after person if he knew the song of the chipping-sparrow, and
most of them are unaware that it has any song. We do not hear it in the
blare of the city street, in railway travel, or when we are in a
thunderous crowd. We hear it in the still places and when our ears are
ready to catch the smaller sounds. There is no music like the music of
the forest, and the better part of it is faint and far away or high in
the tops of trees.

The forest may be an asylum. "The groves were God's first temples." We
need all our altars and more, but we need also the sanctuary of the
forest. It is a poor people that has no forests. I prize the farms
because they have forests. It is a poor political philosophy that has no
forests. It is a poor nation that has no forests and no workers in wood.

In many places there are the forests. I think that we do not get the
most out of them. Certainly they have two uses: one for the products,
and one for the human relief and the inspiration. I should like to see a
movement looking toward the better utilization of the forests humanly,
as we use school buildings and church buildings and public halls. I wish
that we might take our friends to the forests as we also take them to
see the works of the masters. For this purpose, we should not go in
large companies. We need sympathetic guidance. Parties of two and four
may go separately to the forests to walk and to sit and to be silent. I
would not forget the forest in the night, in the silence and the
simplicity of the darkness. Strangely few are the people who know a real
forest at dark. Few are those who know the forest when the rain is
falling or when the snow covers the earth. Yet the forest is as real in
all these moments as when the sun is at full and the weather is fair.

I wish that we might know the forest intimately and sensitively as a
part of our background. I think it would do much to keep us close to the
verities and the essentials.

_A forest background for a reformatory_

Some years ago I presented to a board that was charged with establishing
and maintaining a new State reformatory for wayward and delinquent boys
an outline of a possible setting for the enterprise; and as this
statement really constitutes a practical application of some of the
foregoing discussions, I present the larger part of it here. With
delinquents it is specially important to develop the sense of obligation
and responsibility, and I fear that we are endeavor