There is one kind of idea--and it is worth while meditating in the woods on the leverage power of even one very little idea--that can always be found out of doors. I mean a healthful idea, the kind of thought that makes us stand straighter, that strengthens the muscles of our backbone, that makes us act as if we were what we wish to be. There is no other force in the world that can so readily straighten out a crooked boy or a crooked girl as this same Dr. Dame Nature.
Clean? Of course, we all know what cleanliness means. It is not possible to drive, to ride in a trolley, to go on a train without being impressed with at least the advertising energy that is put into trying to get or keep the world clean. Dear me, there are the ever-present, cheerful Gold Dust Twins, well up with the times, you may believe, and nowadays taking to aviation. Their aeroplanes may not be very large, but they are clean as gold dust can make them, and the twins, without any of the friction that comes from dirt, are flying at last. What’s more, intrepid as some old Forty-Niner, they are penetrating the camper’s wilderness. Most of us do not want to be twins, and we certainly do not want to be gold dusters or any other kind of dusters, yet we should miss these jolly little youngsters. And there are Sapolio and Sunny Monday advertisements and Pears’ soap--have you used it?--and a dozen other kinds and goodness knows what not besides.
Yes, we Americans, and especially American women in the household, know what it is to make an effort in the midst of heated, dusty or uncared for streets to keep our houses and everything in them clean. In Pennsylvania you see the people scrubbing off white marble steps. In New England they turn the hose on the outside of their white farm houses. In the West they flood the side-walks to keep the dust and heat down. And our houses? Well, all houses are being built with bath tubs nowadays, even our camps, which is more than can be said for very good houses indeed in other countries than America. Some people think that camping is an excuse to be dirty. Often they are very nice people, too, but they keep a dirty camp. They don’t keep even themselves clean.
But there is another kind of cleanliness, not superficial, not that of the skin, or of the clothes or of the cabin, about which we are coming to think more and more deeply. It is what might be called vital cleanliness, the cleanness of stomachs, of the intestines, of all the vital organs. We begin to realize the truth of what those most helpful of missionaries, the health culturists, are saying: One may be clean superficially, that is one may scrub enough and yet vitally be very far from clean. We know, although it is of the greatest assistance to keep the skin free and vigorous so that it is able to do its part of the house-cleaning work for our systems, that vital cleanliness, clean, strong, internal organs performing their work with the vigor of well-constructed engines, uninjured by foolish clothing, unharmed by impure food, keen for opportunity to grow and be vigorous--we know, I say that that cleanliness is more important than skin cleanliness. Indeed, without such deep-seated cleanliness it is impossible for the skin to be really clean.