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A few mornings ago I was aroused and humbled by the Red Cow. She noticed a wonderful thing that was happening in the world before I did, and gambolled around and did a cow-tango to express her emotion. We had turned the cattle out to water, and, after the red pirate had rubbed herself against a stack, almost upsetting it, and had taken a peep to see whether the granary door had been left open, she suddenly let out a little bawl—"Buh! uh"—kicked sideways with both hind legs, and began to race around the barnyard. Instantly the whole seven were frolicking and pretending to fight and expressing cow-joy in laughable antics. I do not think there is anything in Nature funnier or more absurd than a happy cow. In the great scheme of things the cow is the symbol of gravity and solemnity, and when she unbends and attempts to be sportive the result is as incongruous as if the "most potent, grave and reverend seignoirs" of the Senate took to playing leap-frog. In the course of her everyday life the Red Cow habitually looks more serious-minded than I do when meditating on the high cost of living and the injustice of special privileges; but on this particular morning she relaxed and let herself go before it dawned on me that there was any special cause for happiness in the world. When the great tides of spring swept over the world she responded instantly, while I had to rid myself of a lot of foolish cares and worries before I felt my pulses beating to the rhythm of renewed life. But before she and her clumsy fellows had finished their sprawling saraband I was awake to the great event, and feeling properly rebuked because the cows had noticed it first.

To explain the above paragraph I must now set forth a personal conviction that will be scorned by material scientists as an hallucination and reproved by churchmen as unpardonable paganism. To me all Nature is as much alive as I am myself and flushed with the same life force. During the winter months this force is dormant, but in the spring it awakens and floods the world like sunshine. I do not investigate it or moralize about it. I accept it as I do the vernal warmth and the perfumed air. With the return of spring I let

"The great slow joys of being

Well my heart through as of yore."

The all-pervading life force, recognized by the poets, is as real and powerful and subtle as electricity. It is something

"Whose secret Presence, through Creation's veins

Running quicksilver-like eludes your pains;

Taking all shapes from Mah to Mahi."

When it stirs and moves Nature to mating and growing all life throbs with unreasoning happiness. It is an impalpable flame that inspires instead of consuming. Only man with his egotistic self-consciousness misses its reviving touch. Because he can reason and has will power he attempts to control Nature—and misses the best that Nature has to give. But the children and all child-like spirits are still at one with Nature and share all her gifts. In the spring she touches them as she touches the flowers and they expand and grow. They are as happy as the singing birds and as carefree as the wandering air.

As might be expected, I could not keep out of the sugar-bush "when the sap began to stir." There was something stirring in me and I wanted to be out in the sunshine where I could spend happy hours without thought—simply glad to be alive and aware. And yet I could not help reflecting idly it must have been in the spring of the year that the piping of Orpheus made all Nature follow him. It is a myth, of course, and a pagan myth at that, but with everything about me stirring with life it did not seem so wildly improbable. The pagans had intuitions too noble to be forgotten, for did not one of them write:

"Earth crammed with Heaven

And every common bush afire with God."

Out among the trees, with the flowers stirring at my feet, I could realize, the truth of this. The world of men was very far away and unimportant. In the woods there was a companionship and an activity that put to shame the feverish and purposeless life of our cities. The wise and practical may say that I was simply idling when I should have been about the business of the world, and they may wag their heads gravely at the thought of such folly. To such there is no answer to be made. They could not understand—and perhaps even our philosophers could not understand. Novalis says that there is no temple in the world but the human body. That is only a half truth. Everything in which life stirs is a temple, and while I gathered sap with automatic industry I was conscious that myriads of temples were a-building about me. And it was the men who sensed the architecture of that building who shaped the Parthenon and the great cathedrals.

"The hand that rounded Peter's dome

And groined the aisles of Christian Rome

Wrought in a sad sincerity.

His soul from God he could not free.

He builded better than he knew,

The conscious stone to beauty grew."

The growing and building force that pervades all Nature is the compelling inspiration of all art and poetry and beauty. It is a living thing, and to be conscious of it is to live to the full.

Surely there is no one so busy or careworn but he can steal a few hours in the spring to be alone with Nature. And I wish to emphasize that word—alone. Nature seems to be jealous of all other companionship. Or perhaps it is because we cannot let ourselves go in the presence of others. When we go to the woods or the parks with companions someone is sure to keep up a gabble about the affairs of everyday life—the latest get-rich-quick scheme or the last shift in the political kaleidoscope. To enjoy Nature you must leave all these things behind and everything that may suggest them. Go to Nature as a child goes—thoughtless and open-minded. The less you seek the more you will find. Let the new leaves brush against your face and whisper to you, or throw yourself down on the grass and relax as if you were sinking to sleep. Then the searching sunshine will have its will of you, and the little winds will go about their business as if you were not there. The sky, squirrels and birds will come near to you and accept you into the great companionship of things that are free and inspired, and you will soon feel the benign and reviving influence of your pure surroundings. I leave it to others to teach the lessons to be learned from this quiet communion with the great life force. Learn to feel it even as the cattle feel it, or even as the smallest thing that harbours a spark of the fire of life feels it, and you will be ready to learn unspeakable things.