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Mark Twain said of Thomas Bailey Aldrich in his later years: "I
am tired of waiting for that fellow to grow old." Some men are
like that. They keep the heart of a boy and snap their fingers in the
face of Father Time. John Burroughs is such a man. Although he has
lived on this round earth for more than eighty-three years, he is
still getting fun out of life, and is as interested about the earth
itself and all the creatures on it as when he was a boy on his
father's farm in the Catskills. Probably this is why he keeps so young.
Last spring, with a Boy Scout and his father, a Scout Master, he
visited a beavers' colony in a wild wooded chasm in the Dutchess
County hills, and was the most interested of that interested three in
the work of those beavers-in the trees they had cut down and peeled,
and the dam they had built. He brought away some of their chips, and
a maple walking-stick -- a strong straight stick which they had cut
and bevelled at either end in a thoroughly workmen-like way, and now
he carries that beavermade cane on all his tramps afield.
"Sparrowhawk" and his father made a fire and then taught
this experienced camper-out one thing he had never heard of-how to
make a brigand steak: They selected, peeled, and sharpened a straight
maple limb, six or eight feet long, which tapered to the size of a
lead pencil, peeling about two feet of the tapering end. On this
peeled end the Scout Master strung the pieces of steak, sliced very
thin and cut in portions about one and one-half inches square, the
folded slices of bacon, and the tender young onions, like beads on a
string. Placing a big stone back of the fire on which to rest the tip
of the long stick, they slowly turned the stick, thus roasting the
meat and onions over the flame. And when all was done to a
turn-several of them-in this picturesque rotisserie, and their
appetites were whetted to distraction by the savoury smell, the salt
added, the string unstrung, the three boys of varying age and size,
but each with a brigand's appetite, fell to, and made way with the feast. |
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Last year in Life, in the Historic Boys Series by E. Foster Lincoln,
there appeared a clever caricature of Mr. Burroughs. It represents
Johnnie Burroughs as a small barefoot boy in short trousers and
checked shirt, but with the white hair and flowing beard we all know.
He is holding a rabbit in his hands, butterflies are resting on the
crown of his head, a bird is perched on one shoulder, the tail of a
grey squirrel is sticking out of one pocket, a red squirrel is
running up one leg, and a chipmunk is peeking out of another pocket.
A bird has built its nest in his hat, and birds and butterflies and
many other wild creatures are hanging around as chummy as you please.
It is pretty true to life, this caricature, except that the
expression of the boy's face should be happier. He usually has a
twinkle in his eye instead of the somewhat worried look the
caricaturist has given. But it represents him having a good time out
of doors with his wild friends, as he has had throughout his boyhood
of more than four-score years.
Probably the most of my young readers learned to know John Burroughs
in the Little Nature Series, Birds and Bees, and Squirrels and Other
Fur Bearers. I wonder if you remember about the venturesome mouse
which he found swimming vigorously in the middle of a mountain lake,
its little legs looking like swiftly-revolving wheels; and how the
mouse dived as he came near, but came up like a cork, and ran up the
oar and shook hands with him. Perhaps you learned to know Lark, his
little black and tan, the dog with the gentle heart, who joined him
on so many excursions to the woods; and his cat, Nig, who kept warm
on cold days by sitting on the back of Prince, the horse. Then there
was Peggy Mel of such sweet memory, who dwelt in a hive; and Molly
Cottontail who lived under his study, faring sumptuously on sweet
apples, and thumping her thanks on the floor, or maybe asking for more.
Well, he is just as fond of pets as ever, as you will see if you read
his latest book, Field and Study, where he talks about his fussy and
quarrelsome wren neighbours, his wood waifs, his tame chipmunks, and
his companion, the dog. He is as fond of a scrap, too, as other boys
are, even if it is only a scrap between a wren and a bluebird.
As a rule boys don't hanker after " English " very much,
but I imagine it is quite a relief when they come upon "The
Apple" in their prescribed work-nothing dry and tasteless about
that! Only the worst of that essay is, it makes you so hungry for an
apple that you can never read it through without stopping to go down
cellar after one-if you are lucky enough to have a cellar, and apples
in it. And from that you are pretty sure to read on and on just for
the pleasure of it, finding in whatever volume you take up
descriptions of things you know and delight in, and discovering
others of which you have never dreamed.
To a boy especially keen about birds there is a regular
"bonanza" in "The Return of the Birds," "The
Tragedies of the Nests," and "Birds' Eggs." In this
last chapter "the Bird Man," as some children I knew
affectionately named him, teaches you to collect eggs yet leave them
in the nest. For the angler there is "Speckled Trout." For
the boys who are good campers and trampers there are "Birch
Browsings" and "A Bed of Boughs."
For those who like to hobnob with wild creatures there are "The
Snow Walkers", "Hard Fare," and "Winter
Neighbours"; and whatever your special bent, you will enjoy
paddling with the author down the Pepacton on that summer voyage he
took so long ago, mighty sorry you were not there on the spot when he
launched his boat in Dry Brook at Arkville (which was not dry at
all), and was wishing for a boy just about your age to go along.
