II
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.