where she undressed me on the wood-pile and wrapped me in her own
woolen shawl, which was a black-and-red pattern of very large
squares. Thus bundled up and rendered quite helpless except as to
my lungs, I was laid on the floor near the stove, where I remained
for the amusement of the children until the shower was over, when a
bushel-basket was sent for to the nearest house, which was the house of
shoemaker Talmadge. Into this basket, commonly used for potatoes and
corn, I was put, wrapped in the black-and-red shawl and packed around
with my soiled clothes, and two of the big boys, John Pierpont and
John Talmadge, carried me up the hill and through the village to my
grandmother's house.
In the summer following I went to school again, and again to the
sentimental schoolma'am, who loved to teach, but abhorred to punish.
Her gentle punishments rarely frightened the youngest children.
She would say, “Henry, you have disobeyed me, and I shall have to cut
off your ear,” and with these ominous words she would draw the back of
her penknife across the threatened ear. I must have been very small,
for on one occasion she threatened to shut me up in one of the school
desks.
Our mad recreation out of school was “playing horse.” We drove each
other singly and in pairs by means of wooden bits and reins of
sheep-twine, and some prancing horses were led, chewing one end of a
twine string, and neighing and prancing almost beyond the control of
the infant groom.
In the congressman's woods, close by the school-house, we built
stalls and mangers against logs and in fence corners, and gathered
horse-sorrel and sheep-sorrel for hay. The stalls were bedded with
grass and protected from the sun by a roof of green boughs, and the
horses were watered and curried and groomed in imitation of that
service at the stage stables, and the steeds themselves kicked and bit
like the vicious leaders.
Other teachers followed the young and sentimental one, and the surplus
of the dinner-baskets, thrown out of the window or cast upon the
wood-pile, bred a colony of gray rats that lived under the school-house
and came out to take the air in the quiet period after the door was
padlocked at night and even ventured to come up into the school-room
and look over the books and otherwise nibble at learning. When I had
advanced to the dignity of pictorial geography, as set forth in a thin,
square-built, dog-eared volume, which not having been opened for a
whole day by a certain prancing horse, he was left to learn his lesson
while the teacher went to tea at the house below the tavern, and the
wheat stubble under the window was soon alive with gray rodents that
looked like the colony of seals in the geography.
About this time the rats, having taken formal possession of the old
school-house, a new school-house was built in our village just beyond
my grandmother's house and facing her orchard.
[Illustration: =“My great-grandmother.”=] (_page 97_)
MY GREAT-GRANDMOTHER
My great-grandmother was the widow of an Episcopal clergyman, the Rev.
Titus Welton, whose son was the first rector of the village church.
My only acquaintance with my great-grandfather was connected with the
white headstone that bore his name in the graveyard. With the exception
of a quaint water-color portrait in profile of my grandmother in a
mob-cap bound with a black ribbon, which was equally a portrait of
the flowered back of the rocking-chair in which she sat, she survives
in my memory in a series of pictures. I see her sitting before the
open fire, knitting, with one steel needle held in a knitting-sheath
pinned to her left side, or taking snuff from a flat, round box that
contained a vanilla bean to perfume the snuff. Her hands were twisted
with rheumatism, and she walked with a cane. On one occasion I trotted
by her side to church and carried her tin foot-stove, warm with glowing
coals.
She slept in a high post bed in her particular room over the
sitting-room, which was warmed in winter by a sheet-iron drum connected
with the stove below, and in one corner was a copper warming-pan with a
long handle. When I sat at table in my high-chair eating apple-pie in a
bowl of milk, she sat on the side nearest the fire eating dipped toast
with a two-tined fork. The fork may have had three tines, but silver
forks had not yet made their appearance.
My great-grandmother lived just long enough to have her picture
taken on a plate of silvered copper by the wonderful process of
Daguerre,[29] a process so like something diabolical that she protected
her soul from evil, as all sitters in that part of the country did,
by resting her hand on a great Bible, the back turned to the front,
so that the letters “Holy Bible” could be read, proving that the
great book was not a profane dictionary. The operator who took her
daguerreotype traveled from town to town, hiring a room in the village
tavern furnished with a chair, a stand on tripod legs, a brown linen
table-cloth, and the aforesaid Bible, and when such of the people as
had the fee to spare, the courage to submit to a new-fangled idea, and
no fear that the face on the magical plate would fade away like any
other spirit face when they opened the stamped-leather case with the
red plush lining after it had lain overnight in the darkened parlor, he
moved on like the cracker baker or any other itinerant showman.
