Margaret Warner Morley

“ They are our little friends of the early summer,—snowdrops and crocuses and spring beauties and dogtooth violets; mandrakes, too, and Jack-in-the-Pulpit.
These bulbs and thick roots are full of plant food; and this is where the plant has gone to. It has curled up, so to speak, in these bulbs and roots and gone to sleep till next spring. Then it will wake up. It will hardly wait for the snow to go off before it pushes out a bud. The snowdrop does not wait, but sometimes blossoms right under the snow. In a few days the woods that looked so dead and bare are as gay as you please. ”

“ There is something deeper than mere knowing, which the parent wishes to kindle, like a sacred fire which can never be extinguished, in the soul of his child. That is, a high reverence for the noble mystery of human life in its inception, and a deep love for his parents and a profound faith in them, such a love and reverence that any impulse to subvert the forces of his own life may be met with successful resistance. ”

“ Some are better than others, but Mother Nature lets them grow if they are strong enough and can find food. At last the blooming comes. The flowers do their best. The strong ones make large, bright flowers full of color and full of sweetness. Mother Nature smiles at them and is pleased. The weaker flowers do their best; they are not so bright nor so large. Mother Nature smiles at them, for she loves them, too, and she will tell them what to do. ”

“ So Baby Mitchell had a whole feather-bed to himself that night, and he slept without a sound until the lady unrolled him the next morning.
She hardly expected to find him alive, he was such a tender little thing to undergo such hardships. Starving, and sleeping under ladies’ belts, and being carried in that way up a rough mountain and then down again, and fed on condensed milk and cow’s milk, and put to sleep at last in a feather-bed, one would think would be enough to wear out any squirrel so young it couldn’t open its eyes. ”

“ Let the child who finds such a treasure call the rest, that they too may enjoy the pretty picture; let the children get down and put their faces against the flowers if they want to smell them, and then go away leaving the beauty undisturbed. Their adult comrade at such a time by exclaiming appreciatively over the sweetness of the little scene, the bright flowers against the dark tree, the green moss growing over the rock at one side, can often open young eyes to a harmony of beauty which will cause the whole composition to be recalled later with pure pleasure ”

“ Only in the hyacinth bed it is different, for there the hyacinths have waked up; their stiff leaves have opened the door of the earth for the blossoms to come out. The flower clusters are nearly ready to bloom, but the buds are still green. The tall stem has lifted them up into the air and sunlight, and, although the air is still cold, they continue to grow. ”

“ There was no road through the forest, only a narrow path that went waggling along over rocks and rivers and tangly tree-roots, and nobody but a mountaineer could have found it. The lady followed her guide miles and miles, and would have felt very tired, only the air is so refreshing up by the big mountain that you cannot feel very tired, not if you walk ever so far. ”

“ Cricket is in the mood for chirping, he raises his wing covers and rubs them together.
This throws the stiff membranes of which the wing covers are made into vibration, and the result is the cheery call of our little black fairy.
Little Nell says the cricket is more like a brownie than a fairy, and maybe she is right.
You can easily see the crickets rub their wings together if you watch in the fall of the year. ”

“ Early in the spring the snowdrops and crocuses peep out, and then they go away.
We do not think much about it, for other flowers have come in their places.
Spring beauties and bloodroots shine in the woods, and then they go away. But the mandrakes have come with their umbrella leaves, and then the columbines and roses ask for a welcome.
After awhile we can find no more mandrakes and columbines, only yellow apples and brown seed-pods. ”

“ Many birds pair for life, returning to the same nest year after year. Nor should the instruction fail to impress upon the young mind the advance of love and tenderness on the parent for the offspring as we ascend the scale of life. The flowers, the fishes, the frogs, entrust their offspring to the care of Mother Nature; the birds cannot do this. The mother and the father of the helpless little creatures take deep joy in sacrificing their own freedom and strength and time to this loving duty. A bird will even lose its life for its young, trying to drive off an enemy ”

“ You see now what was happening,—Little Mitchell was no longer a baby. He was fast getting to be a handsome grown-up squirrel, with all the stripes and markings of one. His face seemed to shorten up and change in expression,—just as people change when they grow out of childhood into grown-up [220] men and women. Only their faces grow longer instead of shorter.
It was very pretty to watch these changes come over Little Mitchell; but one thing troubled his lady,—as time went on he did not get well. He would seem pretty well for a long time, but the poor little hind legs got weaker and weaker. ”

“ In all nature-work with the child, the subjects treated should be made interesting and beautiful. This cannot be too strongly insisted upon. The child has a right to the pleasure, the elevation of sentiment, the play of imagination which the contemplation of nature is able to give in such a peculiar degree. He has a right to the romance of the flower, cloud, bird, fish, animal life, plant life, in all their ramifications. It is a part of his soul-development. ”

