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' ! H E SEER OF SLA BSI DES

I

“ ! H I S Slab si de s title , The Seer of , does not quite fit John Burroughs—the Bur

-e r roughs I knew . He was a see . A

‘ lover of nature, he watched the ways

of bird and beast ; a lover of life, he thought out and wrought out a serene human philosophy that made hi m it e a ch er and interpreter of the simple and the near at hand rather than of such things

o ff w a s as are hidden and far . He alto h gether uman ; a poet, not a prophet ; a

e gr at lover of the earth , of his portion of

it in New York State, and of everything

and everybody dwelling there with him . 5 3 4 m }; SLABSI DES

He has added volumes to the area o f

N e w St a t e °a n d York , peopled them with f — immortal olk little folk , bees , blue birds , speckled trout , and wild straw b chi cfl erries . He was y concerned with

Sla b si d e s living at , or at Woodchuck

Lodge , and with writing what he lived .

He loved much , observed and inter

r e t e d p much , speculated a little, but “ dreamed none at all . The Lover of Woodchuck Lodge I might have “ called him , rather than The Seer of ” i de s Sla b s . P ietro , the sculptor , has made him rest ing upon a boulder, his arm across his fore

su n head , as his eyes, shielded from the , peer steadily into the future and the far

w away . I sat ith the old naturalist on this same boulder . It was in October, and ! H E SEER OF SLABSIDES 5 they laid him beside it the following

- f . April , on his eighty ourth birthday . I watched him shield his eyes with his

a s arm , the sculptor has made him , and gaze far away over the valley to the roll

Sk ing hills against the y, where his look

lingered , sadly , wearily , for a moment at their vaunting youth and beauty ; then coming instantly back to the field belo w “ ! f us , he said This ield is as full of

woodchucks as it was eighty years ago .

I caught one right here yesterday . How

’ eternally interesting life is ! I ve studied

’ S the woodchuck all my life, and there

no getting to the bottom of him .

He knew , as I knew , that he might

s never re t against this rock again . He

had played upon it as a child . He now

sleeps beside it . But so interesting was 6 TH E SEER OF SLABSIDES

the simplest, the most familiar thing to

e him , that the long , long twilight , alr ady filling the valley and creeping up toward

w e him , still gave him a chance , as sat there, to watch the woodchuck slipping from his burro w . Had I been the sculp tor, I Should have made the old natural i st fla t lying on the round of that rock,

he a r d his white a patch of lichen , his eyes peering from under his slouch hat over the top of the boulder at something near at hand at the woodchuck feed ing below in the pasture .

w He was the simplest man I ever kne , simpler than a child ; for children are

- o often self consci us and uninterested , whereas Burroughs ’ s interest!and curios ity grew with the years , and his direct ness, his spontaneity , his instant pleasure ! H E SEER OF SLABSI DES 7

and his constant joy in living , his utter naturalness and nai vete amounted to — genius . They were his genius and a — Sim i stumbling block to many a reader .

' lzd 5 13721713115 cum n t ur , or a thief to catch

r e a thief, as we say ; and it certainly quires such a degree of simplicity to u m

e r st a n d e w uS d Burroughs as f of possess . Not every author improves u pon per

! sonal acquaintance, but an actual isit with Burroughs seems almost necessary for the right approach to his books .

e Matter and manner , the virtu s and faults of his writings , the very things he

e did not write about , are all xplained in the presence o f a man of eighty -three who brings home a woodchuck f rom the

field for dinner, and saves its pelt for a

winter coat . And with me at dinner 8 THE SEER OF SLABSI D ES

that day were other guests , a lover of

Whitman from Bolton , England , a dis

ti n u i she d g American artist, and others .

o The country r ad , hardly more than

a farm lane, shies up close to Wood

i t chuck Lodge as goes by . Here on the vine- grown porch was the cot of the

old naturalist, as close to the road as it

could get . Burroughs loved those remote

ancestral hills , and all the little folk who

ha b i t a t e d m i n the with him . He was as retiring and shy as a song sparrow

s who nest in the bushes , and Sings from

the fence stake . No man loved his fel

- low man more than Burroughs . Here in his cot he could watch the stars come out upon the mountain -tops and see the fires of dawn kindle where the stars had

shone, and here, too , he could see every TH E SEER OF SLABSI DES 9

-b passer y and , without rising , for he had need to rest , he could reach out a hand of welcome to all who stopped on their

n jour ey past .