My great-grandmother had never sent or received a message by telegraph
or ridden in a railway-carriage, and died in peace just before those
portentous inventions came to destroy forever the small community life
in which she had lived.
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS
1. Why does the writer employ such simple language?
2. What sort of events does he narrate?
3. Why does he give so few details concerning his early schooldays?
4. How does he look upon his early misfortunes?
5. Why does he do little more than present the picture of his
great-grandmother?
6. Point out examples of gentle humor.
7. What do the sketches reveal concerning life in the past?
8. What spirit characterizes both sketches?
SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION
1. My First Schooldays 11. Punishments I Remember
2. My Grandparents 12. Queer Old Customs
3. An Early Misfortune 13. My First Superstitions
4. Some Vanished Friends 14. A Wonderful Day
5. My Old Home 15. Gifts
6. Playmates 16. My First School-books
7. Old Toys 17. Pictures of Childhood
8. My First Games 18. My Relatives
9. A First Visit 19. A Great Event
10. My First Costumes 20. Relics of the Past
DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING
Throw yourself back into the past. Conjure up the people with
whom you used to associate. See once again the places where you
played and where you lived. Think how happy it all was, and how
good it is to look at it once more. Then put down on paper the
things that you remember with the greatest interest. Write in such
a way that you will give the reader the very spirit that you have.
Remember: you are not to communicate facts; you are to communicate
emotion.
FOOTNOTES:
[29] Louis Daguerre (1789-1859). A French painter who perfected one of
the earliest methods of photography.
A VISIT TO JOHN BURROUGHS
By SADAKICHI HARTMANN
_Author of the first_ History of American Art, _and also of a_
History of Japanese Art. _His poems, short stories, and essays
appear in many magazines_.
=John Burroughs was a delightful essayist and a delightful man.
Although he preferred to live the most simple of lives and to spend
his time in meditation on the beauties of natural scenery, and the
wonders of animal life, he attracted to himself the companionship
of some of the greatest in the land, and the love of all people. To
visit him would, indeed, have been a delight.=
=_A Visit to John Burroughs_ is not a dull narrative of the
events of a visit, nor is it the report of an interview with the
nature-lover. It is an article that admits one into the charm of
Burroughs' spirit. We are with the man in his simple, book-filled
home; we learn his love for pasture and mountain-side, for birds
and for gardening; and we gain some of that spirit of contentment
and peace that made him, in his gray old age, appear like a prophet
in the midst of an over-hurrying generation.=
In some places time passes without making any change. The little
village on the Hudson where John Burroughs made his home half a century
ago has shown no ambition of expansion. There is no building activity,
and the number of inhabitants has scarcely increased. The little church
stands drowsily on the hill, and the same old homesteads grace the
road. More freight-trains may rattle by, and more automobiles pass on
the main road, but the physiognomy of the town has remained unchanged.
It is as if time had stood still. The mist shuts out the rest of the
world, river and hills disappear, the stems of the grape-vines look
like a host of goblins, and the wet trees make darker silhouettes than
usual.
I knocked at a door and entered, and there sat John Burroughs stretched
at full length in a Morris chair before some glowing beech-sticks in
the open fireplace. There was not much conversation. What is most
interesting in an author's life he expresses in his books, and so we
indulged only in an exchange of phrases about his health, of the
flight of time, and a few favored authors. The questioning of the
interviewer can produce only forced results, and in particular when the
interviewed person has reached an age when taciturnity becomes natural,
and one prefers to gaze at the dying embers and listen to the drip of
the rain outside. That his interest in literature did not lag was shown
by a set of Fabre,[30] whom he pronounced the most wonderful exponent
in his special line.