“ It is spring, and the air is moist and warm. It rains often, and the plants have all the water they need.
What fun it must be to come out in the world! What joy to unfold bright flowers in the shadowy woods! ”

“ The plant is alive; it eats, it breathes; sometimes it even moves. It breathes the same air that we do, only it takes it in through tiny pores in the leaves. Eating and breathing, the plant continues to grow, leaf after leaf unfolding. At last, in the axil of one of the leaves [Pg 63] there comes a little bud that does not unfold into a leaf but into a flower.
The appearance of this first blossom on the plant the child has himself raised from the seed will be watched with eagerness, and its advent can be made a subject of general pleasure and notice in the home. ”

“ He was very fond of playing with his tail, and when he was on the floor he would often chase it just as a kitten does. It was a fine tail by this time, long and bushy; and when he got excited he would fluff it out until it looked like a real grown-up squirrel’s tail.
But talking of tails, the most outrageously funny thing Little Mitchell ever did was to roll himself up into a ball, with his tail hugged in his arms and held between his teeth, then go over and over, like a ball, from one end of the platform to the other. ”

“ But there will be more morning-glories, for the vine has stored some of its life in the seeds, and they will not fade and cease to work. All that is left of the life of the vine is in the seeds. All the morning-glories that will grow and delight us with their bright flowers next summer lie packed away in the dark seeds. ”

“ Nothing is so sensitive as the reproductive system. Lacking certain stimuli which it finds in its natural surroundings, it will not become active. The goldfish in the globe will, if a female, have the ovary containing undeveloped ova, the male will have the testicles containing the fertilizing cells, but these will not mature. It is as though the whole system of the fish missed the freedom of space, the changes of season, the variety of substances at the bottom of the water,—all that goes to make "home" for it, and so languished in body as well as spirits. ”

“ MARGARET WARNER MORLEY has written in “Life and Love” a book which should be placed in the hands of every young man and woman. It is a fearless yet clean-minded study of the development of life and the relations thereof from the protoplasm to mankind. The work is logical, instructive, impressive. It should result in the innocence of knowledge, which is better than the innocence of ignorance. It is a pleasure to see a woman handling so delicate a topic so well. Miss Morley deserves thanks for doing it so impeccably. ”

“ The life battle of the youth who has been carefully instructed and preserved clean in mind and body is very different from that of him who has been weakened in will and perverted in mind from lack of such preservation; he knows that purity is both possible and good, and desires it above all things for his sons, both for their happiness and for their material success in life.
Habits of thought and action have an incalculable influence upon the body as well as upon the mind; and here as everywhere else, the ideal, whether it be high or low, will control the destiny of the man. ”

“ They change into gases and float off in the air, or to minerals and other substances and sink to the ground. These gases and solid substances pass into other plants and help make them strong.
“It is better to help another than to do poor work alone, dears,” Mother Nature whispers, as she lays them to rest.
Then she visits all the weak plants, and all those in poor soil or in too much light or too much shade, and lays them to rest. Their materials go to nourish the strong plants, who are doing good work in the world and growing in beauty. Not all the plants that live to blossom are good alike. ”

“ Every parent of a purely reared child is putting a stone in the foundation of prosperity for this wonderful new civilization, which will go on evolving, or die of decrepitude, just as its central dynamic force, the sex life of the people, finally decides. Sex immorality is, as every one knows, one of the signs of the approaching death of a nation.
Few young mothers realize the great need of watchfulness against the formation of bad habits in even young children. And many make the mistake of supposing that with children instruction can take the place of watchfulness. ”

“ As the protoplasm withdraws from the leaves of the rose bushes and of many other plants, particularly the trees, the resting time of the plant is announced by the most brilliant colors, the result of certain changes going on within the leaf. These bright colors that make our autumn woods so entrancing are not dependent upon the frost, as many think, but upon certain changes going on within the leaf itself as it ripens, just as fruit, when it ripens, takes on glowing colors. The bright autumn leaves are ripe leaves getting ready to fall. ”

“ To keep the mind of the child wisely impressed with the beauty, the achievements, of the great reproductive force in nature, which is directly responsible for every living thing on the earth, is to help immeasurably toward branding a high instead of a low ideal on his soul,—an ideal which he cannot lose when he reaches the great climax that transforms him into an adult capable of reproducing his kind, and when whatever most powerfully influences him will become a determining factor in the administration of his whole after life. ”

“ After they get two or three tiny green leaves and the cunningest little curled-up frond, just like a big fern, off they tumble down to the ground, where they strike root and grow as calmly as though they had come the regular plant way and sprouted from a seed. ”

“ The pure but ignorant boy going for the first time into the new life of the school, looking up to the older boys with that peculiar veneration the younger boy almost always feels for the older, moved in his senses by what he hears and sees, may speedily forget such home warnings as seem vague and pointless, and he may yield himself to a course most disastrous to his future. ”