How well I can see Father's expression as he wrote that line, "Your dad
is honoured in strange lands--more than he is at home"! and I sympathize
with him fully. It has always been thus, that people of genius are least
appreciated in their own home. And yet few men have the patience and
gentleness that he had; few were as easy to get along with. He asked
little for himself and was generous with what was his, and generous to
the faults or shortcomings of others. I remember in one of those early
March days the school boys raided his sap pans and Father chased and
caught them, and as he overhauled one boy, the boy exclaimed pantingly,
"I didn't touch your sap, Mr. Burris!" and Father laughed over it. "The
little rascal was all wet down his front then with sap!" Father would
then tell the story of the boy in school who was seen by his teacher
eating an apple. "I saw you then," exclaimed the teacher. "Saw me do
what?" said the boy. "Saw you bite that apple." "I didn't bite any
apple," replied the boy. "Come here," and as the boy came up the teacher
opened his mouth and took out a big chunk of apple. "I didn't know it
was there," promptly said the boy. Father would always laugh at that: he
sympathized with the boy. Yet when he taught school he had a big bundle
of "gads" as he called them and he hid them in the stove pipe, where
the boys failed to find them. I remember how Mother said that one boy
imposed upon Father's good nature too far, and then when Father did
finally get angry he got furious and grabbed the boy, who hung on his
desk, and Father took him desk and all, tearing the desk from its floor
fastenings. Doubtless afterward he was very sorry he had let his temper
"get the better" of him, as he would express it.
In those days we often went for a swim, either in the river, or over to
the swimming pool in Black Creek. Father was a good swimmer but he would
never dive--he said it always seemed to him that there would be many
water soldiers down there holding up spears, and one would be impaled
upon them if he dived. Many times I have asked myself just how he looked
in those days when he was so strong and active. There was something very
natural about him, a thin white skin that bled easily at a scratch; fine
hair that grew well and was wavy; a fine-grained, fluid kind of body,
like the new growth of ferns or new shoots of willows; medium size
hands, broad and brown, with fingers bent from milking when he was a
small boy; picturesque in dress, everything soft and subdued in colour.
Someone once said that his style in literature was slovenly, and Father
said that that was true. "I am slovenly in my dress and all I do, so
no doubt my style is slovenly also." Though this may seem to be a harsh
criticism, it is true in the sense that Nature he self is slovenly,
slovenly in contrast to what is stiff and artificial. His eyes were
grayish brown, light, with a hint of green. His voice was soft and when
he was embarrassed he stammered; he would force the words out, with a
little hesitation; then when the word did come it was quick and forced.
In the same way his long-enduring patience, when once it did become
exhausted the temper came out in full measure. Often he was the one who
suffered--more often, I should say. In the following letter he refers to
the broken bone in his hand, a long and painful break, that caused him
months of suffering. One day when chopping wood on his wood pile by the
study a small stick irritated him, it would not lie still, but rolled
about and dodged the axe until in fury Father managed to strike it. The
stick flew back and in some way broke the bone in his right hand that
goes to the knuckle of the index finger, which he used in writing.
At Home, Feb. 12 {1907}.