Part 1

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RAMBLES WITH JOHN BURROUGHS

R. J. H. De LOACH

_Illustrated with photographs by the Author_

RICHARD G. BADGER THE GORHAM PRESS BOSTON

_Copyright 1912 by Richard G. Badger_ _All Rights Reserved_

_The Gorham Press, Boston, Mass._

To THE DEAR OLD UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA and her Noble faculty who have ever inspired me I dedicate this little volume

PREFACE

There is a longing in every student's life some time or other to share his pleasure with the world, and if he happens to find himself in the proper environment he cannot forego that pleasure. His studies, his anxieties, his loves and his devotions are a part of him and he cannot give himself to the world without giving these.

My personal contact with John Burroughs has meant a great deal to me and these papers represent in a measure what I have enjoyed, though they come far short of what I would like them to be. Some of them were written among his native hills and it is hoped they will give the flavor of his own experiences. Others were written at odd times on trains, on boats, and in my study here, where I have enjoyed re-reading so many times his essays on Nature. The qualities of the man and his papers have always made a direct appeal to me, and I love to come in contact with him and spend days with him.

Long before they were printed in book form, I had collected most of his poems in my old scrap book and studied them. Their simplicity and beauty combined with their perfect rhythm impressed me and almost at one reading I was able to remember them line for line.

The names of Burroughs and Whitman are forever linked together and one can hardly think of one in certain relations without thinking of the other. To the literary public they have many ideals in common, and their bonds of sympathy have been knit together forever in Burroughs essays. To be associated with Burroughs is therefore to get many interesting and valuable hints on the life and works of Whitman. While I write this preface Mr. Burroughs talks with me in the evenings on the possible future influence of Whitman on American literary methods and criticism. The reader will not be surprised therefore, to find in this collection of papers, one on the relation of these two grand old men.

I have not attempted to interpret John Burroughs. He is his own interpreter and the very best one. In writing the papers, I have had in mind only just what he has meant to me. How he has affected me and changed the course of my life. How he has given me new eyes with which to see, new ears with which to hear, and a new heart with which to love God's great out-o'-doors.

Athens, Ga. January, 1911.

CONTENTS

The Simple Life Around Slabsides and the Den John Burroughs in the South Around Roxbury The Old Clump John Burroughs as Poet John Burroughs and Walt Whitman John Burroughs and the Birds

ILLUSTRATIONS

John Burroughs In the Old Barn The Old Stone Wall built by Deacon Scudder The Study Slabsides Burroughs Listening to the Cardinal in Georgia At the Bars in front of The Old Burial Ground Over the Site of his Grandfather's Old Home Under a Catskill Ledge where he has often been protected from the rain in summer A Catskill Mountain Side Under the Old Grey Ledge On the Summit of the Old Clump Looking across the Pasture Wall Stones marking Site of Thoreau's Cabin Pointing out the Junco's Nest My Chickadee's Nest

THE SIMPLE LIFE

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.

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!"

II

Not many years after I had known Mr. Burroughs personally, it occurred to me to look up his literary record and see just how his years have been spent and associate with this the fruit of his labors. The long jump from _Notes on Walt Whitman as Poet and Person_ (1867), his first book to _Leaf and Tendril_ (1908), his last volume, marks a wonderful change in interest and study. But the record is made, the books stand for themselves, and we would not have it otherwise. This is the way of nature and of her best interpreter, John Burroughs, whose nature books almost have the fresh and sweet flavor of wild strawberries, and tell in unmistakable language the author's love for and knowledge of the out-door world in which he has spent so much of his life. Reared in the country, he knows country life and country people and loves them. In his early years, his mind must have been very susceptible to impressions of truthful observations, which formed a setting for his after work. Of this I think he is still conscious, judging from the advice he gives teachers in a copy of the Pennsylvania School Journal I happen to have before me. "I confess, I am a little skeptical about the good of any direct attempt to teach children to 'see nature.' The question with me would be rather how to treat them or lead them so that they would not lose the love of nature which as children, they already have. Every girl and every boy up to a certain age loves nature and has a quick eye for the curious and interesting things in the fields and woods. But as they grow older and the worldly habit of mind grows upon them, they lose this love; this interest in nature becomes only so much inert matter to them. The boy may keep up his love of fishing and of sport, and thus keep in touch with certain phases of nature, but the girl gradually loses all interest in out-door things.

"If I were a teacher I would make excursions into the country with my children; we would picnic together under the trees, and I would contrive to give them a little live botany. They should see how much a flower meant to me. What we find out ourselves tastes so good! I would as far as possible let the child be his own teacher. The spirit of inquiry--awaken that in him if you can--if you cannot, the case is about hopeless.

"I think that love of nature which becomes a precious boon and solace in life, does not as a rule show itself in the youth. The youth is a poet in feeling, and generally he does not care for poetry. He is like a bulb--rich in those substances that are to make the future flower and fruit of the plant.

"As he becomes less a poet in his unconscious life, he will take more and more to poetry as embodied in literary forms. In the same way, as he recedes from nature, as from his condition of youthful savagery, he is likely to find more and more interest in the wild life about him. Do not force a knowledge of natural things upon him too young."

If Mr. Burroughs had been taught nature after the academic fashion, he would never have developed the love for the subject that is so evident in all his out-door books. My impression is that his early environment was best suited to him and he was the child so "like a bulb." He absorbed nature without having any consciousness of what it meant. "I was born of and among people," he says, "who neither read books nor cared for them, and my closest associations since have been with those whose minds have been alien to literature and art. My unliterary environment has doubtless been best suited to me. Probably what little freshness and primal sweetness my books contain is owing to this circumstance. Constant intercourse with bookish men and literary circles I think would have dwarfed or killed my literary faculty. This perpetual rubbing heads together, as in literary clubs, seems to result in literary sterility. In my own case at least what I most needed was what I had--a few books and plenty of things." The roaming over the hills and mountains and following up trout streams was most conducive to his life, and thus it was he spent his odd hours and rest-days. This gave him "plenty of real things," and just what they have meant to him you will be able to learn from his twelve out-door volumes. But what brought all this long string of books out of him? How comes it that he turned to literature as a profession? From the earliest he had a passion for authorship, and when in the "teens" resolved to become a writer. "It was while I was at school, in my nineteenth year," he says, "that I saw my first author; and I distinctly remember with what emotion I gazed upon him, and followed him in the twilight, keeping on the other side of the street.... I looked upon him with more reverence and enthusiasm than I had ever looked upon any man.... I suppose this was the instinctive tribute of a timid and imaginative youth to a power which he was beginning vaguely to see--the power of letters."

By this time Mr. Burroughs had begun to see his own thoughts in print in a country newspaper. He also began writing essays about the same time and sending them to various periodicals only to receive "them back pretty promptly." These perhaps rather conventional papers on such subjects as _Genius_, _Individuality_, _A Man and His Times_, etc., served a great purpose. They tutored the author of them into his better papers that were welcomed by the editor of the Atlantic Monthly and other leading periodicals. In his twenty-first year, he discovered Emerson--so to speak--in a Chicago book-store, and says: "All that summer I fed upon these essays and steeped myself in them." No doubt Emerson's essays had a wonderful influence on this young reader and almost swamped him. They warped him out of his orbit so far, that had he not resolved to get back upon ground of his own, we would never have had _Wake Robin_. Emerson had complete possession of him for a time and was hard to shake off, but constant writing upon out-door themes did the work, and put Burroughs back in possession of himself.