Adeline Knapp

“ They flock up here, the city folks, during these first spring days, to eat their luncheons by the roadside and to fill their hands with the poppies and wild hyacinth, the blue-eyed grass and pimpernel that everywhere dot the young meadows’ glowing green. I hear, at night-fall, mother’s voices calling the little ones to prepare for home-going, and I love to see the contented parties go wandering down, the tiniest tired climber usually sound asleep in his father’s arms with the sun’s last rays caressing the small face. ”

“ All about me the things of Nature are still in the mystical, subtile tenderness of their young, green growth. The golden days of autumn are full of their own beauty. The grey days of winter’s mist and fog have theirs, but there is something in the tender blue days of the rainy springtime that sets the heart apraise, and brings out as nothing else can, the meanings of leaf and bud, of flower and tree. ”

“ The growth of the scouring-rush seems to me to show something beautiful, as well as interesting. There is a certain light-hearted gaiety in the waving, tree-like thing which makes one forget that it is a degenerate stock, and doomed to destruction. Still a little work remains for it to do: still some waste places and miasmatic bogs to be cleansed and purified, and so the little rush grows on, the merest shadow of its once opulent self. ”

“ The things of Nature grow sophisticated as the season advances. In the early springtime they are frank and confiding, and willingly tell the secrets of their growth to him who asks They have time, in these first beginnings of things, for friendly sociability: to show their tiny roots and bulbs, and let us study the delicate, gracious unfoldings of leaf and bud and blossom. In a few weeks they will all be too busy, keeping up with the season’s swift march, to stop and visit with the lovingest of human friends. ”

“ It touches the eucalyptus trees into glory and flames in splendor along the western sky. It lights her face and his as they stand transformed before each other. They do not know that the crimson light has made them beautiful. They think the beauty each sees is the other’s, a part of their wonderful discovery, and who shall say that either is wrong? It is we who are blind, and not love. ”

“ They have been touched by the finger of God, and have seen each other’s 61beauty, the beauty that is their human right; that once seen is never, again, wholly lost.
The crimson has faded to rose, the rose to wonderful green—the green has turned to white. The early moon has come out to light the hill. Hand in hand they are passing down the road. Hand in hand they are going through life, toiling together, bearing together the burdens Fate brings to them. ”

“ We see this same tendency in the leaves of the wild poppy, the buttercup and all the great crowfoot family. Across the road stretches a line of locusts, just now in dainty, snowy, fragrant blossom. 21The individuality of a tree is a constant and delightful fact in Nature. The locust is as unlike the oak or the willow as can well be imagined, yet like them in taking on an added and characteristic loveliness in the rain. How delicately the branches pencil themselves against the blue and silver of the cloudy sky and the dark green of the orchard beyond them! ”

“ I like that phrase as describing the flight of a bird. It is so literally what the creature does. A bird is not superior to gravitation. But for that force he would be the helpless victim of every little breeze, like a balloon, which is unable to shape a course or do anything but float helplessly before the wind. The balloon floats because it is lighter than the air, but the air which the bird displaces is lighter than he, and he only moves in it by virtue of his ability to extract from it, by the motion of his wings, sufficient recoil to propel himself forward. ”

“ He stood and studied the busy workers, intent upon the business of their miniature society
“I wonder,” he said at last, “if our human reason shall ever evolve a system half so perfect as the one that mere instinct has taught these feeble insects.” As I was silent he continued:
“Well, at all events, I can learn one lesson from the bees, and be about my business. If society is ever to be freed from its burdens every soul must do its full duty. One life wasted means a whole world hindered just that much.” ”

“ We prate of the limitations of our humanity, forgetful of that humanity’s limitless capacity to receive. With insincere self-abasement we declare ourselves to be worms of the dust, 56and the spirits of light who look upon us may readily believe our assertions
But there are moments when the scales fall from our eyes. We get fleeting glimpses, then, of the meaning and the end of our human nature. We know that it is in the skies. ”

“ A bank where wake-robin lifts its bonny head is always fair to see. The plant has certain boon companions always sure to be close at hand. The Solomon’s seal is one of these, its roots bearing to this day the round marks imagined by the early foresters to be none other than the seal of Solomon, the son of David, 14 (on both of whom be peace!) There is no more exquisite green than the beautiful, shining leaves of this plant, with its tiny white bells of flowers. ”

“ Even before the first growths appear there is a hushed awareness throughout Nature that moves the heart to thankfulness and remembered expectation The hope of springtime comes without stint, and without fail, bringing each one of us the message his heart is prepared to receive, and quickening our purest, least sordid impulses. The best that is in us seems possible, in the springtime. Who of us does not then dream that this best will yet gain strength to withstand the heat and drouth of summer’s fierce searching? We turn to Mother Nature like children who long to be good. ”

“ Will love be theirs when Spring is gone and the summer drouth is upon them; when Autumn’s harvest time is passed them by and Winter’s breath has chilled their blood? Will love be theirs when, hand in hand, in the uncertain white light, they journey down the hill of life? ”

“ It is because the bees and the other dumb creatures have nothing more than this measure of reason which we call instinct, that it serves them perfectly. Man has something else, that draws him higher; that prompts him further. But alas for us! With the destiny to live perfectly as human beings, we yet long for the restrictions through which we may live perfectly as the beasts. We seek our lessons from the brutes while the Eternal waits to teach us. We cannot live like the beasts. The divine human spark within us will not let us. ”

