“But how I’m running on! Regret being born in the country? Do you know that I can shut my eyes and see the hills and meadows and orchard, fairer than any ever put in colours on the canvas? I can see the oriole’s nest swinging from a branch of the big elm in the corner of our yard and the nest of the pewee under the bridge. Just across the road in the meadow are glorious masses of violets, and mother’s peonies and sweet pinks beat anything I’ve ever seen since. When I’m dog-tired from the day’s work it rests me just to think of the quiet and calm and beauty of the old home among the hills. “And there’s another thing that I want to tell you: when I go into the country I can enjoy it. One of my best friends, born in the city, is bored almost to death every time he tries to take a vacation in the country. He doesn’t know the difference between a hard maple and a tamarack, and asked me once if a woodchuck was likely to attack a human being if not angered. He’s afraid of bees and garter snakes, and even a friendly old “daddy-long-legs” gives him a nervous shock. He can’t enjoy the fields and flowers, for he was brought up on people and bricks. I’d like to be back there at the old place this minute. I’ll bet I could find some raspberries on the bushes that grow in the fence corners along the west road. We used to string them on timothy stalks as we came home from school, and I’ve never tasted any such berries since.” The witness is through with his testimony and we’ll submit the case to the jury without argument. What do you say, fathers and mothers of the city? Shall your children have a chance to learn nature’s secrets at first hand? Will you give them some time in the open every year, where the work of man has not elbowed the work of God into a corner and out of sight? More, will you help to send the children of the poor, children whose playground is the city street, and to whom the stories of green fields and limpid streams and flowers that belong to any who will gather them, sound like fairy tales--will you give to these children of the tenement and the slums days where the sunshine is not filtered through a bank of smoke and all the ministry of God’s unspoiled work strengthens them for the coming days of toil? [Illustration: 0257] [Illustration: 0258] ```_But should you hire from his ````dark haunt, beneath the `````tangled roots ```Of pendent trees, the monarch of `````the brook, ```Behooves you then to ply your `````finest art. ```At last, while haply o’er the shaded sun ```Passes a cloud, he desperate takes the death, ```With sullen plunge. At once he darts `````along, ```Deep-struck, and runs out all the length- `````ened line; ```And flies aloft, and flounces round the pool, ```Indignant of the guile. With yielding `````hand, ```That feels him still, yet to his furious `````course ```Gives way, you, now retiring, following `````now ```Across the stream, exhaust his idle rage;