AN INTRODUCTION Which might better be entitled: Some Youngsters Find the Wrong Parents

By

Gene Stratton-Porter

Since “The Wild Heart” is throbbing with the same blood that pulses in the heart of every human being who goes to the fields and woods and fraternizes with the creatures that home there, since the feet that carry a wild heart on its journey are following the same path that a few peculiar feet have made, what they have found and what the heart has 2learned is the same thing that similar feet have been finding and hearts have been learning since the beginning of time.

The author of this book pronounces it “very simple, having no literary style or value.” Perhaps this estimate indicates modesty on her part, but it is not the truth concerning the book. Thoreau once wrote: “It takes two to speak the truth—one to speak and the other to hear.” Those of us who have made our own path through the wilds know the truth when we hear it. The first law that can be laid down concerning any work worthy to be put into the hands of the public is the old law that every writer should write concerning matters of his own personal observation. Whenever any writer follows this old rule, working with sincerity of heart, with inborn insight concerning his chosen subject, following the promptings of a simple human heart, and using a certain facility in the choice of words, 3which is a gift of God primarily, that author must evolve good work. Laying down these specifications as law which governs every masterpiece that ever has been produced, it will be observed that “The Wild Heart” follows them as naturally as water flows to the sea, possibly as unconsciously.

To anyone who knows the fields and woods the book carries the conviction of truth. Those who do not know nature will not believe many of these statements, because they have not learned that when one goes into the haunts of the wild calmly, fearlessly, absolutely in tune with Nature, one is perfectly safe. The people who go to fraternize with the free creatures, to learn the secrets of Nature, to protect, to love, to fellowship with the wild, wear an invincible armor.

Enos Mills will tell you that he tramps the Rocky Mountains for weeks at a time absolutely without a weapon. Arthur Heming will tell you that he 4travels Canada from side to side, north and south, passing all kinds of wild creatures at all seasons and under any conditions, and nothing touches him.

I can tell you that my face has been within two feet of a coiled rattlesnake ready to strike, but it did not strike. Two minutes later a man antagonistic to the wild passed the same location and immediately the snake disclosed itself and was ready to fight.

Very recently some children playing at the edge of the desert found a scorpion. They coaxed it onto a piece of bark and were carrying it around playing with it. So long as they felt no fear of the creature, it was quiescent in their hands. The instant they carried it among grown people who recognized it and were afraid, the trouble began. When the wild thing entered the atmosphere of fear and was surrounded by the taint of that acid which is exhaled from the body of any human being 5experiencing fear, that instant it was on guard and ready to strike.

Any human being carrying in his breast a wild heart knows instinctively how to fraternize with the wild. Anyone carrying a heart of fear and antagonism will have a troubled journey through forest or desert. The writer of this book proves that she carries a wild heart in her breast. Her records are unquestionably true. They are precisely the same things that happen to anyone having a heart in tune with Nature.

So the book passes, first, because it speaks the truth. It needs only that these records should be read to gain an idea of the degree of insight possessed by the writer. The nice comprehension of what the wild is thinking and feeling, the keen perception of the “why” of things, pass the book on the grounds of insight. The simple unassuming manner in which the record is kept 6proves it the emanation of a human heart without guile, effervescing love, not only for the beauties of field and forest, but for the living creatures that home there.

It is modest of the writer to say that her book has “no literary style or value,” but the book proves the reverse. Throughout will be found the value of truth, the exquisite style of utter simplicity, the best plain common word chosen to tell the plain common story; and it is a very difficult thing always to find the right words with which to tell any story. There are only about twenty thousand words in the English language. When you compare this number with the number of objects existing in the world, the number of ideas that have sprung and will spring in the human brain, it easily can be appreciated that it is sometimes difficult to find the right word by which to express one’s meaning clearly and simply; for there always is one word which, better 7than any other, will portray a situation or describe an object.

Any author who is actuated by sincerity will always choose the plain simple word which expresses his meaning plainly and simply. The one thing that sets apart the work of any writer is the ability to express himself in plain simple language that common people can understand and appreciate. It was on this subject that Martin Luther once said: “Hebrew, Latin, and Greek I spare until we learned ones come together, and then we make it so curled and finical that God Himself wondereth at us.”

That is precisely the reason why nine-tenths of the Nature books written in this country have been failures. They are “so curled and finical” that only the “learned ones” can understand what they are all about.

To me it is an atrocity to tag a bird, a butterfly, or a flower with several inches of Latin or Greek per each. 8Every living creature should have a common, simple, descriptive name that a common human being who wants to know what it is can learn and remember. I do truly believe “that God Himself wondereth at us” if He takes the time to look at many of the books to be found in our libraries concerning the most exquisite and beautiful of His creatures.

I believe that any normal man or woman would be intensely interested in the organism of a moth, the delicate parts so beautifully evolved to serve their purpose; but what common person could wade through a large volume crammed from end to end with such terms as patagia, jugum, discocellulars, phagocytes? It is such works on Nature that have kept the Nature lovers of many generations out of the fields and woods. They had not the education, the time, nor the inclination to be sufficiently “curled and finical” to be specific. They could take no one specimen 9and learn it, because they could not identify it. In a book such as “The Wild Heart” there is no word that a ten-year-old child can not comprehend; while there is a wonderful beauty and facility in the choice of words, in the sincerity of expression, and the sympathetic insight.

I certainly wish that a copy of this book may go into every home in the world, for two reasons: the first, that men and women may learn how anyone with a sympathetic heart devoid of fear may fraternize with the wild; and for the other very excellent reason that it may do something toward teaching parents that all children are not alike and can not possibly be run through the same groove.

Here and there in a family there is born a child with a wild heart. It is nothing less than a tragedy when such a child is cursed with the wrong parents. God gives to only a few of His children a wild heart, a musical ear, 10facile fingers. The man or woman who keeps a child born with the love of the woods in its heart from contact with Nature, who destroys the trust that God placed in its heart, and instils fear bred by man, does a dreadful thing, a thing that must end in disaster. Nature does not reveal her secrets to everyone. Creatures of the wild will not be brothers with any save a very few specially endowed human beings.

Today my heart sickens at the thought of what would have happened to me if, when I told my Mother I had been talking with the fairies and what they said and did, she had whipped me for not speaking the truth; if, when I came from the woods with my apron torn and soiled, full of dirty specimens, my heart overflowing with the wonders of my discoveries, I had been beaten and forbidden to go again. If we are to have truly great art, literature, or 11science in the future, many, perhaps most, of those who are to do the work will be born into this world in simple common homes like the Indiana homes in which the author of “The Wild Heart” and I were born. What we as a nation produce in wonder-work along any creative line in the future is going to depend upon the ability of parents of this generation to recognize and to foster unusual gifts in their children when they first detect them. The mother who whips a child because it happens to have been born with a wild heart does a thing so wickedly cruel that there are no words in which to describe the situation adequately. If this book will serve the one purpose of making fathers and mothers of the coming generation sympathetic and kindly to the little wild hearts that they bring into the world, it will perform a very great work indeed.

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