Quotable E.A.M.--In Beaver World

The Quotable Enos A. Mills, from "In Beaver World":

"It was autumn when these beaver pioneers came to Lily Lake's primitive and poetic border. The large green leaves of the pond-lily rested upon the water, while from the long green stems had falllen the sculptured petals of gold; the willows were wearing leaves of brown and bronze, and the yellow tremulous robes of the aspens glowed in the golden sunlight."

"A river which flows steadily throughout the year is of inestimable value to mankind. If floods sweep a river, they do damage. If low water comes, the wheels of steamers and of factories cease to move, and a dry river-channel means both damage and death. Numerous beaver colonies along the sources of countless streams that rise in the hills and the mountains would be helpful in equalizing the flow of these streams. I hope and believe that before many years every rushing care-free brook that springs from a great watershed will be steadied iin a poetic pond that is made, and that will be maintained by our patient, persevering friend the beaver."

"A live beaver is more valuable to mankind than a dead one...if protected they would multiply and colonize stream-sources. Here they would practice conservation. Their presence would reduce river and harbor appropriations and make rivers more maneagable, useful, and attractive. It would pay us to keep beaver colonies in the heights. Beaver would help keep America beautiful. A beaver colony in the wilds gives a touch of romance and a rare charm to the outdoors. The works of the beaver have ever intensely interested the human mind. Beaver works may do for children what schools, sermons, companions, and even home sometimes fail to do,--develop the power to think. No boy or girl can become intimately acquainted with the ways and works of these primitive folk without having the eyes of observation opened, and acquiring a permanent interest in the wide world in which we live. A race which can produce mothers and fathers as noble as those beaver in the Grand Canyon who offered their lives hoping thereby to save their children is needed on this earth. The beaver is the Abou-ben-Adhem of the Wild. May his tribe increase!"

The beaver has a rich birthright, though born in a windowless hut of mud. Close to the primeval place of his birth the wild folk of both woods and water meet and often mingle. Around are the ever-changing and never-ending scenes and silences of the water or the shore. Beaver grow up with the many-sided wild, playing amid the brilliant flowers and great boulders, in the piles of driftwood and among the fallen logs on the forest's mysterious edge. They learn to swim and slide, to dive quickly and deeply from sight, to sleep, and to rest moveless in the sunshine; ever listening to the strong, harmonious stir of wind and water, living with the stars in the sky and the stars in the pond; beginning serious life when brilliant clouds of color enrich autumn's hills; helping to harvest the trees that wear the robes of gold, while the birds go by for the southland in the reflective autumn days. If Mother Nature should ever call me to live upon another planet, I could wish that I might be born a beaver, to inhabit a house in the water.

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