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THE OUTDOOR NATURE CLUB of HOUSTON, TEXAS
BULLETIN
No. 5
Second Series
SPRING
1934
I Dine With
The Celebrities
By R. A. SELL
I eat bear meat with the president of
the United States at Sitka, Alaska. President Harding, "the Great White Father,"
gets up from the table to shake hands
and exchange felicitations with a native
Indian chief. Although he was clad in
deerskins and otter fur, the chief was not
timid. He did more than his share of the
talking. But the president was gracious
and patient, and when the Indians struck
up their drums and tomtoms and surprising "Wah-wah-wah," it was time for
the "White Father" to gesture for his
white guests to stand and cheer.
Anything can happen in Los Angeles.
>\. we were hardly prepared .for Mary
rford and Jack at a rather common-
_ce luncheon. "America's Sweetheart"
"poised a short salad fork between the
tips of her thumb, middle and ring fingers, and, with the index finger pointing,
she jabbed straight down to gig an olive.
The playwright, philosopher-naturalist,
Maurice Maeterlinck, appeared to be
timid, reserved and self-conscious. Fluent
with the music-box French, he only stammered a two-syllable word when he was
introduced to some one.
Midnight at Oakland, 1915, when one
of the longer speeches was grinding
along, and the guests were toying with
their glasses and spoons, a clerk tiptoes
to David Starr Jordan to ask:
"Do you wish to release one of the
rooms that you have reserved ?"
"No. We must keep what we've got.
A lone fisherman might come in—cold
and wet, shivering and chattering." And
'Ms from the world's greatest authority
»the subject of fish,
jnos A. Mills of Long's Peak, Colo.,
,xid of posting himself among the rocks
near a little mountain pool where wild
animals frequently came to drink. Three
mountain goats, an old billy and two
nannies, were climbing a narrow defile
when they were met by a skunk—a jet-
black fellow with a broad stripe and a
bushy tail. "Mr. Skunk just walked
straight at the goats. Old Billy hesitated,
(Continued on page 2)
The Miser
By ETHEL OSBORN HILL
I am a miser in the spring.
I grasp each shining hour
And hide it deep within my heart,
While from each blossomy bower
I snatch a picture, priceless, rare,
To hang in Memory's hall,
And tune my heart's receiving set
To catch each songbird's call.
My mental fingers tightly clutch
Each precious gem I find,
Like dewdrop diamonds, crystal clear,
And store them in my mind.
For gold I measure sunshine's glow;
For silver, moonlight's gleam;
And greedily I hoard away
Each happy, rose-hued dream.
All these I store in Memory's vault
Against that coming day
When all is cold and dark and drear,
And Spring is far away.
Then, miser-like, I'll lock my door
And take my treasures out;
I'll gaze upon my pictures rare
And spread my gems about.
My rainbow dreams I'll then unpack
And count them, one by one,
And warm my soul at Memory's fire,
Aglow with springtime sun.
Old Winter then may rage and storm;
With him I'll have no part—
For I'll be gloating o'er the wealth
I've stored up in my heart.
Spring Rhapsody
By MARCELLUS E. FOSTER
You may not believe in evolution as
far as the human race is concerned, but
when it comes to flowers we do know
there has been a constant change, often
an improvement and frequently a mingling of the wild and the tamed which
produces something more beautiful and
gorgeous.
Maybe you never had a centuries-
removed ancestor who was a fish or a
monkey, but the modern miracle called
the chrysanthemum took the Japanese
long years to produce and no doubt it
was once an ox-eyed daisy. For all you
know, it started from a lump of coal
that got restless when a hummingbird's
bill kissed it and left some pollen on its
black face—the yellow dust of new life
that had been gathered while flitting
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A Wasp Called
The Mud-Dauber
By CARL V. JARRELL
There flows down the stream of life
by your side, and intertwined with you,
the other countless creatures of earth,
all dreaming dreams, all hoping and
waiting, all endowed by the same force
of intelligence. Your genius appears akin
to them all. Your romance of life, perhaps, varies only in degree.
We are interested in the many operations of the law which appear as inexorable and as final as do the forces that
make their operations possible.
"What law determines the time factor
between the egg and the mature insect
with the same precision and with the
same regularity as the rising of tomorrow's sun and its setting at the end of
day in the western sky? What law says
to one insect its transition period shall
be of a few days, or a few weeks, or
many months, and to another decrees
that many years will come and go before
they attain maturity? Who breathes the
spark of life into one lonely chrysalis
and says, "Come forth," and to another
says, "Not yet" ? What law of life gives
to you the constancy of purpose that is
a marvel to the race of men ? What fate
hangs out the red lantern at the crossroads and points you the way beyond the
bicker and the strife that enables you to
escape the hallucinations of men that
bring about his infirmity of will ?
What power is given your offspring to
attain maturity unaided ? Then plan and
build and live to destiny's end, without
instruction, compared to some other children of earth, who are nurtured to
growth, then, in the main, seldom plan,
and rarely build except when directed ?
Then She Disappears
She went away one evening and something told me she would never return
and that I would finish this narrative by
the light of the inspiration she had left
behind.
We are conscious of a power which has
inspired her with an abiding faith. We
divine a force which has impelled her to
go forth without mental confusion or
(Continued on page 3)
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