Now, after this caution, you ought to go out some evening by the shore
with a small party and roast some green corn in the husk; then,
wrapping some potatoes in clay, bake them; if you have fish, wrap them
in clay with their scales on, and bake them. The scales will come off
beautifully when the clay is cracked off, and leave you the tastiest
meal of fish and potatoes and corn you ever ate. Every boy and girl
ought to have a little camp-life and ought to have each his share of
camp-work to perform this summer.
VI
At the close of some stifling July day you ought to go out into the
orchard or woods and watch the evening come on--to notice how the wild
life revives, flowers open, birds sing, animals stir, breezes start,
leaves whisper, and all the world awakes.
Then follow that up by getting out the next morning before sunrise,
say at half-past three o’clock, an hour before the sun bursts over the
eastern hills. If you are not a stump or a stone, the sight and the
smell--the whole indescribable freshness and wonder of it all--will
thrill you. Would you go to the Pyramids or Niagara or the Yellowstone
Park? Yes, you would, and you would take a great deal of trouble to
see any one of these wonders! Just as great a wonder, just as
thrilling an experience, is right outside of your bedroom early any
June, July, or August morning! I know boys and girls who _never_ saw
the sun get up!
VII
You ought to spend some time this summer on a real farm. Boy or girl,
you need to feel ploughed ground under your feet; you need the contact
with growing things in the ground; you need to handle a hoe, gather
the garden vegetables, feed the chickens, feed the pigs, drive the
cows to pasture, help stow away the hay--and all the other interesting
experiences that make up the simple, elemental, and wonderfully varied
day of farm life. A mere visit is not enough. You need to take part in
the digging and weeding and planting. The other day I let out my cow
after keeping her all winter in the barn. The first thing she did was
to kick up her heels and run to a pile of fresh earth about a newly
planted tree and fall to eating it--not the tree, but the earth, the
raw, rich soil--until her muzzle was muddy halfway to her eyes. You do
not need to eat it; but the need to smell it, to see it, to feel it,
to work in it, is just as real as the cow’s need to eat it.
VIII
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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