not afraid"--from the last letter of Captain Scott to his wife, as he
lay watching the approach of death in the Antarctic cold. His own end
was nigh, but the infant son, in whose life he should never take a
father's part, what should be his last word for him?

"Make our boy interested in natural history if you can. It is better
than games. Keep him in the open air."

Those are solemn words, and they carry a message of deep significance.
I have watched my own boys; I recall my own boyhood; and I believe the
words are true. So thoroughly do I believe in the physical and moral
value of the outdoors for children, the open fields and woods, that
before my children were all born I brought them here into the country.
Here they shall grow as the weeds and flowers grow, and in the same
fields with them; here they shall play as the young foxes and
woodchucks play, and on the same bushy hillsides with them--summer and
winter.

Games are natural and good. It is a stick of a boy who won't be "it."
But there are better things than games, more lasting, more developing,
more educating. Kittens and puppies and children play; but children
should have, and may have, other and better things to do than puppies
and kittens can do; for they are not going to grow up into dogs and
cats.

Once awaken a love for the woods in the heart of a child, and something
has passed into him that the evil days, when they come, shall have to
reckon with. Let me take my children into the country to live, if I
can. Or if I cannot, then let me take them on holidays, or, if it must
be, on Sunday mornings with me, for a tramp.

I bless those Sunday-morning tramps to the Tumbling Dam Woods, to
Sheppard's Mills, to Cubby Hollow, to Cohansey Creek Meadows, that I
was taken upon as a lad of twelve. We would start out early, and deep
in the woods, or by some pond or stream, or out upon the wide meadows,
we would wait, and watch the ways of wild things--the little marsh
wrens bubbling in the calamus and cattails, the young minks at play,
the big pond turtles on their sunning logs--these and more, a multitude
more. Here we would eat our crackers and the wild berries or buds that
we could find, and with the sunset turn back toward home.

We saw this and that, single deep impressions, that I shall always
remember. But better than any single sight, any sweet sound or smell,
was the sense of companionship with my human guide, and the sense that
I loved