Some Winter Days in Iowa
BY
Frederick John Lazell
CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA
THE TORCH PRESS
NINETEEN HUNDRED SEVEN
Copyright, 1907
by
Fred J. Lazell.
FOREWORD
I am glad to have the privilege, thus in advance, of looking over Mr.Lazell's delightful essays. He has surely a gift in this sort ofthing. We are grateful to the man who shows us what he sees in Nature,but more to the man who like our present author shows us how easy andblessed it is to see for ourselves.
Mr. Lazell reminds me of Thoreau and Emerson, and I can suggest nobetter foreword than the passage from the last named author, from theMethod of Nature, as follows:
"Every earnest glance we give to the realities around us with intentto learn, proceeds from a holy impulse and is really songs of praise.What difference can it make whether it take the shape of exhortation,or of passionate exclamation, or of scientific statement? These areforms merely. Through them we express, at last, the fact that God hasdone thus or thus."
Iowa City, Iowa
October 17, 1907
[Pg 9]
I. THE WOODLANDS IN JANUARY
Humanity has always turned to nature for relief from toil and strife.This was true of the old world; it is much more true of the new,especially in recent years. There is a growing interest in wild thingsand wild places. The benedicite of the Druid woods, always appreciatedby the few, like Lowell, is coming to be understood by the many. Thereis an increasing desire to get away from the roar and rattle of thestreets, away from even the prim formality of suburban avenues andartificial bits of landscape gardening into the panorama of woodland,field, and stream. Men with means are disposing of their palatialresidences in the cities and moving to real homes in the country,where they can see the sunrise and the death of day, hear the rhythmof the rain and the murmur of the wind, and watch the unfolding of thefirst flowers of spring. Cities are purchasing large parks where thebeauties of nature are merely accentuated, not[Pg 10] marred. States and thenation are setting aside big tracts of wilderness where rock and rill,waterfall and cañon, mountain and marsh, shell-strewn beach andstarry-blossomed brae, flowerful islets and wondrous wooded hillswelcome the populace, soothe tired nerves and mend the mind and themorals. These are encouraging signs of the times. At last we arebeginning to understand, with Emerson, that he who knows what sweetsand virtues are in the ground, the waters, the plants, the heavens,and how to come at these enchantments, is the rich and royal man. Itis as if some new prophet had arisen in the land, crying, "Ho, everyone that is worn and weary, come ye to the woodlands; and he that hathno money let him feast upon those things which are really rich andabiding." While we are making New Year resolves let us resolve tospend less time with shams, more with realities; less with dogma, morewith sermons in stones; less with erotic novels and baneful journals,more with the books in the running brooks; listening less readily togossip and malice, more willingly to the tongues in trees; spendingmore pleasureful[Pg 11] hours with the music of bird and breeze, ripplingrivers, and laughing leaves; less ti