Guy Gregory Gelhardt  age 9, of Milwaukee for his question:

What is meant by Mother Nature?

Maybe you have seen the Statue of Liberty, or at any rate a picture of that great lady. This huge figure of a woman holding aloft a beacon is our symbol of liberty. See my lamp of freedom, she seems to say, You will see better and think better if you are free to think for yourself. Such a. symbol tells us far more than the plain word liberty.

The symbol of justice is a. blindfold woman holding a pair of scales. I weigh everything fairly, she seems to say. I do not judge by what this person or that person looks like. I  judge and weigh only what is proved before me in my balance scales.

Mother Nature is another of these symbols. She is represented as the mother of all living things upon the earth, She is not a real person, any more than Miss Liberty or Justice are real persons. Like them, she is a symbol that them, she is a symbol that helps us to understand an idea better than words could ever do.

It is also pleasant for us to imagine that all the little creatures have an understanding mother. Like a real mother, Mother Nature is kind and she is stern. She helps little ones, she provides them with food and she teaches them. Like a real mother, she also lays down the law and sees to it that her children keep her rules.