_love the out of doors with all your mind_: Do you know what is meant by loving the out of doors with your mind? Just this: that while you feel (with your heart) the beauty of a star, at the same time you know (with your mind) that that particular star, let us say, is the Pole Star, the guide to the sailors on the seas; that it is also only one of a vast multitude of stars each one of which has its place in the heavens, its circuit or path through the skies, its part in the whole orderly universe--a _thought_ so vast and wonderful that we cannot comprehend it. All this it means to love with our minds. Without minds a star to us is only a point of light, as to Peter Bell “A primrose by the river’s brim A yellow primrose was to him And it was nothing more.” Does the toadfish become anything more than a mere toadfish in a shoe before the end of the chapter? PAGE 28 _in the toadfish’s shoe_: What does the author mean by asking you to put yourself in the toadfish’s shoe? Only this: to try, even with the humblest of creatures, to share sympathetically their lives with them. The best way to do this with man as well as with toadfish is to learn about their lives. CHAPTER IV TO THE TEACHER There are several practical uses to which you can put this chapter, and the similar chapters, VII and XII: they can be made the purpose for field excursions with the class. Such excursions might be quite impossible for many a teacher in school hours; and we know how the exacting duties overcrowd the after-school hours; but one field excursion each season of the year, no matter how precious your time, would do more for you and your class than many books about nature read inside your four plastered walls. Better the books than nothing; but take the book and go with your pupils into the real out of doors. Again, you can make these chapters a kind of nature test, asking each pupil to try to see each of the things suggested here; or, if these do not chance to be the sights characteristic of the autumn in your region, then such sights as are characteristic. So the chapter can serve as a kind of field guide to the pupil, and a kind of test of his knowledge of nature. Again, you can make each item mentioned here the subject for a short composition direct from the pupil’s experience--the only kind of subject for him to write upon. Or make each item (say, No. IV, the Ballooning Spiders) the beginning for a short course of study or collateral reading for the individual pupil particularly interested in spiders! CHAPTER V TO THE TEACHER The real point of this story (but first of all it is a story and should not be spoiled with any moral) is the thought in the lines:--