When we read in the papers about some of the great things that men have made or found or done, we feel excited; but when we take a quiet look at just a few of the marvels in the world of nature, we feel both amazed and humbled. To show you what I mean: It is said that there is more power in a single bolt of lightning than man could create if he were to combine every source of power we have.

A starfish can grow new limbs; no man can do that. If a billion flakes of snow fall, all will have six sides and yet no two will be the same; a man could not design a thousand such patterns. A man can get lost in a forest five miles long, yet a seal can swim three thousand miles and get home when and where he should. We men have a long way to go before we can catch up to nature’s marvels.

For more than a year now, it has been my pleasure each morning to study the window of a fine jewelry store that is located at the corner where I catch the bus. I get there a few minutes before eight and have to wait six or seven minutes before the bus is due to stop for me. While I wait, I look at a special display of clocks, which is quite a sight to see, for there are clocks of all shapes and sizes. Most out of step with each other, you might say. If I owned the store, I think I would try to make a better show than that.

Until I got my first look at the window of the jewelry store, I did not know that clocks come in so many different sizes. The window has a whole shelf of alarm clocks; there must be two dozen of them, from tiny to huge. There is one row of slim china clocks that look church spires. The best of all, though, is a group of clocks that (a sign says in big letters) are wound by the changes in the weather. I have some doubts about this kind, and now and then I stir a quiet hope that the experts who built these clocks have put in a key as a kind of insurance against too many nice days.

All during lunch, we joshed each other about the great mess of trout on which we were not dining. We spoke of its fine quality. We agreed that what Jim had caught, had won first prize for the work of the morning. So, it was in such fine spirit that we went back to our rods and reels and the wise old trout to which we would now show no mercy, none at all. But the wise old trout stayed wise and out of reach, and by late afternoon most of us were looking a bit anxious. When the bacon odors came this time, they did not seem quite the same as at lunch. The talk around the fire was a bit grim.

One thing that animal life needs is space in which to find food and to grow. Someone once put a few rabbits on a small, green island. This was an excellent place for rabbits; they quickly grew in size and in numbers. In a year or two they ate up all the grass and sprouts and leaves. Just as you would guess, that was the end of the rabbits.

The tale is told, too, of an island on which there were so many mice that they just about took over the place. The island was one of some value because a rare bush grew there, one whose bark is used in medicine. The owner brought in some cats to get rid of the mice. The cats did the job too well. When all the mice were gone, the cats grew so wild and fierce that even men had to move out, leaving the whole island to a horde of wild cats.

The more you see how nature has armed living things so that they might stay out of the jaws of other living things, the more amazed you will be. For example, a squid can shoot out a jet of black ink and leave its foe in a dark cloud. An urchin can cut its way out from inside another fish. An eel can stun a foe with an electric jolt. A salmon can cut and run away at thirty miles an hour.

Nature has helped man no less. We have feet and legs so we can run; we have hands and arms so we can fight; we have a brain that helps us think up ways to outwit a foe, and this brain is hidden in a skull that is mighty hard to crack. But the best trick nature had given a lot of us, I think, is a glib tongue: We talk our way out of danger!

The six of us found a lane that led to a quiet lake in the woods. The lake was not very big, as far as size goes, but it looked as if it were loaded with fish and just ached for some kind souls like us to help reduce its load. Well, we had come with some such kind thought in mind; and before you could think twice, Joe and Co. were getting their fishing lines in order. Before lines hit the water, though, an old chap came along; I asked him if we were allowed to fish there, and he said that no one would mind at all if we did.

I do not know, Dave, that I can analyze your problem, glad though I would be to help you. All of us want to be liked, of course; but what it is that makes a man liked is hard to say. It is not just that he is or is not quiet, that he is or is not extra neat. What makes others so well liked?

Red is well liked because, with so much that he could boast about, he doesn’t. Frank is liked because he doesn’t tell how he helps others. Bob is liked because he does not flaunt the money his folks have. These boys have in common a thing we call modesty. They simply do not show off, ever!

When you hear someone say that it is raining cats and dogs, you know rain is falling hard. No one knows quite how the expression was begun, but it is old. Jonathan Swift, who wrote those tales about Gulliver, used the term in a book more than two hundred years ago. Well, it never has rained cats and dogs, of course; but do you realize that it has rained, of all things, frogs? It is true.

It seems that a gale can scoop up the spawn, or eggs, of the frog and lift them high up in the air. The spawn may ride on the wind for hundreds of miles, flying on for days and days. The spawn may hatch up there in the air and, taking on more weight than the gale can carry as its force grows less, fall to the ground along with the last rain of the storm. You see, it really can rain frogs.

When the two of us got back from our hike to the lake, we found that there had been a big fire in one of the homes down the street from where we live. No one had been hurt in the blaze, but the flames had left just a shell of what had been one of the best old homes in that whole part of town.

Doc and I went down for a look and were told that no one was in the house when the fire began, which is why it had got such a start by the time the fire trucks got there. While we stood there, some man came out of the wet ruins with a strange look on his face and a black oil can in his hand.

So, fish day and night is what we thought we would do. The sun was up just a little, so that it must not have been more than eight or nine in the morning when the six sets of lines first hit the water. We laughed when Jim snagged the first shoe and when Bob lost the first hook to a hidden log that, as we told him, must have been waiting for him for at least two of three years. We had no luck at all that morning, though; and when we got a whiff of the bacon that Fred had sizzling over a fire, we knocked off for a quick dip in the lake and then a cheerful meal in the shade of the oaks.

We sat by the fire and ate our meal with little of the spark and zest that had marked our lunch. We were still at it when the old fellow who had told us we could fish in the lake came up once more. He asked us whether we had had any luck. We said we had had quite a lot of it, all bad. Then he laughed and said he guessed that, by now, we knew why no one would mind if we fished there: There weren’t any fish.

You might think that we must have exploded with anger, right then and there; but if you think that, you don’t know fishing. We were so glad to find out that the results were not our fault that we just roared with laughter and relief.