ring are spread everywhere in nature, confronting us on every hand!
We see them almost every day of our lives and they become so common
that they make no impression upon us. Think of the difference between
what a Ruskin sees in a landscape and the impression conveyed to his
brain, and what is seen by the ordinary mind, the ordinary person who
has little or no imagination and whose esthetic faculties have scarcely
been developed!

We are immersed in a wilderness of mysteries and marvelous beauties.
Miracles innumerable in grass and flower and fruit are performed right
before our eyes. How marvelous is Nature's growing of fruit, for
example! How she packs the concentrated sunshine and delicious juices
into the cans that she makes as she goes along, cans exactly the right
size, without a particle of waste, leakage or evaporation, with no
noise of factories, no hammering of tins! The miracles are wrought in
a silent laboratory; not a sound is heard, and yet what marvels of
skill, deliciousness and beauty?

What interrogation points, what wonderful mysteries, what
wit-sharpeners are ever before the farmer boy, whichever way he turns!
Where does all this tremendous increase of corn, wheat, fruit and
vegetables come from? There seems to be no loss to the soil, and yet,
what a marvelous growth in everything! Life, life, more life on every
hand! Wherever he goes he treads on chemical forces which produce
greater marvels than are described in the Arabian Nights. The trees,
the brooks, the mountains, the hills, the valleys, the sunsets, the
growing animals on the farm, are all mysteries that set him thinking
and to wondering at the creative processes which are working on every
hand.

Then again, the delicious freedom of it all, as contrasted with the
cramped, artificial life in the city! Everything in the country tends
to set the boy thinking, to call out his dormant powers and develop his
latent forces. And what health there is in it all! How hearty and
natural he is in comparison with the city boy, who is tempted to turn
night into day, to live an artificial, purposeless life.

The very temptation in the city to turn night into day is of itself
health-undermining, stamina-dissipating and character-weakening.

While the city youth is wasting his precious energy capital in late
hours, pleasure seeking, and often dissipation, the country youth is
storing up power and vitality; he is being recharged with physical
fo