gorously from the former than it does
from the latter. The vineyard winds its tendrils around me and detains
me, and its loaded trellises are more pleasing to me than the closets
of greenbacks.

The only time there is a suggestion of an iron wall in front of me is
in winter, when ice and snow have blotted out the landscape, and I
find that it is in this season that my mind dwells most fondly upon my
favorite themes. Winter drives a man back upon himself, and tests his
powers of self-entertainment.

Do such books as mine give a wrong impression of Nature, and lead
readers to expect more from a walk or a camp in the woods than they
usually get? I have a few times had occasion to think so. I am not
always aware myself how much pleasure I have had in a walk till I try
to share it with my reader. The heat of composition brings out the
color and the flavor. We must not forget the illusions of all art. If
my reader thinks he does not get from Nature what I get from her, let
me remind him that he can hardly know what he has got till he defines
it to himself as I do, and throws about it the witchery of words.
Literature does not grow wild in the woods. Every artist does
something more than copy Nature; more comes out in his account than
goes into the original experience.

Most persons think the bee gets honey from the flowers, but she does
not: honey is a product of the bee; it is the nectar of the flowers
with the bee added. What the bee gets from the flower is sweet water:
this she puts through a process of her own and imparts to it her own
quality; she reduces the water and adds to it a minute drop of formic
acid. It is this drop of herself that gives the delicious sting to her
sweet. The bee is therefore the type of the true poet, the true
artist. Her product always reflects her environment, and it reflects
something her environment knows not of. We taste the clover, the
thyme, the linden, the sumac, and we also taste something that has its
source in none of these flowers.

The literary naturalist does not take liberties with facts; facts are
the flora upon which he lives. The more and the fresher the facts the
better. I can do nothing without them, but I must give them my own
flavor. I must impart to them a quality which heightens and
intensifies them.

To interpret Nature is not to improve upon her: it is to draw her out;
it is to have an emotional intercourse with her, absorb her, and
reproduce her tinged with the