“ These 22ladies of the hilltop have a fashion of growing thus, and in no other position is their delicate, suggestive beauty more apparent. The eucalyptus is an original genius among trees, never repeating itself. It stands for endless variety, for strong good cheer, for faith that seeks and reaches and goes on, never wavering It blesses as well as delights its friends. I love its wonderful, ever varying leaves, its up-reaching, outstretching branches, and the annual surprise of its mystic blossoming. Each tree is distinct and individual in its growth, yet every one is typical of the genus. ”

“ Those who seek correspondences between the natural and physical kingdoms find the rush an emblem of cleansing, and this is precisely the office which, since earliest creation, it has filled for the world. For our scouring-rush was not always the puny, insignificant thing we see it. It belongs to the carboniferous age. It has nothing to do with our modern civilization. It had reached its highest perfection and entered upon its downward career before man appeared on the earth. ”

“ It is quite true that each blossom of the compositæ has given its life to the race. But what if, after all, life with our fellows is a giving instead of the receiving we are wont to think it? What if, after all, the true outlook upon Society will one day show us that our neighbor is put here that we may have the great, the inestimable joy of living for him? ”

“ One is so fully conscious, even while the drops are falling, that the sun is shining behind the light clouds. And the drops themselves come down so gently, tentatively offering themselves, as it were, to the welcoming earth—pattering lightly on the leaves, and softly rippling the surface of the little pool under the willows. ”

“ It is a joy to be on the back of a swiftly running horse, with the wind rushing away from your face as you ride, bearing every care from your brain But to traverse the air—to fly! This joy we long for: we have an indisputable, an inalienable right to long for it. ”

“ The keener our realization of the human love that is in the flowers, in the trees, in all the wild life about us, the richer is our humanity, the fuller our reception of life and love, the more thoughtful our use of all the things of Nature becomes Once I saw an oriole weaving some bits of string into his nest. ”

“ We send forward our souls if haply they should find God, while we remain behind to weigh and test their evidence when they return to us—if they ever do, hugging the surface the while, lest a sustaining breath of spiritual force lift us clean above the safe shelter in which we may dive altogether should our returning souls bring back news of the meanings of life, scaring us to cover, after all, by the thought that we ourselves, are heaven and hell
Usually we are content to grovel. We traverse our little round and declare it to be destiny. ”

“ It is when life is fullest that we turn to our fellows. Those of us who are true know that then we need them most, and so, our real drawings together are in order that we may give. We know this in that secret part of us where lies what most of us call our human weakness, but we are faithless to the knowledge, and choose to live on a lower plane, within that outer circle which we call knowing We think we come together to receive, but who of us does not know the emptiness of death that lies in such coming? ”

“ Nature teaches us so much if we will but keep still long enough to let her: if we will only empty ourselves of conceit and knowingness, and get rid of the notion that all things, Nature included, are made for us. We are not the lords of creation. We are only a small part, albeit the highest part, of it all, and the better we learn this lesson the better men and women we shall become.
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I was sitting here beside the stream, watching the bees swarm in and out at the entrance to their hive, when Hercules passed by. ”

“ Perhaps some day we shall spell out something of this riddle which we have made so painful, and with the lesson get somewhat of the humility that comes with knowing
But now man does not read the book of Nature to much better purpose than he reads those other volumes, written by himself, and bought by himself, in bulk, to adorn his libraries: portly tomes to which he may point with pride as evidence that at least his shelves hold wisdom, tho’ his head may never. ”

“ Indeed, love, alone, sees clearly. External, temporal conditions have made his body less than noble; have crossed his face with dull, heavy lines. They have narrowed her mental horizon and imprisoned her soul in a poor little cage, but He and She are held above these, now. ”

“ Our very protests, our kicking against the pricks that would incite us to higher effort are but our blind fear lest, after all, they should not mean flight. We are afraid of our moments of faith; ashamed of our aspiring impulse, the upward impulse that throbbed through all life since the world was born. ”

“ For it there are no long, soaring sweeps through the air; no freedom from the labors of its cautious flight. It is a very spendthrift of effort because of the timidity that never lets it rise to the sustaining forces just above its head. To climb the sky is not for him who hugs cover. ”

“ When the warm rains succeed winter’s driving downpours, and the young grass begins to mantle the meadows with tender green, is the time, of all the year, to be out of doors All the woodsy places are cool and dripping and dim and delicious. ”

“ In other words, the individuals formed a body social of their own, growing from a compact cluster from a common stem, each giving and receiving, constantly, its use and share in the common life. The many-petaled flowers found it inconvenient to arrange themselves in the composite order, and so, as we see in the clover, the petals have pressed closely together and united to form a tube-shaped flower, and as the tubular form is best adapted to receive fertilization by the bee, which insect is the most useful to the clover blossom, that form has been perpetuated in this plant. ”

“ The trees bring us the real news of the real world long before they are crushed into pulp and made into the paper on which is printed our morning service from the scandal monger and the stock broker. It was heralded as a marvelous triumph of modern ingenuity when, the other day, a forest tree was cut down and made into paper on which the news of the world was printed and hawked along the streets within four and one-half hours from the moment when the axe was laid at the root of the tree. ”

“ We humans are but larger molecules in the body social. We live only in so far as the common life flows through us. We never fully, in our plans, and by a wonderful provision of Divine Wisdom we cannot give one another that which is really and unmistakably our own. No human thought, even, ever traveled a straight course from one human 40soul to another and was received exactly as it was sent. We live our lives each within the molecular envelope of his individual body, and we can no more mix, in reality, than the molecules mix. ”

“ For Nature keeps open house for us, and even when we visit her and leave a trail of dust and desolation behind us, like the stupid, untidy children we are, she only sets herself, with the silent, persistent patience of her age-wise motherhood, to cover and remove it. ”