(Some years ago I took it upon myself to let Professor Hill know the real author of "Expression." He appeared grateful, though some what chagrined, and said the error should be corrected in the next edition. Mr. Burroughs smiled indulgently when he learned of my zeal in the matter: "Emerson's back is broad; he could have afforded to continue to shoulder my early blunders," he said. C. B.)
of Harvard, quoted a line from it in a footnote in his "Rhetoric," and credited it to Emerson. So I had deceived the very elect. The essay had some merit, but it reeked with the Emersonian spirit and manner. When I came to view it through the perspective of print, I quickly saw that this kind of thing would not do for me. I must get on ground of my own. I must get this Emersonian musk out of my garments at all hazards. I concluded to bury my garments in the earth, as it were, and see what my native soil would do toward drawing it out. So I took to writing on all manner of rural themes—sugar-making, cows, haying, stone walls. These, no doubt, helped to draw out the rank suggestion of Emerson. I wrote about things of which I knew, and was, therefore, bound to be more sincere with myself than in writing upon the Emersonian themes. When a man tells what he knows, what he has seen or felt, he is pretty sure to be himself. When I wrote upon more purely intellectual themes, as I did about this time for the "Leader," the Emersonian influence was more potent, though less so than in the first "Atlantic" essay.
Any man progresses in the formation of a style of his own in proportion as he gets down to his own real thoughts and feelings, and ceases to echo the thoughts and moods of another. Only thus can he be sincere; and sincerity is the main secret of style. What I wrote from "the push of reading," as Whitman calls it, was largely an artificial product; I had not made it my own; but when I wrote of country scenes and experiences, I touched the quick of my mind, and it was more easy to be real and natural.
I also wrote in 1860 or 1861 a number of things for the "Saturday Press" which exhaled the Emersonian perfume. If you will look them over, you will see how my mind was working in the leading-strings of Analogy—often a forced and unreal Analogy.
December, 1907
My Dear Friend,—
You ask me to tell you more about myself, my life, how it has been with me, etc. It is an inviting subject. How an old man likes to run on about himself!
I see that my life has been more of a holiday than most persons', much more than was my father's or his father's. I have picnicked all along the way. I have on the whole been gay and satisfied. I have had no great crosses or burdens to bear; no great afflictions, except such as must come to all who live; neither poverty, nor riches. I have had uniform good health, true friends, and some congenial companions. I have done, for the most part, what I wanted to do. Some drudgery I have had, that is, in uncongenial work on the farm, in teaching, in clerking, and in bank-examining; but amid all these things I have kept an outlook, an open door, as it were, out into the free fields of nature, and a buoyant feeling that I would soon be there.
My farm life as a boy was at least a half-holiday. The fishing, the hunting, the berrying, the Sundays on the hills or in the woods, the sugar-making, the apple-gathering—all had a holiday character. But the hoeing corn, and picking up potatoes, and cleaning the cow stables, had little of this character. I have never been a cog in the wheel of any great concern. I have never had to sink or lose my individuality. I have been under no exacting master or tyrant.... I have never been a slave to any bad habit, as smoking, drinking, over-feeding. I have had no social or political ambitions; society has not curtailed my freedom or dictated my dress or habits. Neither has any religious order or any clique. I have had no axe to grind. I have gone with such men and women as I liked, irrespective of any badge of wealth or reputation or social prestige that they might wear. I have looked for simple pleasures everywhere, and have found them. I have not sought for costly pleasures, and do not want them—pleasures that cost money, or health, or time. The great things, the precious things of my life, have been without money and without price, as common as the air.
Life has laid no urgent mission upon me. My gait has been a leisurely one. I am not bragging of it; I am only stating a fact. I have never felt called upon to reform the world. I have doubtless been culpably indifferent to its troubles and perplexities, and sins and sufferings. I lend a hand occasionally here and there in my own neighborhood, but I trouble myself very little about my neighbors—their salvation or their damnation. I go my own way and do my own work.