“Yes, quite often. He was bent on making money, and did considerable trading among us schoolboys,—sold me some of his books. I felt then that my view of life was more satisfactory to me than his would have been. I wanted to obtain a competence, and then devote myself to high thinking instead of to money-making.”[[11]]
[11]. An old schoolmate in the little red schoolhouse has said, that “John and Jay were not like the other boys. They learned their lessons easier; and at recess they looked on the games, but did not join in them. John always knew where to find the largest trout; he could show you birds’ nests, and name all the flowers. He was fond of reading, and would walk five miles to borrow a book. Roxbury is proud of John Burroughs. We celebrated ‘Burroughs Day’ instead of Arbor Day here last spring, in the high school, in honor of him.”
“How did you plan to attain this end?”
“By study. I began in my sixteenth or seventeenth year to try to express myself on paper, and when, after I had left the country school, I attended the seminary at Ashland and at Cooperstown, I often received the highest marks in composition, though only standing about the average in general scholarship. My taste ran to essays, and I picked up the great works in that field at a bookstore, from time to time, and filled my mind with the essay idea. I bought the whole of Dr. Johnson’s works at a second-hand bookstore in New York, because, on looking into them I found his essays appeared to be solid literature, which I thought was just the thing. Almost my first literary attempts were moral reflections, somewhat in the Johnsonian style.”
“You were supporting yourself during these years?”
“I taught six months and ‘boarded round’ before I went to the seminary. That put fifty dollars into my pocket, and the fifty paid my way at the seminary.[[12]] Working on the farm, studying and teaching filled up the years until 1863, when I went to Washington and found employment in the Treasury Department.”
[12]. It was when he was attending the academy, that young Burroughs first saw that wonderful being—a living author:—
“I distinctly remember with what emotion I gazed upon him,” he said, “and followed him about in the twilight, keeping on the other side of the street. He was of little account,—a man who had failed as a lawyer, and then had written a history of Poland, which I have never heard of since that time; but to me he was the embodiment of the august spirit of authorship, and I looked upon him with more reverence and enthusiasm than I had ever before looked upon any man with. I cannot divine why I should have stood in such worshipful fear and awe of this obscure individual, but I suppose it was the instinctive tribute of a timid and imaginative youth to a power he was just beginning to see,—or to feel,—the power of letters.”
“You were connected with the Treasury then?”[[13]]
[13]. “My first book, ‘Wake-Robin,’ was written while I was a government clerk in Washington,” says Mr. Burroughs. “It enabled me to live over again the days I had passed with the birds, and in the scenes of my youth. I wrote the book while sitting at a desk in front of an iron wall. I was the keeper of a vault in which many million of bank-notes were stored. During my long periods of leisure, I took refuge in my pen. How my mind reacted from the iron wall in front of me, and sought solace in memories of the birds and of summer fields and woods.”