And everybody stopped . If he had no fresh woodchuck to serve them , he would

l n have one out of a can , for no less his home than in h i s heart had he made provision for the coming guest . The stores of the village were far away , but there was no lack of canned woodchuck and hospitality in the Lodge . Few men ha v e ha d more friends or a wider range f of riends than Burroug hs . And months later , as I sat looking over the strange medley of them gathered at his funeral ,

I wondered at them , and asked myself what was it in this simple , childlike i man , th s lover of the bluebird , of the 10 . THE SEER OF SLABSI DES e arth on his breast and the sky on his back, that drew these great men and lit

H e tle children about him . was ele mental . He kept his soul . And through t h e press men crowded up to touch him , and the virtue that went out from him restored to them their souls—their blue bird with the earth on its breast and the sky , the blue sky , on its back” I I

A N D this same restoration I find in his books . John Burroughs began that long line of books by writing an essay for the ” Atlantic Monthly , entitled Expres ” sion , a somewhat Emersonian Ex pression , says its author, which was printed in the “ Atlantic for Novem

1 8 6 0 - ber , , sixty one years ago ; and in each of those sixty- one years he has not failed to publish one or more essays here “ where Expression led the way . Sixty- one years are not threescore and ten , being nine years short . Many men have lived and wrought for more than

’ threescore and ten years ;but Burroughs s “ s Atlantic year are unique . To write 1 2 THE SEER OF SLABSIDES

f o r - without a break sixty one years , and

’ ’ e keep one s eye undimmed , on s natural

’ e f force unabat d , one s soul un agged and

h u as fresh as dawn , is of itself a great man achievement . Only a f e w wee ks before his death he sent me a copy of the last book that he

se e should through the press , and who shall say that “ Accepting the Universe ” lacks anything of the vigor or finish or freshness found in his earliest books ! It is philosophical , theological , indeed, in

matter , and rather controversial in style ; its theme is like that of “ The Light of ” e Day , a th me his pen was ever touch

ing , but nowhere with more largeness

e and beauty !and inconsistency)than h re .

e e e For Burroughs , though d ply r ligious ,

. an d was a poor theologian He hated cant,

14 ! H E SEER OF SLABSIDES

o f f o r 1 8 6 0 whole page his diary . On ” 2 2 0 page of Accepting the Universe ,

- published sixty one years later , and only m f a short ti e be ore his death , we find this attempted answer

So , when we ask, Is there design in Nature ! we must make clear what part

o f or phase Nature we refer to . Can we sa y that the cosmos as a whole shows any desig n in our human sense of the word ! I think not . The Eternal has no purpose that our language can compass . There can be neither center nor circum ference to the Infinite . The distribution of land and water on the globe cannot be the result of design any more than ca n the shapes of the hills and mountains , or

’ ’ Saturn s rings, or Jupiter s moons . The circular forms and orbits of the universe ! H E SEER OF SLABSIDES 1 5 must be the result of the laws of matter and force that prevail in celestial me

c ha n i cs ; th is 1s not a final solution of the riddle, but is as near as we can come to it . One question stands on another

a n d so question , that on another , and on , and the bottom question we can never reach and formulate It is a beautiful illustration of the con t 1n u 1t y, the oneness of this singularly Si m ple life and it is as good an illustration of how the vigor of his youth steadies

into a maturity of strength with age , w hich in many a late essay as in The ” — Long Road , for instance lifts one and bears one down the unmeasure d reaches of geologic time as none of his

earlier chapters do . Many men have written more than 16 THE SEER OF SLA BSI DES

- fi v e John Burroughs . His twenty vol

. umes are p e rhaps nothing r e markable f o r

e e sixty y ars of st ady writing . But it is remarkable to come up to f our and

o ff eighty with one book just the press , two more books in manuscript to appear after the light has failed ; for there is still

o f a book miscellaneous papers , and some studies on Emerson and Thoreau yet to be published . And I think it a rather remarkable “ lot of books , beginning with Wake

