The great majority of people consider that this expression about defines
a summer outing, or a camping trip and that is the end of it. They
cannot associate it with any form of living for they have not tried the
simple life. A few weeks in summer they are in the habit of unfolding
their tents and going away to the mountains where they can for a short
while rid themselves of conventionalities and try out nature. On such
occasions they are forced to do most of their own work, and hence are
primarily interested in reducing this to the minimum. Usually those who
seek this form of the simple life are glad when the spell is over and
they are back safely in the home.
Once in awhile and perhaps at long intervals, the world gives birth to a
character tuned in a lower key than the average of us, that by virtue of
its inborn love of simplicity and lack of things to worry over, prefers
to remove the deadly weights of the conventional and to live in harmony
with the forces of the world. In this way native merits are allowed to
expand and grow. Such persons are meek and lowly with much humility of
spirit and usually gifted with a great capacity for love. Unconsciously
they are continually weeding out everything from their lives that tends
in any way to abate their natural forces, and by the time they are far
on the way of life they have become entirely free from those things that
hold most of us aloof from the best the world has to offer.
The human race has given very few such characters to the world, in fact
not a great enough number to formulate in any sense a law of the
probability and chance of their production. Diogenes is an illustration
of such a character, who after an early life of luxury, settled upon an
extremely simple life during his later years, and grew in wisdom and
understanding in proportion to his devotion to such life. Gilbert White
after a thorough college training refused many offers to appointments to
honorable posts in order to live simply at the Wakes and make a complete
record of the Natural History about Selburne. In preference to large
paying positions in many parts of the Kingdom, he chose clerical work at
very low pay that he may remain at home and not miss any important event
in the Natural History thereabouts. Thoreau is another type of the
advocate of the simple life. He could have remained about Concord all
his days as other men and have amounted to as little as many of them
did, if he had preferred. But instead, he deliberately planned an
experiment in plain living and high thinking. It has been thought by
many that he was an extremist, but how many of us there are who would
gladly take his claim to immortality. His experiment was a success. So
soon as he cast off all obstacles to free thinking, his mind seized on
the things he most loved and desired, and made him famous.
Another character that belongs in this category, and the one in whom we
are the most concerned in the present paper, is John Burroughs. Born in
one of the most beautiful sections of a great country, and reared on a
farm where he learned first hand the secrets of nature, he has never
departed far from the simple life. At the age of seventy-five he still
finds greatest comfort away from any human habitation, and the earth
beneath--the sky above, and nothing to mar his inner musings. Strange to
say the happiest environment that ever comes to him is amid the very
hills where he first saw the light. Recently, he confessed as he lifted
his eyes to a Catskill sunrise: "How much these dear old hills mean to
me! When in my playful youth little did I think as I went along this
roadway to school every morning that some day I should fall back upon
these scenes for thought, love, inspiration! O what a wholesome effect
they have upon me!" This I am sure is not an exaggerated statement of
the case. He really longs to get back among the hills of his nativity on
the return of summer, and so long as health and strength permits he
will 'return to the place of his birth, though he cannot go back to his
youth.' There in the quiet of the country, nestled among those beautiful
hills and valleys, he can get into the free and wholesome open air and
live as he likes, while the many pleasant memories of his earlier days
seem to act as a lubricant to his already active mind.
A simple life is not necessarily a life of idleness, but may on the
other hand be the very busiest of lives. In fact, is the product of any
mind as wholesome, as pure, as great as it might be when the denominator
is not reduced to its lowest terms? Let us not get the little summer
visit to the mountains confused with the larger simple life. Very few
campers on a summer vacation ever know the real joy of a quiet life as
Thoreau lived it at Walden Pond, or as Burroughs lives it at Slabsides
in spring and at Woodchuck Lodge in summer. Such a life as I am writing
about is a psychological condition as well as a physical environment,
and results from a choice or preference of two or more methods of
living. It carries with it no regrets, no envy, no covetousness. Perhaps
such a life would prove impossible when forced upon one, but happy
indeed is he who, having lived as other men, learns "to reduce the
necessities of subsistence to their lowest terms" and proves, "that in
every life there is time to be wise, and opportunity to tend the growth
of the spirit." 'Tis then and only then that he can "share the great,
sunny, joyous life of the earth, or be as happy as the birds are! as
contented as the cattle on the hills! as the leaves of the trees that
dance and rustle in the wind! as the waters that murmur and sparkle to
the sea!"
All of this I think John Burroughs has realized if ever any man has
realized it. Sitting in an old barn about a hundred yards from Woodchuck
Lodge, his summer home, in his home-made chair, and for his writing desk
an old chicken coop with one board-covered side, and a large piece of
heavy manila paper covering this, is the way I found him at work. In
front of the opening or barn door was The Old Clump, the mountain of his
boyhood days to inspire, to uplift him. Even the summer home in which he
lives savors too much of the conventional. To be absolutely free is a
consummation devoutly to be sought for--and this he finds, experiences,
cherishes. Writing at seventy-five? Yes, thinking and writing,--but
writing, thinking and living best when living simplest. With his dark
brown wash-suit and cap on, he is not afraid to sit or roll on mother
earth nor to climb a tree if necessary. Before breakfast we go to gather
some apples for the table, and nothing would do but I should hold the
basket while he mounted the tree and picked the apples. Then over the
brow of the hill after breakfast to get potatoes for dinner--but to
stop long enough at the old barn for a snap-shot of him and to learn of
the junco's nest built in the hay only six feet from his chicken-coop
desk. The bird as busy in her work rearing her young as Burroughs
writing his essays, and the two blend beautifully in the picturesque
barn. This is the only record, he tells me, of a junco nesting under
human habitation, so I get two very good pictures of the bird entering
the nest.
