Chapter XIII: To the Teacher

If you have read through “The Fall of the Year” and “Winter” and
to this chapter in “The Spring of the Year,” you will know that
the upshot of these thrice thirteen readings has been to take
you and your children into the woods; you will know that the
last paragraph of this last chapter is the aim and purpose and
key of all three books. You must _go_ into the woods, you must
lead your children to go, deep and far and frequently. The Three
R’s first--but after them, before dancing, or cooking, or
sewing, or manual training, or anything, send your children out
into the open, where they belong. The school can give them
nothing better than the Three R’s, and can only fail in trying
to give them more, except it give them the freedom of the
fields. Help Nature, the old nurse, to take your children on her
knee.

FOR THE PUPIL

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_Here is the prescription_: Think you can swallow it? Go out and
try.

PAGE 129

_Golden Chariot_: In what Bible story does the Golden Chariot
descend? and whom does it carry away?

_pale-face_: an Indian name for the white man.

PAGE 130

_box turtles_: They are sometimes found as far north as the
woods of Cape Cod, Massachusetts; but are very abundant farther
south.

PAGE 133

_Chewink_: towhee, or ground-robin; to be distinguished by his
loud call of “chewink” and his vigorous scratching among the
leaves.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Spring of the Year, by Dallas Lore Sharp