His visit through the South during the Winter and early Spring of 1908,
is rather significant, especially among his literary and Nature-lover
friends. It is another evidence of his determination to understand
Nature under all conditions, and removes far from us the idea that he is
a local figure like Thoreau or White.
When it was known that Mr. Burroughs intended to spend part of the
Spring of 1908, traveling through the South and visiting in Florida,
nothing seemed more fitting than to have him stop in Georgia. This he
consented to do, and was with us a week beginning March 4. As soon as he
consented to visit in Georgia, an effort was made to have him meet
"Uncle Remus," and Mr. Harris was invited to call on Mr. Burroughs, but
on account of sickness that finally got the better of Mr. Harris and
caused his death, July 3, also on account of business details during the
combining of The Home Magazine with _Uncle Remus's Magazine_, the two
men did not meet. In expressing his regrets, "Uncle Remus" wrote of his
debt and relation to Mr. Burroughs as follows:
There is not in the wide world a man whom I would rather meet
than John Burroughs. He is the only man in the country who is
living the ideal life. I have just been re-reading his essay on
Walt Whitman, and I feel closer to him than ever. There are
some details of the deal with the Western Magazine still to
settle, and I am sorry indeed, not to be able to accept your
invitation. I thank you for thinking of me. Give Mr. Burroughs
my love.
Faithfully yours,
JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS.
Both of these men have lived the simple life, and yet, "Uncle Remus"
thought that "Oom John," as Mr. Roosevelt calls Burroughs, was the only
man in the country living the ideal life. One thing is evident, no man
ever enjoyed life more than Mr. Burroughs, and as per his own statement,
work has been the secret of his happiness. "Oh, the blessedness of
work," he says, "of life-giving and life-sustaining work! The busy man
is the happy man; the idle man is the unhappy. When you feel blue and
empty and disconsolate, and life seems hardly worth living, go to work
with your hands,--delve, hoe, chop, saw, churn, thrash, anything to
quicken the pulse and dispel the fumes. The blue devils can be hoed
under in less than a half hour."
This, he goes on to say, is his own experience, and therefore he has
always found something to do. Not many days ago he wrote: "I have
recently got to work again and hope to keep at it." And he will keep at
it as long as life shall last.
Mr. Burroughs was born April 3, 1837, on a small farm amid the Catskills
at Roxbury, New York, where he lived during the early years of his life.
The love of the farm still clings to him, and you will frequently hear
him say, "Anything that savors of the farm is very pleasant to me, and
recalls my early years at Roxbury on the old home farm." He belongs to
that class of men who got an education by working most of the time and
going to school when there was little work to do. In order to gain his
way to the academy, he had to earn his own money, as his parents were
poor and there were nine children in the family. To earn the necessary
money, he taught school and with the money he thus earned, went to
Ashland Academy. Afterwards, he closed his school days at Cooperstown in
1854, where he studied one term. Upon leaving school, the spirit of
adventure seized him, and he went to Illinois and spent some time
teaching. But because of the girl he loved, he soon returned to New
York, and married in 1857, while teaching in a small town in the east
central part of the state. The two have enjoyed a wide acquaintance
among the literary characters of America for the last half century. To
them has been born one child, Julian Burroughs, who is already known in
the literary world as a Nature writer.