Heroes of To-Day

by Mary Rosetta Parkman

When the time drew near, however, it proved as strange and unusual a desire as that for the algebra. The district school had been good enough for his brothers. So he put his disappointment behind him as he went for another winter to the Roxbury school. “Yet I am not sure but I went to Harpersfield after all,” said Mr. Burroughs; “the long, long thoughts, the earnest resolve to make myself worthy, the awakening of every part and fiber of me, helped me on my way as far, perhaps, as the unattainable academy could have done.”

The next year found the youth of seventeen teaching a country school for eleven dollars a month and “board around.” How homesick he felt for the blue hills at home, for the old barn, with the nests of the swallows and phœbe-birds beneath its roof, for the sugar-bush, and the clear, laughing trout-streams. He could see his mother hurrying through her churning so that she might go berrying on the sunny slope of Old Clump, and he knew what she brought back with the strawberries—dewy dreams of daisies and buttercups, lilting echoes of bobolinks and meadow-larks.

In October the long term was over and he went home with nearly all his earnings,—over fifty dollars,—enough to pay his way at the Hedding Literary Institute for the winter term.

In the spring of 1855 he went to New York City for the first time, hoping to find a position as teacher. He was not successful in this quest, but the trip was memorable for a raid on the second-hand book-stalls. He reached home some days later “with an empty pocket and an empty stomach, but with a bagful of books.”

Always attracted chiefly to essays, the works of Emerson influenced him greatly. He absorbed their spirit as naturally and completely as he had absorbed the sights and sounds of his native hill-country. His first article—an essay called “Expression,” which was printed without signature in The Atlantic Monthly—was by many attributed to Emerson. Lowell, who was at that time editor of The Atlantic, told, with much amusement, that before accepting the contribution he had looked through all of Emerson’s works expecting to find it and confound this plagiarizing Burroughs with a proof of his rascality.

While teaching school near West Point he one day found, in the library of the Military Academy, a volume of Audubon—and entered upon his kingdom. Here was a complete chart of that bird world which he had never ceased to long to explore since that memorable day when he had seen the little blue warbler. There was time, too, for long walks, time to live with the birds—to revive old ties as well as to make new friends.

In speaking of his study of the birds, Mr. Burroughs once said:

“What joy the birds have brought me! How they have given me wings to escape the tedious and deadly. Studied the birds? No, I have played with them, camped with them, summered and wintered with them. My knowledge of them has come to me through the pores of my skin, through the air I have breathed, through the soles of my feet, through the twinkle of the leaves and the glint of the waters.”

At once he felt a longing to write something of the joy he was gaining through this comradeship with his feathered friends. There was nothing that spoke of Emerson or any other model in his pages now. He had found his own path. He was following the little blue bird into a world of his own.

A chance came to go to Washington to live. For several years, while working as a clerk in the Treasury, he spent all his spare moments with the birds. He knew what nests were to be found near Rock Creek and along Piney Branch. It seemed that he heard the news as soon as a flock of northbound songsters stopped to rest for a day or two in the Capitol grounds.