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[Illustration]




                                OUTINGS
                              AT ODD TIMES

                                   BY

                        CHARLES C. ABBOTT, M. D.

              AUTHOR OF A NATURALIST’S RAMBLES ABOUT HOME,
                        DAYS OUT OF DOORS, ETC.

                             [Illustration]

                                NEW YORK
                        D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
                                  1890




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                            COPYRIGHT, 1890,
                      BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.




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                               PREFATORY.

                                -------




                      Nature, and Books about it.


Often, during a long and dusty walk in midsummer, I have chanced
suddenly upon a wayside spring, and stooping drank directly from the
bosom of Mother Earth. Filled with the pleasant recollections of such
moments, how tame is all other tipple, even though the crystal is a
marvel of art, with “beady bubbles winking at the brim”!

So, too, I find it with matters of graver import. I would that no one
should aid me in gathering my stores, but with my own hands I would
delve at the fountain-head. The spirit of such an aim is a spur to
youth, but becomes a source of amusement rather than a more serious
matter in our maturer years. I am more than willing now to take nature
at second hand. But is this safe? How far can we trust another’s eyes,
ears, and sense of touch and smell? There are critics scattered as
thickly as motes in a sunbeam, veritable know-alls, who shriek “Beware!”
when nature is reported; but, for all this, outdoor books are very
tempting to a host of people, and in the long run educate rather than
misinform. That ever two naturalists should wholly agree, after careful
study of an animal, is not probable. There will be the same differences
as exist between two translations of the same book. What a crow, a
mouse, or a gorgeous cluster of blooming lotus is to me, these will
never be to another; but, because of this, do not persist that your
neighbor is blind, deaf, or stupid. I recently had a horse ask me to let
down the bars; to another it would have been merely the meaningless fact
that the horse neighed.

Having an outdoor book in hand, when and how should it be read? It is no
doubt very tempting to think of a shady nook, or babbling brook, or
both, in connection with the latest outdoor volume. Possibly, as you
start out for a quiet day, you string together a bit of rhyme concerning
the book, as Leigh Hunt did and others have done since. It is a common
practice to carry a book into the fields, but not a logical one. How can
a book, even one of outdoor topics, compete with Nature? Certainly if
Nature is to the reader but a convenient room, a lighter and more airy
one than any at home, does it not signify a serious lack in the mind of
that person? From a notice of a recent publication I clip the following:
“A capital book to slip into one’s pocket when taking an outing.” If,
because of its size, it could be readily slipped into one’s pocket, then
it was a capital way of getting rid of it. What sort of an outing can
one have who reads all the while? Is not the cloud-flecked sky something
more than a ceiling, the surrounding hills more than mere walls, the
grass and flowers more than carpet? There is one pleasure even greater
than that of reading, and that is being out of doors. To read at such a
time seems to imply one of two things: either that the reader knows
Nature thoroughly, or is indifferent to such knowledge. The former
phenomenon the world has never seen; the latter, to speak mildly,
deserves our pity. To escape ridicule, which is something, to insure
happiness, which is more, to avoid great dangers, which is of even
greater importance, one must know something of Nature. In one sense she
is our persistent foe. She mantles with inviting cover of rank grass her
treacherous quicksands; she paints in tempting colors her most poisonous
fruits; she spreads unheralded the insidious miasma from the meadow and
the swamp; but neither the quicksand, the unwholesome fruit, nor noxious
vapors is an unmixed evil. Let us take them as they are, see them as
parts and parcels of a complete whole, and each hour of every outing is
an un