bath in the clear, fresh dew. All the time Hummy sang away and made everybody within hearing distance happy because of his tunefulness. And he waved his wings about so prettily that it made you feel good to see them, they were such little rainbows of color. ”

“ You may travel the world over before you can find, made by man's hand, such mystery and beauty as lie about you in the natural world. All the dynasties of Egypt could not shape the scale on a moth's wing. All the religion of the past can shape nothing that will do the Creator so much reverence as the world He has created, the world we have about us. ”

“ Among massed trees sleep-hung with jewelled fruit;
Antiquity against a shadowed sky,
And everywhere old gardens where men loved
So long ago, and the moon rose on vows
And thirsty human lips aching to meet;
And the moon set on darkling ivory-petalled rows
Of lilies and on hands dim with loneliness:—
Below, Amalfi’s campanile plays
Its even-song, full chant and antiphon,
A wish, a hope, a call from star to star. ”

“ And the Great Palace is the Palace of English Literature.
Over those doors are many names written—names never to be forgotten while the English tongue is spoken. And in that palace there is fairyland; there are giants and monsters; there are warrior heroes like Beowulf, and saintly heroes like Cuthbert; there are noble boys like Alfred; there are poets, princes, lovely ladies, little children, spirited horses, faithful dogs ”

“ The finery is as out of place in camp as your camp boots would be at a garden party at home. But several middy blouses, more shoes, more stockings, another skirt, a number of towels, a few more books—all will prove just that much added food for pleasure; first, last, and always, be comfortable in camp. There is no reason for being uncomfortable unless you enjoy discomfort. Anything, however, over and above what you actually need will be only a hindrance. Those who go camping, if they go in the right spirit, are looking for the simple life ”

“ And there is another and very important joy in work—the sense that one is being equipped for the work of the world, for usefulness. The mere feeling that one's powers are being developed brings joy with it. There is still another joy which every one of us must covet—the sense of entering into the intellectual riches of the world, its wonders of science and art and letters, with the feeling that we have a part in a great treasure, a treasure which, unlike gold and precious stones, men have never been able to gauge or to exhaust. ”

“ And gold upon the lake—pale leaf of drifting waters
Cut by the wild duck’s close, sharp flight—frets him.
For he must store in steep sky granaries much bannered gold
With which to hang a hundred winter dawns and dusks.
Still, he spares a little for my garden’s need,
Spreading it in marigolds and frost,—
It is September then,—October, too.
The bee, the big bee, the burning bee
Begins and ends in gold.
In spring, knocking the snow from rosy apple bloom,
He climbs the sky with fagots on his back
To scatter them in yellow willow twigs and daffodils ”

“ What a strange world it would be if there were no insects in it! We should have no little crickets chirping in the sunny fields or in the dark corners and cracks of our houses. There would be no katydids singing all night, no clacking of the locusts in the tall grass along dusty roads, no drowsy hum of bees. There would be no little ants and big ants digging out underground tunnels and carrying the grains of sand as far from their doorways as possible. ”

“ Ugh! with a jar up flew the window and Dizzy, thinking faintly about little Flutter, cuddled among the clover blossoms, was swept into the room and its blinding light. The soft, warm fragrance of the night air reminded him of the cozy little place on the grass at the foot of the hill—the little birch-leaf home. Mother Moth, Flutter, and Father Buzz were all down there now, and listening perhaps to the Cob-web Symphony played by the Marsh Grass Vesper Quartette. And this, too, was the evening when the June Bug was to sing the June Bug Wing Solo, composed by himself. ”

“ All his training was teaching him how to be a soldier. Yet there was something for which Alfred cared even more. All about them in those days were the Danes, the fiercest of fighting-men. Government, the gentle religion of Christ, peace, had been almost dislodged by these fierce, heathen Danes. Yet in the midst of the war-filled years of his boyhood and young manhood Alfred was dreaming of what English books, of what education in their own tongue, might do for his people.
And even in war times they were very busy just getting things together in order to live. ”

“ Maybe it is not, but if you have ever heard the screams of an animal, terrified by fire, being burned to death, as I have; if you have ever heard the blind frenzied terror of the stampede which takes place, the beating of hoofs and the screams of creatures that are trying to escape, but do not know how, as I have heard them—then you will have a new sense of the tragedy which a forest fire means to the creatures of the forest. Of a forest fire it may be said, as of an evil, that there is absolutely no good in it: it is all bad, all devastating, all injurious. ”