“By study. I began in my sixteenth or seventeenth year to try to
express myself on paper, and when, after I had left the country school,
I attended the seminary at Ashland and at Cooperstown, I often received
the highest marks in composition, though only standing about the
average in general scholarship. My taste ran to essays, and I picked up
the great works in that field at a bookstore, from time to time, and
filled my mind with the essay idea. I bought the whole of Dr. Johnson’s
works at a second-hand bookstore in New York, because, on looking into
them, I found his essays appeared to be of solid literature, which I
thought was just the thing. Almost my first literary attempts were
moral reflections, somewhat in the Johnsonian style.”
“You were supporting yourself during these years?”
“I taught six months and ‘boarded round’ before I went to the seminary.
That put fifty dollars into my pocket, and the fifty paid my way at
the seminary. Working on the farm, studying and teaching filled up the
years until 1863, when I went to Washington and found employment in the
Treasury Department.”
“You were connected with the Treasury, then?”
“Oh, yes; for nearly nine years. I left the department in 1872, to
become receiver of a bank, and subsequently for several years performed
the work of a bank examiner. I considered it only as an opportunity to
earn and save up a little money on which I could retire. I managed to
do that, and came back to this region, where I bought a fruit farm. I
worked that into a paying condition, and then gave all my time to the
pursuit of the studies I like.”
“Had you abandoned your interest in nature during your Washington life?”
“No; I gave as much time to the study of nature and literature as I had
to spare. When I was twenty-three, I wrote an essay on ‘Expression,’
and sent it to the ‘Atlantic.’ It was so Emersonian in style, owing to
my enthusiasm for Emerson at that time, that the editor thought some
one was trying to palm off on him an early essay of Emerson’s which he
had not seen. He found that Emerson had not published any such paper,
however, and printed it, though it had not much merit. I wrote off and
on for the magazines.”
The editor in question was James Russell Lowell, who, instead of
considering it without merit, often expressed afterward the delight
with which he read this contribution from an unknown hand, and the
swift impression of the author’s future distinction which came to him
with that reading.