Natural History for Street Boys

— Now and again we fail sadly to improve the people we are making it our business in life to improve, by rating them too low. I gave myself conscientiously to amusing a group of street boys with table games for several months before I discovered them to he worthy of much better things. Then the discovery came by the merest accident.

The boys were twelve and thirteen years of age. There were seven of them, and they came to my room once a week. Their ignorance of the commonest facts of country life (I have heard a squirrel called a young monkey) led me one night to show them a dusty natural-history collection I had made when a very small boy. Instantly it was to them as if they were in a fairy palace. The specimens (mainly insects and birds’ eggs) were battered, worm-eaten, and discolored ; but my boys’ eyes were full of wonder, and reverence was in the touch of their hands. They were touched with a new enthusiasm that boded much good. I saw that I should have to rack my brains no more for amusements ; that our meetings were at last to answer a real purpose.

The collection alone, petty as it was, held the attention of the boys for several nights. Then, as it was winter, I tried to tide the precious interest over to spring by planting seeds in sawdust and sand, and getting them to do the same. Early in March, I was able to show tree buds and catkins as trophies of walks in the country, and a little later, live frogs, turtles, and snakes. As soon as birdnesting time arrived, it was easy to make a striking display every week. On occasional Saturdays I took the boys into the country, and there they became infected with the eggcollecting fever.

“ Other things being equal,” says good Dr. John Brown, “ a boy who goes birdnesting, and makes a collection of eggs, and knows all their colors and spots, going through the excitements and glories of getting them, and observing everything with a keenness, an intensity, an exactness, and a permanency which only youth and a quick pulse and fresh blood and spirits combined can achieve, — a boy who teaches himself natural history in this way is not only a healthier and happier hoy, but is abler in mind and body for entering upon the great game of life, than the pale, nervous, brighteyed, feverish, ‘ interesting boy,’ with a big head and a small bottom and thin legs, who is the ‘captain,’ the miracle of the school ; dux for his brief year or two of glory, and, if he lives, booby for life.”

By midsummer the boys had contracted an entomological fever, and late in August I was permitted to spend in the country with them the ten days provided by the Country Week Association. There we made a specialty of raising caterpillars. Thus we entered upon the winter well provided with cocoons and chrysalids. Curiosity regarding the transformation of these guaranteed some sort of continuous interest, but, not daring to trust to this alone, I got a wise collector to talk about his specimens, with the hope that some time a series of lectures might be possible. I also secured such simple books of ornithology, oölogy, and entomology as would give us significant facts about our own specimens. This textbook study served fairly well so far as the boys were concerned, but I am not a scientist myself, and could put no zest into the work. I knew it could not last, for their enthusiasm, in the long run, was going to depend on mine.

I love Thoreau and I love Burroughs and all the rest of the outdoor fraternity. I longed to share my pleasure in them with the boys, but lacked the moral courage to make so risky an experiment. Finally I remembered the charming bird biographies of Olive Thorne Miller, and ventured on them. It was a happy venture. This so far emboldened me that I read them, in quick succession, parts of Bradford Torrey, Bolles, Abbott, Burroughs, and even Thoreau. Of these, Burroughs, I think, was the favorite. That the finer shades of thought or the strictly literary qualities of these writings were apparent to the boys I do not for a moment affirm. Of course I had to choose chapters wisely, and avoid altogether, or simplify, as I read along, unfamiliar words and references ; but the salient ideas were taken in, and the fresh out-of-door flavor was appreciated.

This past summer, the study and collecting have gone on very much as in the year before, except that the nature-love is now “ inside the skin.” This it is that makes mo glad. The boys no louger wait for me to take the initiative. They take electric-car rides into the country by themselves, when they can raise dimes. When there are no dimes, they walk out through dismal city streets to such country as is to he found at the end of two or three miles, — tame enough, as most of us know.

These boys are forever past calling every flower a daisy, every bird a robin, every snake a rattlesnake, every insect a bee, and every tree an “ ellum,” as they did in the beginning. That is something. They have learned to observe ; whereas at first they discerned nothing, their young eyes are now sharper than my own.

They have a rudimentary appreciation of the beauties of atmosphere and color. The theory of evolution still puzzles them. “ Once, you know, a monkey, he fell asleep, an’ after a long time he woke up an’ found he was a man,” fairly expresses their understanding of it ; but they have acquired a sense of orderly development (the plant from the seed, the flower from the bud, the butterfly from the worm), and along with this a feeling of reverence for the Power at work in the world about them.

These are small things, perhaps, and these small things may not visibly modify the lives of my boys. But the effort out of which they come may be worth while, notwithstanding.

Those of us who have faith that no good influence, however weak, is vain, as well as those of us who are Wordsworthians enough to believe in the special ethical value of a love of nature, will feel it is really no small thing for the child of a city slum to grow to manhood with such a love within his soul. “ Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.” In these hours of rollicking country research are “ life and food for future years.”