From his maternal grandfather, who was American-born but of Irish ancestry, John Burroughs avers he gets his "dreamy, lazy, shirking ways." That Burroughs, the poet of bee and bird, of flower and tree, has dreamed to good account, all who read and love him know. He got his first taste for out-door diversions in the company of his aged grandparent, as together they fished the streams of Delaware County, New York,—the old man mingling tales of soldier days at Valley Forge with stories about snakes and birds.

Burroughs was born in Roxbury, New York, April 3, 1837. In after years he wrote, "April is my natal month, and I am born again into new-delight at each return of it." His father was a school teacher turned farmer. Burroughs' mother had little schooling, but, he says, "I owe to my mother my temperament, my love of Nature, my brooding, introspective habit of mind—all those things which in a literary man help to give atmosphere to his work. The Celtic element, which I get mostly from her side, has no doubt played an important part in my life. My idealism, my romantic tendencies, are largely her gift."

Young John was usually engaged outside of school hours doing chores in field and garden, but he was never too busy to raise his head at the note of a "brown thrasher," or stop to inquire into the ways of a wild flower nodding in his path. He went hunting, but he used to come back with little game. He was too intent on watching the behavior of fox and pigeon to aim his gun. He says in Dr. Barrus' intimate biography, "Our Friend John Burroughs," "I knew pretty well the ways of wild bees and hornets when I was only a small lad. What, or who, as I grew up, gave my mind its final push in this direction would not be easy to name. It is quite certain that I got it through literature, and more especially through the works of Audubon." He acknowledges, also, the influence of Thoreau, and of Emerson, "who kindled the love of Nature in me."

By doing farm work and by teaching Burroughs saved enough money to enter an institute not far from his home. He returned from his first visit to New York "with an empty pocket and an empty stomach, but with a bagful of books." All his money had been spent at second-hand book-stalls. For several years he taught school, marrying a pupil, Ursula North, in the meantime. He was twenty-six when, engaged in teaching near West Point, he "chanced upon the works of Audubon" in the library of the Military Academy. He relates, "It was like bringing together fire and powder. I was ripe for the adventure; I had leisure, I was in a good bird country, and I had Audubon to stimulate me. How eagerly and joyously I took up the study! It gave to my walks a new delight; it made me look upon every grove and wood as a new storehouse of possible treasures." His earliest contribution to Nature literature, a paper entitled "The Return of the Birds," was completed when he was a clerk in the office of the Comptroller of the Currency, in Washington. He held this position for ten years. In his spare moments he studied birds and wrote about them, finding that "he had only to unpack the memories of the farm boy to get at the main things about the common ones." The love of the great Nature essayist for his native countryside pervades much that he has given us. "Take the farm boy out of my books, and you have robbed them of something that is vital and fundamental," he avows. From the beginning he liked to write about rustic things—"sugar-making, cows, haying, stone walls."

Journeys to England, to the West Indies, to Alaska with the Harriman Expedition, to the Grand Canyon and the Yosemite, which he explored with his friend John Muir, to the Yellowstone (he visited the National Park in 1903 as the chosen companion of President Theodore Roosevelt), widened the sphere of John Burroughs' happy bird and flower hunting-grounds. But he still loves best the scenes of his boyhood, and he often returns in summer to the Catskills to revive memories, and write, and muse on the beauties of the Delaware County hills and vales. His home above the Hudson, at Riverby, West Park, where he has lived for nearly half a century, and Slabsides, his tree-shaded chestnut-barked work cabin on a nearby hill, are places of pilgrimage for children, poets, wise men. "Nature lovers?" said a visitor. "Yes, and John Burroughs lovers, too."

"The whole gospel of my books," wrote the sage of Slabsides, most distinguished of living American naturalists, "is 'Stay at home; see the wonderful and the beautiful in the simple things all about you; make the most of the common and the near at hand.'" Herein we have the keynote of the enduring charm that distinguishes all the Burroughs books about bursting buds, birds, butterflies, leaves, and the seasons' graces. Said Walt Whitman of a letter written to him by Mr. Burroughs, "It is a June letter, worthy of June; written in John's best out-door mood. I sit here, helpless as I am, and breathe it in like fresh air."

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY PIRIE MACDONALD NEW YORK
ERNEST THOMPSON SETON
COURTESY OF THE WOODCRAFT LEAGUE

AMERICAN NATURALISTSErnest Thompson Seton
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