A quaint interior was this quiet little room. Conspicuous were the
portraits of Whitman,[31] Carlyle,[32] Tolstoy,[33] Roosevelt,[34] and
Father Brown of the Holy Order of the Cross, men who in one way or
another must have meant something to his life. On the mantelpiece stood
another portrait of Whitman and a reproduction of “Mona Lisa.”[35]
There were windows on every side, and the rest of the walls consisted
of shelves filled with nature books. One shelf displayed the more
scientific works, and one was devoted entirely to his own writings. It
was the same room in which several years ago, on a summer day in the
vagrom days of youth, I had read for the first time “Wake Robin,”[36]
that classic of out-of-door literature, and “The Flight of the Eagle,”
an appreciation of Walt Whitman.
John Burroughs was fifty then, and had just settled down seriously to
his literary pursuits. He had risen brilliantly from youthful penury
to be the owner of a large estate. His latest achievement was “Signs
and Seasons”; “Riverby,” a number of essays of out-of-door observations
around his stone house by the Hudson, was in the making.
There is a wonderful fascination in these books. They reveal a man who
has lived widely and intimately, who has made nature his real home. All
day long he is mingled with the heart of things; every walk along the
river, into the woods, or up the hills is an adventure. He exploits the
teachings of experience rather than of books. His essays are always
fused with actions of the open. One feels exhilaration in making the
acquaintance of a man with an unnarrowed soul who has burst free from
the shackles of intellectual authority, who joyfully and buoyantly
interprets the beauties about him, shunning no such pleasures as
jumping a fence, wading a brook, or climbing a tree or mountain-side.
American literature has always abounded with nature speculation and
research. Bryant[37] was a true poet of nature; he loved woods,
mountain, and river, and his “To the Yellow Wood Violet,” and “The
Blue Gentian” are gems of pictorial nature-writing. Whittier[38]
transfigured the beauty of New England life in one poem “Snowbound,”
and in his “Autumn Walk” leisurely strolled to the portals of
immortality. Whitman stalked about on the open road like a
pantheist.[39]
Yet none had the faculties of discovery and interpretation like
John Burroughs, the intimate knowledge, the warm vision, to which a
wood-pile can become a matter of contemplation, and a back yard or a
garden patch become as interesting as any scenery in the world. None
of them could have lectured on apple-trees or gray squirrels with such
intimacy as Burroughs. Burroughs has never any sympathy with the
“pathetic fallacy of endowing inanimate objects with human attributes,”
nor would he indorse Machin's propaganda idea of the antagonism of
animals against their human masters.
A trout leaping in a mountain stream, the lively whistle of a bird
high in the upper air, a bird's nest in an old fence post--these are
some of the topics nearest his heart. No nature-writer has ever shown
such diversity of interest. Even _Rip Van Winkle_ did not know the
mountains as well as does this camper and tramper for a lifetime on
the same familiar grounds; over and over again he makes the round from
Riverby to Slabsides, to Roxbury in the western Catskills, and back
again to the rustic studio near the river. He knows every pasture,
mountain-side, and valley of his chosen land. He even named some of
the hills. One of them, much frequented by bees, he named “Mount
Hymettus,”[40] because there “from out the garden hives, the humming
cyclone of humming bees” liked to congregate.
But is his minute observation of weed seeds in the open field or insect
eggs on tree-trunks not disastrous to literary expression? Can this
style of writing soar above straightforward nature-writing of men like
Wilson,[41] Muir,[42] White,[43] and Chapman?[44] Burroughs is capable
of making a long-winded analysis of the downward perch of the head of
the nut-hatch, but he is no Audubon.[45] As a literary man he is an
essayist who etches little vignettes, one after the other, with rare
precision. How fine is his sentence about the unmusical song of the
blackbirds! “The air is filled with crackling, splintering, spurting,
semi-musical sounds which are like salt and pepper to the ear.”
Here the poetic temperament finds an utterance far beyond the broad
knowledge of nature.
And there is his fine appreciation of Walt Whitman, his grasp of
literary values despite working in a comparatively smaller field of
activity. John Burroughs has a good deal of Whitman about him, whom he
called “the one mountain in our literary landscape.” The man of Riverby
is not large of stature, but has the same nonchalance of deportment,
the flowing beard, and the ruddy face, a few shades darker than that
of the good gray poet; for Whitman was, after all, a city man, while
Burroughs always lived his life out of doors.