Only a few weeks before, he had remodeled Woodchuck Lodge and put a
rustic porch on it. His niece, referring to Mr. Burroughs during the
time, says: "I never saw a happier person than Uncle John was then. He
would work all day and rest well at night, and was in a happy mood all
the time. If there ever was such a thing as a happy person on earth, I
think he was then." And nothing delights him more now than to point out
the different pieces of furniture he made with his own hands. Every
piece of it is up to the standard of the Craftsman, and the buffet and
dining table quite tasty, while the rustic reading table and cot showed
considerable ingenuity in the adaptation of odd-shaped pieces of bark
covered wood to man's needs. All in all, it was an excellent piece of
work, and far more picturesque than any factory work I ever saw.
This man of whom we write is in many respects a wonderful man. His first
dash into literature was purely and simply Transcendentalism, a kind
of a mixture of Emersonian philosophy and metaphysics, and is by no
means poor literature, but perhaps far too complicated or vague for the
mental fibre of its author. So he starts from the first again and writes
about the common things of the farm and forest. "It was mainly to break
the spell of Emerson's influence," he says, "and get upon ground of my
own that I took to writing upon out-door themes." The selection has been
a happy one and has probably done much to recast, as it were, the author
of _Expression_--to reduce his denominator, if not increase the
numerator. Thinking and writing on every-day themes has induced him to
almost get out and live with the animals and plants. It has very largely
been responsible for the growth of his sane, wholesome mind housed in
such a healthy body. Under no other conditions it seems to me could he
have given to the world "so much of sane thinking, cool judgment,
dispassionate reasoning, so many evidences of a calm outlook upon life
and the world." In fact, could he have experienced these things in
conventional life? His philosophy is well ripened and at the same time
wonderfully human and appreciative. Each new book from his pen shows in
every way the intense enthusiasm of the author for the great study that
he has made his life work.
[Illustration: BURROUGHS IN THE OLD BARN IN WHICH HE DOES HIS WRITING]
We may ask, how does he spend his time in this country home when not
actually engaged in writing? Going about from farm to farm talking to
the common people about the seasons, the crops, and perhaps now and then
advising with them on some phase of farm work, such as curing hay or
mowing grain. Sometimes he goes to the mountains and under some ledge of
rocks he will be found studying the nature of the geological formation
of the earth. A small angled stone in his hand, he picks into the side
of the stone wall and makes some interesting discovery. While thus
engaged, he hears in the hemlock forest behind him lively bird notes,
and suddenly turning gets a glimpse of the author when for the first
time in that particular woods he sees the warbling or white-eyed vireo.
On his return he follows up a stone fence for several hundred feet to
get a little study of the chipmunk, or to locate a new flower that he
happens not to have seen this season. He knows where it ought to be, but
has not located it yet. With the growth, color, and size of a particular
species he associates its environment and perhaps learns something new
about this too before he reaches home again. Wherever his fancy leads
him, whether it be to the trout stream or the mountain side, he shows a
wonderful vigor, keen vision, and alert attention to the life about him
that is apparent in all his writings. I find no other writer on Natural
History themes quite up to Burroughs in honesty and keenness of
observation, delicacy of sentiment, and eloquent simplicity of style.
For the past few years, Burroughs' mind has turned to philosophy rather
than Nature study--the _causes of things_ rather than _things_. This is
to be expected of one who has given the mind opportunity for consecutive
development for the past half century. He has always been a philosopher,
but only his two last volumes of essays--_Ways of Nature_, and _Leaf and
Tendril_ show the deeper currents in his life. It is in these that we
see him much concerned about the constitution of nature and the history
of creation. His mind has ripened to this, and it is surprising to know
how versatile he is on the structure of organic beings, and the
geological formation of the earth's crust, and the evolution of life.
Perhaps no nature writer, ancient or modern, is so largely responsible
for the universal interest in the nature study movement at the present
time, as John Burroughs. How many he leads to an appreciation of nature!
and how many personal friends he has among all classes of people! Then
too his writings have recently found their way to the schools--thanks to
Miss Burt. With all his love for the freedom of the woods and mountains,
he is a sociable being, and is thereby subject to many interruptions
from friends. But despite this he has accomplished far more in the way
of substantial writing than the average author, and recently said that
if he keeps up his present rate he will soon have his shelves filled
with his own writings. One thing is quite conspicuous about his
relation to other people--His friends are the warmest of friends, and
whenever I have been with him, he has had a good deal to say about them.
In his _Indoor Studies_, he confesses that he is too conscious of
persons. "I feel them too much, defer to them too much, and try too hard
to adapt myself to them." But there is a certain influence he has felt
from friends that has, in all probability, given him a calmer and more
beautiful outlook upon the world. Often he is invited to dine with the
rich, but always reluctantly accepts, and I think the best part of it to
him is his return to the simple life. He says: "I am bound to praise the
simple life, because I have lived it and found it good. When I depart
from it, evil results follow. I love a small house, plain clothes,
simple living. How free one feels, how good the elements taste, how
close one gets to them, how they fit one's body and one's soul!"