Burroughs professed to have a great admiration for Turguenieff's[49] “Diary of a Sportsman.” These exquisite prose poems represent nature at its best, but they are purely poetic, pictorial, with a big cosmic swing to them. This is out of the reach of Burroughs, and he never attempted it. His poems contain, as he says himself, more science and observation than poetry. A few beautiful lines everybody can learn to write, and unless they are fragments of a torso of the most intricate and beautiful construction, they will drop like the slanting rain into the dark wastes of oblivion.
His lessons of nature, accepted as text-books in the public schools, have a true message to convey. They represent the socialization of science. He loves the birds and learned their ways; he could run his course aright, as he has placed his goal rightly. He stirred the earth about the roots of his knowledge deeply, and thereby entered a new field of thought. He became interested in final causes, design in nature.
The transcendentalist[50] of the Emersonian period at last came to his own. There is something of the bigness of Thoreau[51] in his recent writings, Thoreau who in his “Concord and Merrimac River” had a mystical vision, a grip on religious thought, and who, like a craftsman in cloisonné, hammered his philosophic speculations upon the frugal shapes of his observations. In “Ways of Nature” and “Leaf and Tendril” Burroughs has reached out as far as it is possible for a nature writer without becoming a philosopher. He now no longer contemplates the outward appearance of things, but their organic structure, the geological formation of the earth's crust, and the evolution of life. And some ledge of rock will now give him the prophetic gaze into the past and into the future.
And so John Burroughs at eighty-five, still chopping the wood for his own fireside, writing, lecturing, giving advice about phases of farm-work, strolling over the ground, still interested in literature, can serenely fold his hands and wait.
Indeed, this white-bearded man, in his bark-covered study amidst veiled heights and blurred river scenes, furnishes a wonderful intimate picture which will linger in American literature and in the minds of all who yearn for a more intimate knowledge of nature, unaffectedly told, like the song of the robin of his first love, “a harbinger of spring thoughts carrying with it the fragrance of the first flowers and the improving verdure of the fields.”
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS
- How does the first paragraph indicate the key-note of the article?
- What do Burroughs' pictures and books show concerning his character?
- What sort of life did Burroughs lead?
- What is meant by “exploiting the teaching of experience rather than of books”?
- How did Burroughs find happiness?
- What is said concerning Burroughs' faculties of discovery and interpretation?
- What diversity of interests did Burroughs show?
- What is said concerning Burroughs' work as an essayist?
- Why was Burroughs fond of Walt Whitman?
- How did Burroughs gain literary style?
- What is meant by the “socialization of science”?
- What makes Burroughs such a charming person?
- Into what sections may the article be divided?
- What does the article reveal concerning its author?
SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION
| 1. A Visit with My Teacher | 11. Our Unusual Caller |
| 2. A Call on an Interesting Person | 12. A Talk with a Tramp |
| 3. In the Office of the Principal | 13. The Beggar's Life |
| 4. Visiting My Relatives | 14. My Cousin |
| 5. A Visit to Another School than My Own | 15. A Talk with an Expert |
| 6. A Talk with a Fireman | 16. My Friend, the Carpenter |
| 7. A Talk with a Policeman | 17. Interviewing a Peddler |
| 8. An Interview with a Stranger | 18. Talking with a Missionary |
| 9. The Man in the Office | 19. In the Printer's Office |
| 10. The Busy Clerk | 20. The Railroad Conductor |