The Spring of the Year

Thorn Mountain: one of the smaller of the White Mountains; it overlooks the village of Jackson, N. H.

CHAPTER XIII

TO THE TEACHER

If you have read through “The Fall of the Year” and “Winter” and to this chapter in “The Spring of the Year,” you will know that the upshot of these thrice thirteen readings has been to take you and your children into the woods; you will know that the last paragraph of this last chapter is the aim and purpose and key of all three books. You must go into the woods, you must lead your children to go, deep and far and frequently. The Three R’s first – but after them, before dancing, or cooking, or sewing, or manual training, or anything, send your children out into the open, where they belong. The school can give them nothing better than the Three R’s, and can only fail in trying to give them more, except it give them the freedom of the fields. Help Nature, the old nurse, to take your children on her knee.

FOR THE PUPIL

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Here is the prescription: Think you can swallow it? Go out and try.

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Golden Chariot: In what Bible story does the Golden Chariot descend? and whom does it carry away?

pale-face: an Indian name for the white man.

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box turtles: They are sometimes found as far north as the woods of Cape Cod, Massachusetts; but are very abundant farther south.

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Chewink: towhee, or ground-robin; to be distinguished by his loud call of “chewink” and his vigorous scratching among the leaves.

notes

1

So nature pricks (stirs) them in their hearts.