Your loving father,
JOHN BURROUGHS.
Later when he visited me in Cambridge he wrote a daily theme, and I copied it and handed it in as my own, and it promptly came back marked "sane and sensible," the instructor quite unconsciously and unknowingly having hit upon two salient qualities of Father's style. I remember the theme he wrote was about the statue of John Harvard who sits bareheaded in the open, exposed to all weathers. Father said he always wanted to go and hold something over him to keep off the snow or sun. The life he led here and the surroundings could not produce other than wholesome and sane writing. The old house spoken of was the original farmhouse that stood up near the road—it was torn down in 1903 and a new cottage put up just below it. Father and I spent one summer there when we rented Riverby to New York people and he spent time there later as for instance:
Saturday P. M., Jan. 29 {1898}.
MY DEAR JULIAN,
Hiram and I are with the Ackers {who were living in the old house then}. I find the food and give them the rent and they do the work. I shall have peace now and it will taste good. If I come to C when would you rather I should come? I am not done with my writing yet but may be in eight or ten days. Writing is like duck hunting, one doesn't know what game he will get or when he will be back: that is why I am undecided. I make everything wait upon my writing. It is cold here, down to four two mornings; good sleighing. I rec'd your letter yesterday, I do not know about those plays—ask Mr. Page or Rodman. I hope you are prospering in your exams. This is the new pen, do not like it much yet. The prospect for an ice harvest brightens. Write.
Your loving father
J.B.
W. P., Saturday Jan. 15 {1898}
MY DEAR JULIAN,