the Clyde banks about
Blantyre and had begun to collect and wonder at shells and flowers," one
of his biographers says.

Not far away, also in Scotland, Henry Drummond spent his boyhood. He,
too, knew the pleasure of wandering afield. He liked to go to the rock
on which stands grim Stirling Castle, and look away to the windings of
the crooked Forth, the green Ochil Hills, and, farther away, Ben Lomond,
Ben Venue, and Ben Ledi, the guardians of the beautiful Highland lochs.
He was never weary of feasting his eyes on them. In later years he would
go back to the scenes of his boyhood, climb to the Castle, and, looking
out on the beautiful prospect, would say "Man, there's no place like
this; no place like Scotland."

Bayard Taylor first made a name for himself by his ability to see the
things that many people pass by, and to describe them sympathetically.
But he, also, in boyhood days learned the lesson that paved the way for
later achievements. He was not six years old when he used to wander to a
fascinating swamp near his Pennsylvania home. If the child was missed
from the house, the first thing that suggested itself was to climb upon
a mound which overlooked the swamp. Once, from the roof of the house, he
discovered unknown forests and fresh fields which he made up his mind to
explore. Later, in company with a Quaker schoolmaster, he took long
walks, and thus learned many things about the trees and plants. When he
was twelve he began to write out the thoughts that came to him in this
intimate study of nature.

In far-away Norway Ole Bull had a like experience. At an early age he
began to be on familiar terms with the silent things about him. The
quality of his later work was influenced by the grandeur of the scenery
in which he lived. To him trees, rocks, waterfalls, mountains, all spoke
a language which demanded expression through the strings of his violin;
he turned everything into music. His biographer says:

"When, in early childhood, playing alone in the meadow, he saw a
delicate bluebell moving in the breeze, he fancied he heard the bell
ring, and the grass accompanying it with most exceptionally fine
voices."

John Muir, who later wrote of the great Sequoias of California and the
glaciers of Alaska, when a boy of ten found delight in scenes of which
he wrote as follows:

"Oh, that glorious Wisconsin wilderness! Everything new and pure in the
very prime of spring, when nature's pulses were beating highest