We talked about the looks of Whitman, whom he had known in Washington
in the sixties.
“Yes, he had a decided vitality, although he was already gray and bent
at that time. Yes, he would talk if one could draw him out.”
“I believe he talked only for Traubel,”[46] I dryly remarked, at which
Burroughs was greatly amused.
Emerson[47] was the god of Burroughs's youth, but Whitman undoubtedly
exercised the more lasting influence. This, however, never touched
Burroughs's own peculiar nature-fresh-and-homespun style. It lingered
only as a vague inspiration in the under rhythm of his work. Whitman
had the macrocosmic vision,[48] while Burroughs is an adherent of
microcosm. Few can combine both qualities.
Burroughs is an amateur farmer and gardener. He prunes his cherrytrees,
cures hay, and thinks of new methods of mowing grain. He experimented
with grape-vines, a rather futile occupation at this period of social
evolution. He has been a great cherry-picker all his life, and I
remember with keen pleasure how delicious those wild raspberries
tasted that I shared with him one summer day. He has a celery farm
at Roxbury, his birthplace, and when I was last at Slabsides, his
bungalow in the hills near West Park, I saw nothing but beets for
cattle. I was astonished at this peculiar, indeed, prosaic pastime. And
still more so that he had chosen for residence a site in a hollow of
the mountain-side, while only a few steps above one can enjoy a most
gorgeous view of the surrounding country. Did he make the selection
because the place is more sheltered? No, I believe he chose the place
intuitively, because it expresses his particular point of view of
life. The keen breeze and the wide view serve only for occasional
inspiration; but the undergrowth vegetation, the crust of soil, the hum
of insects, the little flowers--these are the true stimulants of his
eloquent simplicity of style.
Burroughs professed to have a great admiration for Turguenieff's[49]
“Diary of a Sportsman.” These exquisite prose poems represent nature
at its best, but they are purely poetic, pictorial, with a big cosmic
swing to them. This is out of the reach of Burroughs, and he never
attempted it. His poems contain, as he says himself, more science and
observation than poetry. A few beautiful lines everybody can learn to
write, and unless they are fragments of a torso of the most intricate
and beautiful construction, they will drop like the slanting rain into
the dark wastes of oblivion.
His lessons of nature, accepted as text-books in the public schools,
have a true message to convey. They represent the socialization of
science. He loves the birds and learned their ways; he could run his
course aright, as he has placed his goal rightly. He stirred the earth
about the roots of his knowledge deeply, and thereby entered a new
field of thought. He became interested in final causes, design in
nature.
The transcendentalist[50] of the Emersonian period at last came to
his own. There is something of the bigness of Thoreau[51] in his
recent writings, Thoreau who in his “Concord and Merrimac River” had a
mystical vision, a grip on religious thought, and who, like a craftsman
in cloisonné, hammered his philosophic speculations upon the frugal
shapes of his observations. In “Ways of Nature” and “Leaf and Tendril”
Burroughs has reached out as far as it is possible for a nature
writer without becoming a philosopher. He now no longer contemplates
the outward appearance of things, but their organic structure, the
geological formation of the earth's crust, and the evolution of life.
And some ledge of rock will now give him the prophetic gaze into the
past and into the future.
And so John Burroughs at eighty-five, still chopping the wood for
his own fireside, writing, lecturing, giving advice about phases of
farm-work, strolling over the ground, still interested in literature,
can serenely fold his hands and wait.
Indeed, this white-bearded man, in his bark-covered study amidst veiled
heights and blurred river scenes, furnishes a wonderful intimate
picture which will linger in American literature and in the minds of
all who yearn for a more intimate knowledge of nature, unaffectedly
told, like the song of the robin of his first love, “a harbinger of
spring thoughts carrying with it the fragrance of the first flowers and
the improving verdure of the fields.”
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS
1. How does the first paragraph indicate the key-note of the
article?
2. What do Burroughs' pictures and books show concerning his
character?
3. What sort of life did Burroughs lead?
4. What is meant by “exploiting the teaching of experience rather
than of books”?
