Chapter III: To the Teacher

The thought in this chapter is evident, namely, that love for
the out of doors is dependent upon knowledge of the out of
doors. The more we _know_ and the better we _understand_, the
more perfect and marvelous nature seems and the more lovely. The
toadfish _looks_ loathly, but upon closer study he becomes very
interesting, even admirable--one of the very foundations of real
love. So, as a teacher and as a lover of nature, be careful
never to use the words “ugly” or “nasty” or “loathly”; never
shrink from a toad; never make a wry face at a worm; never show
that you are having a nervous fit at a snake; for it all argues
a lack of knowledge and understanding. All life, from Man to the
Am[oe]ba, is one long series of links in a golden chain, one
succession of wonderful life-histories, each vastly important,
all making up the divinely beautiful world of life which our
lives crown, but of which we are only a part, and, perhaps, no
more important a part than the toadfish.

FOR THE PUPIL

The toadfish of this story is _Batrachus tau_, sometimes called
oyster-fish or sapo. The fishing-frog or angler is by some
called toadfish, as is also the swell-fish or common puffer of
the Atlantic Coast.

PAGE 21

_Buzzards Bay_: Where is Buzzards Bay? Do you know Whittier’s
beautiful poem, _The Prayer of Agassiz_, which begins:--

“On the isle of Penikese
Ringed about by sapphire seas.”

Where is Penikese? What waters are those “sapphire seas,” and
what was Agassiz doing there?

PAGE 23

_Davy Jones_: Who is Davy Jones? Look him up under _Jones,
Davy_, in your dictionary of _Proper Names_. Get into the
“looking up” habit. Never let anything in your reading, that you
do not understand, go unlooked up.

_Old Man of the Sea_: Look him up too. Are he and Davy Jones
any relation?

_It was really a fish_: What names do you think of that might
fit this fish?

PAGE 24

_coarsely marbled with a darker hue_: What is the meaning of
_marbled_?

PAGE 25

_covered with water_: The author means that the _rock_ is not
always covered with water, not the _hole_ under the rock. Of
course the hole is always built so that it is full of water,
else the fish would perish at low tide.

PAGE 27

_love the out of doors with all your mind_: Do you know what is
meant by loving the out of doors with your mind? Just this: that
while you feel (with your heart) the beauty of a star, at the
same time you know (with your mind) that that particular star,
let us say, is the Pole Star, the guide to the sailors on the
seas; that it is also only one of a vast multitude of stars each
one of which has its place in the heavens, its circuit or path
through the skies, its part in the whole orderly universe--a
_thought_ so vast and wonderful that we cannot comprehend it.
All this it means to love with our minds. Without minds a star
to us is only a point of light, as to Peter Bell

“A primrose by the river’s brim
A yellow primrose was to him
And it was nothing more.”

Does the toadfish become anything more than a mere toadfish in
a shoe before the end of the chapter?

PAGE 28

_in the toadfish’s shoe_: What does the author mean by asking
you to put yourself in the toadfish’s shoe? Only this: to try,
even with the humblest of creatures, to share sympathetically
their lives with them. The best way to do this with man as well
as with toadfish is to learn about their lives.