re saved by our
feeling for the incongruous. A touch of humor recalls us to our senses.
It "makes the whole world kin."

In the love of nature is another source of saving grace. Science is
power. In the stores of human experience lies the key to action, and
modern civilization is built on Science. The love of nature is akin to
Science but different. Contact with outdoor things is direct experience.
It is not stored, not co-ordinated, not always convertible into power,
but real, nevertheless, and our own. The song of birds, the swarming of
bees, the meadow carpeted with flowers, the first pink harbingers of the
early spring, the rush of the waterfall, the piling up of the rocks, the
trail through the forest, the sweep of the surf, the darting of the
fishes, the drifting of the snow, the white crystals of the frost, the
shrieking of the ice, the boom of the bittern, the barking of the sea
lions, the honk of the wild geese, the skulking coyote who knows that
each beast is his enemy and has not even a flea to help him "forget that
he is a dog," the leap of the salmon, the ecstasy of the mocking-bird
and bobolink, the nesting of the field-mice, the chatter of the
squirrel, the gray lichen of the oak, the green moss on the log, the
poppies of the field and the Mariposa lilies of the cliff--all these
and ten thousand more pictures which could be called up equally at
random and from every foot of land on the globe--all these are objects
of nature. All these represent a point of human contact and the reaction
which makes for youth, for virtue and for enthusiasm.

To travel is merely to increase the variety of contact by giving our
time to it, and by extending the number of points at which contact is
possible. It may be that "he who wanders widest, lifts no more of
beauty's jealous veils than he who from his doorway sees the miracle of
flowers and trees." It is true, however, that the experiences of the
traveler cover a wider range and fill his mind with a larger and more
varied store of remembered delights. The very names of beloved regions
call up each one its own picture. The South Seas; to have wandered among
their green isles is to have seen a new world, a new heaven and a new
earth. The white reef with its whiter rim of plunging surf, the swaying
palms, the flashing waterfall, the joyous people, straight as Greeks and
colored like varnished leather, the bread-fruit tree and the brown
orange, the purple splendor of the vine