5. How did Burroughs find happiness?
6. What is said concerning Burroughs' faculties of discovery and
interpretation?
7. What diversity of interests did Burroughs show?
8. What is said concerning Burroughs' work as an essayist?
9. Why was Burroughs fond of Walt Whitman?
10. How did Burroughs gain literary style?
11. What is meant by the “socialization of science”?
12. What makes Burroughs such a charming person?
13. Into what sections may the article be divided?
14. What does the article reveal concerning its author?
SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION
1. A Visit with My Teacher 11. Our Unusual Caller
2. A Call on an Interesting Person 12. A Talk with a Tramp
3. In the Office of the Principal 13. The Beggar's Life
4. Visiting My Relatives 14. My Cousin
5. A Visit to Another School 15. A Talk with an Expert
than My Own
6. A Talk with a Fireman 16. My Friend, the Carpenter
7. A Talk with a Policeman 17. Interviewing a Peddler
8. An Interview with a Stranger 18. Talking with a Missionary
9. The Man in the Office 19. In the Printer's Office
10. The Busy Clerk 20. The Railroad Conductor
DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING
Write about an actual visit or interview. In all your work pay most
attention to presenting the spirit of the person whom you talk with.
The events of your visit, and the remarks that are made, are of less
importance than the things that reveal spirit,--the surroundings, the
costume, the habits, the work done and the various things that show
character. The essay is in no sense to be the story of a visit; it is
to give an intimate picture of the person in whom you are interested.
Your object is to show character.
FOOTNOTES:
[30] Jean Henri Fabre (1823-1915). A French entomologist who wrote many
volumes on insect life, among them being _The Life and Love of the
Insects_; _The Life of the Spider_; _The Life of the Fly_.
[31] Walt Whitman (1819-1892). An American poet, noted for highly
original poems marked by absence of rhyme and metre. Whitman loved the
outdoor world, and had great philosophic insight.
[32] Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). A brilliant English essayist and
historian, strikingly original and unconventional, and a firm upholder
of stalwart manhood.
[33] Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910). A great Russian novelist, reformer
and philosopher,--a bold and original thinker.
[34] Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919). Ranchman, author, soldier,
explorer, and President of the United States, a man of sterling manhood
and great personal fearlessness.
[35] Mona Lisa. A picture of a lady of Florence, painted about 1504
by Leonardo da Vinci, an Italian painter. The face has a peculiarly
tantalizing expression.
[36] _Wake Robin._ One of John Burroughs' delightful outdoor books,
written in 1870.
[37] William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878). The first great American poet;
author of _Thanatopsis_; noted for his love of nature.
[38] John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892). An American poet who wrote
lovingly of New England life and scenery. He is noted for his poems
against slavery.
[39] Pantheist. One who sees God in everything that exists.
[40] Mount Hymettus. A mountain in Greece from which most excellent
honey was obtained in classic times.
[41] Alexander Wilson (1766-1813). Born in Scotland and died in
Philadelphia; author of a remarkable study of American birds, published
in nine volumes.
[42] John Muir (1838-1914). An American naturalist and explorer of the
west and of Alaska.
[43] Gilbert White (1720-1793). An English naturalist, noted for his
_Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne_.
[44] Frank M. Chapman (1864--). An American writer on bird life. He is
especially noted for excellent work in photographing birds.
[45] John James Audubon (1780-1851). A great American student of birds;
noted for his exact drawings of birds.
[46] Horace Traubel (1858-1919). An American editor who was the
literary executor of Walt Whitman.
[47] Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882). An American poet and philosopher;
a man of marked individuality and power.
[48] Macrocosmic. The sentence means that Whitman looked upon the world
and upon the universe as a whole, while Burroughs studied little or
individual things in order to understand the whole.
[49] Ivan Turguenieff (1818-1883). A Russian novelist whose _Diary of a
Sportsman_ aided in bringing about the freeing of Russian serfs.
[50] Transcendentalist. One who believes in principles that can not be
proved by experiment.
[51] Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). An American essayist, naturalist
and philosopher.
WASHINGTON ON HORSEBACK
By H. A. OGDEN