Do you wonder why you so enjoy reading those essays -- even forget
that you are reading? It is because he had such a good time writing
them. We usually do well what we like to do. When anyone finds
something he especially likes to do, and can do just a little better
than anyone else, and in a way all his own, it is probably his
particular work in the world. It is often nearer than he dreams.
Among the writings of John Burroughs the things we most enjoy are
those which have grown out of the homely experiences of the farm.
"Our Rural Divinity" (the cow) was raised on the dairy farm
while its author was being "raised" there, too. The Apple
essay grew in the orchard or volume at his old home. The
"Strawberries" grew there. The Red Fox and the Snow Walkers
roamed there-all these and many more grew on the farm and became a
part of the boy himself, and behold! when he unpacked his boy hood
treasures, there were his books already more than half written! Of
course he had to add something of his own, just as the bee has to add
a drop of itself to the nectar it gets from the flowers before it can
make honey.
When that farm-boy was tending sheep, when the wayward creatures led
him on many a ramble, and he had to be "dog, fence, and
pasture" for them, he was (though he knew it not) doing some
"wool-gathering" of another kind-he coralled bluebirds,
swallows, bobolinks, hermit thrushes and goldfinches in an invisible
enclosure, and although they still soared and sang at liberty over
the mountain meadows, they will always sing and soar for us from the
pages of the one-time boy-shepherd of those breezy hills.
His young correspondents always seem curious as to how he came to
write about the birds and wild life, for it is one thing to have a
good time out of doors, and quite another to tell about it on paper
so that others can have a good time reading it. Some students of
rhetoric a few years ago wrote him that they especially liked his
Strawberry essay and wished he would tell them how to learn to write
as he does. This is what he sent them in reply:
Ah! but I loved the strawberry; I loved the fields where it grew; I
loved the birds that sang there, and the flowers that bloomed there;
and I loved my mother who sent me forth to gather the berries. I
loved all the rural sights and sounds. I felt near them, so that
when, in after years, I came to write my essay, I had only to obey
the old adage which sums up all the advice which can be given in
these matters, "Look into thy heart and write."
The same when I wrote about the apple. I had apples in my blood and
bones. I had not ripened them in the haymow and bitten them under the
desk and behind my slate so many times in school for nothing. Every
apple-tree I ever shinned up and dreamed under of a long summer day,
while a boy, helped me to write that paper. The whole life of the
farm, and love of home, and of father and mother, and of my brothers
and sisters, helped me to write it.
He often says he can never think of his books as works because so
much play went into the making of them. He has gone out of doors in a
holiday spirit, had a good time, and never lost his relish for his
outings. Life has been one long opportunity to learn and enjoy and,
through his books. to share his enjoyment with others. He has not had
to go away from home to have a good time. He has never lost his
appetite for each new day; has kept the same sensitiveness to
impressions that he had as a boy; has kept his keenness for
adventure; and while most of his enjoyment has come from things and
places near home, he has also kept his early curiosity about new
things and new lands.
The two books I have oftenest seen in his hands this spring are
Darwin's Naturalist's Voyage Round the World, which he is reading for
the fourth time, and McMillan's Four Years in the White North. And
to-day he is eager to go to Greece and Rome, and to Egypt, and hopes
to do so as soon as the world gets steadied down from the great
upheaval caused by the World War.
As for the War itself, there was no boy or man in America more
interested than he was, and, since he could not fight with sword or
gun, he fought valiantly with his pen. Still, fighting is not his
forte. His paths have been, like the cowpaths on the home farm, paths
of peace.
He still enjoys his farm-boy pastimes with some others that his
boyhood never knew. He goes trout fishing every June, every summer
hunts birds' nests, climbs trees and picks cherries; he shoots the
woodchucks that pilfer in his garden, and hoes among his peas and
beans. In the fall he gathers apples from the same trees where he
gathered them as a boy. But he also drives his Ford car; and plays by
the seashore with his grandson; camps and tramps with him; and
sometimes goes on an auto-camping trip with Thomas A. Edison, Henry
Ford, H. S. Firestone, and others. Through the winter months, unless
he journeys to a warmer clime, though writing in the forenoon, he
spends a certain part of each day sawing and splitting wood for his
study fire. For recreation he walks through the snow-choked woods, or
ambles along on the back of his little donkey-Sally in our Alley -- a
cantankerous beast, so changeable and fickle, and so rebellious at
having been transplanted from the Rocky Mountains to the Hudson River
Valley, that she finally forced him to part company with her. He even
has an ambition to go up in an aeroplane, and declares he will the
first good chance he gets. He confidently expects before long to see
other friends than the birds flying over his head and alighting near.
Alive to all the thrilling things that are happening in the world
to-day, he is, in truth, a grown-up boy.
Footnotes:
- Riverby: His home at West Park, N. Y. - (Return)
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