A CALL TO THE LAND

In his retirement from active work Doctor Tucker has at last found leisure to experience the restful pleasure of getting back to nature. He may often be found on the little by-roads that intersect the environs of Hanover, on a tour of exploration, making the acquaintance of the land and its people. All will be interested in this appreciation of nature and call to the land, from his pen, written to the Dartmouth Alumni of New York and read at their annual banquet last winter. Doctor Tucker wrote:

"When I closed the door of the office, I determined to see at least some of the things of nature of which I had caught glimpses in the rush of work. So Mrs. Tucker and I, with horse and dog, took our way day after day to the hills on either side of the valley. We opened the old, disused roads which had once tried to conquer the hills; we followed the little rivers and the brooks to their sources ; we climbed to summits where the horizon lifted north, south, east, and west; in short we took the range of the glorious physical environment of the college from Ascutney to Moosilauke. And now, after these experiences, often repeated, I am quite ready to say to you, as one of the sons of England is saying to his fellows in London: The land is the hope of England. Come back to the land, to the ploughing and the reaping and the threshing, to the scents of spring and summer and autumn, to the cleansing wind and the open sky, to the timeless trees and the large heart of nature. Come back, we can give you what no town can ever give you. As I am now writing the thermometer is at zero, and yet I abate nothing from what I have written. I look out of my window to the north and see the white fields tracked with ski and snowshoes and toboggan. Every track is a testimonial to the guard which nature keeps over virility."