Our Friend John Burroughs

by Clara Barrus

These were my first and last days at the plough, and they made that field memorable to me. I never cross it now but I see myself there—a callow youth being jerked by the plough-handles but with my head in a cloud of alluring day-dreams. This, I think, was in the fall of 1853. I went to school that winter with a view to leaving home in the spring to try my luck at school-teaching in an adjoining county. Many Roxbury boys had made their first start in the world by going to Ulster County to teach a country school. I would do the same. So, late in March, 1854, about the end of the sugar season, I set out for Olive, Ulster County. An old neighbor, Dr. Hull, lived there, and I would seek him.

There was only a stage-line at that time connecting the two counties, and that passed twelve miles from my home. My plan was to cross the mountain into Red Kill to Uncle Martin Kelly's, pass the night there, and in the morning go to Clovesville, three miles distant, and take the stage. How well I remember that walk across the mountain in a snow-squall through which the sun shone dimly, a black oilcloth satchel in my hand, and in my heart vague yearnings and forebodings! I had but a few dollars in my pocket, probably six or seven, most of which I had earned by selling maple sugar. Father was willing I should go, though my help was needed on the farm.

Well, I traversed the eight miles to my uncle's in good time, and in the morning he drove me down to the turnpike to take the stage. I remember well my anxious and agitated state of mind while waiting at the hotel for the arrival of the stage. I had never ridden in one, I am not sure that I had even seen one, and I did not know just what was expected of me, or just how I should deport myself. An untraveled farm boy at seventeen is such a vague creature anyway, and I was, in addition, such a bundle of sensibilities, timidities, and embarrassments as few farm boys are. I paid my fare at the hotel at the rate of a sixpence a mile for about thirty-two miles, and when the stage came, saw my name entered upon the "waybill," and got aboard with a beating heart.

Of that first ride of my life in a public conveyance, I remember little. The stage was one of those old-fashioned rocking Concord coaches, drawn by four horses. We soon left the snow-clad hills of Delaware County behind, and dropped down into the milder climate of Ulster, where no snow was to be seen. About three in the afternoon the stage put me down at Terry's Tavern on the "plank-road" in Olive. I inquired the way to Dr. Hull's and found the walk of about a mile an agreeable change. The doctor and his wife welcomed me cordially. They were old friends of my family. I spent a day with them, riding about with the doctor on his visits to patients, and making inquiries for a school in want of a teacher. On the third day we heard of a vacancy in a district in the west end of the town, seven or eight miles distant, called Tongore. Hither I walked one day, saw the trustees, and made my application. I suspect my youth and general greenness caused them to hesitate; they would consider and let me know inside of a week. So, in a day or two, hearing of no other vacancies, I returned home the same way I had come. It was the first day of April when I made the return trip. I remember this because at one of the hotels where we changed horses I saw a copper cent lying upon the floor, and, stooping to pick it up, found it nailed fast. The bartender and two or three other spectators had a quiet chuckle at my expense. Before the week was out a letter came from the Tongore trustees saying I could have the school; wages, ten dollars the first month, and, if I proved satisfactory, eleven for the other five months, and "board around."

I remember the handwriting of that letter as if I had received it but yesterday. "Come at your earliest opportunity." How vividly I recall the round hand in which those words were written! I replied that I would be on hand the next week, ready to open school on Monday, the 11th.

Again I took the stage, my father driving me twelve miles to Dimmock's Corners to meet it, a trip which he made with me many times in after years. Mother always getting up and preparing our breakfast long before daylight. We were always in a more or less anxious frame of mind upon the road lest we be too late for the stage, but only once during the many trips did we miss it. On that occasion it had passed a few minutes before we arrived, but, knowing it stopped for breakfast at Griffin's Corners, four or five miles beyond, I hastened on afoot, running most of the way, and arrived in sight of it just as the driver had let off the first crack from his whip to start his reluctant horses. My shouting was quickly passed to him by the onlookers, he pulled up, and I won the race quite out of breath.

On the present occasion we were in ample time, and my journey ended at Shokan, from which place I walked the few miles to Tongore, in the late April afternoon. The little frogs were piping, and I remember how homesick the familiar spring sound made me. As I walked along the road near sundown with this sound in my ears, I saw coming toward me a man with a gait as familiar as was the piping of the frogs. He turned out to be our neighbor Warren Scudder, and how delighted I was to see him in that lonesome land! He had sold a yoke of oxen down there and had been down to deliver them. The home ties pulled very strongly at sight of him. Warren's three boys, Reub and Jack and Smith, were our nearest boy neighbors. His father, old Deacon Scudder, was one of the notable characters of the town. Warren himself had had some varied experiences. He was one of the leaders in the anti-rent war of ten years before. Indeed, he was chief of the band of "Indians" that shot Steel, the sheriff, at Andes, and it was charged that the bullet from his pistol was the one that did the fatal work. At any rate, he had had to flee the country, escaping concealed in a peddler's cart, while close pressed by the posse. He went South and was absent several years. After the excitement of the murder and the struggle between the two factions had died down, he returned and was not molested. And here he was in the April twilight, on my path to Tongore, and the sight of him cheered my heart.

I began my school Monday morning, April the 11th, 1854, and continued it for six months, teaching the common branches to twenty or thirty pupils from the ages of six to twelve or thirteen. I can distinctly recall the faces of many of those boys and girls to this day—Jane North, a slender, clean-cut girl of ten or eleven; Elizabeth McClelland, a fat, freckled girl of twelve; Alice Twilliger, a thin, talkative girl with a bulging forehead. Two or three of the boys became soldiers in the Civil War, and fell in the battle of Gettysburg.

(In April, 1912, Mr. Burroughs received the following: "Hearty congratulations upon your seventy-fifth birthday, from your old Tongore pupil of many years ago. R—B—.")

I "boarded round," going home with the children as they invited me. I was always put in the spare room, and usually treated to warm biscuit and pie for supper. A few families were very poor, and there I was lucky to get bread and potatoes. In one house I remember the bedstead was very shaky, and in the middle of the night, as I turned over, it began to sway and lurch, and presently all went down in a heap. But I clung to the wreck till morning, and said nothing about it then.