Robin , running down through the ti ” “ tles , with Winter Sunshine , Birds P ” ” and oets , Locusts and Wild Honey , ” ” “ Pe a ct o n p , Fresh Fields , Signs ” “ and Seasons, Riverby Far and ” “ Near, Ways of Nature , Leaf and ” Tendril , The Summit of the Years , ! H E SEER OF SLABSI DES 17

” “ o f Time and Change , The Breath ” L f e e t h e - e i , Und r Apple Tr es, and ” Field and Study , to Accepting the ” Universe, for these books deal very

e e largely with nature, and by thems lv s

S constitute the largest , most ignificant — group of nature books that have come ,

S n perhaps , from any i gle pen . These sixteen or seventeen volumes are John Burroughs ’s most characteristic and important work . If he has done any

co n t r ib u desirable thing , made any real r tion to American literature, that cont i b u t i o n will be found among these books . His other books are eminently worth

! while there is reverent , honest thinking in his religious essays, a creedless but an absolute and joyous faith ; there is si m pl e and exquisite feeling in his poems ; 1 8 THE SEER OF SLABSI DES close analysis and an unmitigatedness wholly Whitmanesque in his interpreta

tion of Whitman ; and no saner , happier criticism anywh e re than in his Liter ! ” ary alues . There are many other ex

c e ll e n t critics , however, many poets and

religious writers , many other excellent

u - nat re writers , too but is there any other who has written so much upon the ways of n ature as they parallel and cross the

so ways of men , upon great a variety of

’ nature s forms and expressions, and done

it with such abiding love, with such truth and charm ! Yet such a comparison is beyond

proof, except in the least of the literary — values mere quantity ; and it may be with literature as with merchandise ! the

larger the cask the greater the tare . ! H E SEER OF SLABSI DES 1 9 Charm ! Is not charm that which I

o u ! chance to like , or y chance to like Others have written of nature with as much love and truth as h a s John Bur

roughs , and each with his own peculiar

! charm Audubon , with the spell of wild places and the thrill of fresh wonder ;

Traherne, with the ecstasy of the reli

i o u s g mystic ; Gilbert White , with the sweetness of the evening and the morn

ing ; Thoreau , with the heat of noon ff day ; Je eries , with just a touch of twi

light shadowing all his pages . We want them severally as they are ; John Bur “ roughs as he is , neither wandering lonely ” as a cloud in search of poems , nor skulking in the sedges along the banks

o f the Guaso Nyero looking for lions .

Sl ab si d e s We want him at , near his 2 0 THE SEER OF SLABSI DES

e c lery fields , or at Woodchuck Lodge ov e rlooking t h e high fi e lds that run down ! from the sky into Montgomery alley . And whatever the literary quality of our

- o f e other nature writers , no one th m has come any nearer than John Burroughs to — that diffi cult ideal a union o f thought d and form , no more to be separate than

‘ the heart and the bark of a live tree . Take John Burroughs ’ s work as a whole , and it is beyond dispute the most complete, the most revealing , of all our

e outdoor literature . His pag s lie open like the surface of a pond , sensitive to

sk every wind , or calm as the y , holding the clouds and the distant blue, and the

- fl ff - dragon y , sti winged , and pinned to

- the golden knob of a spatter dock .

All outdoor existence , all outdoor

2 2 THE SEER OF SLABSI DES

so him . But is its habitat , the whole of its environment . He sees the gem , not

se t t he cut and in a ring , but rough in

o f mine, where it glitters on the hand

a l nature , and glitters l the more that it is worn in the dark . Naturally John Bur roughs has written much about the birds ; yet he is not an ornithologist .

His theme has not been this or that , but nature in its totality , as it is held within the circle of his horizon , as it surrounds , supports , and quickens him . That nature does support and quicken the spiritual of him , no less than the physical , is the inspiration of his writ l ing and the fina comment it requires . Whether the universe w a s Shaped from chaos with man as its end , is a question

b u t of real concern to John Burroughs , ! H E SEER OF SLABSI DES 2 3 of less concern to him than the probl e m

o f of shaping himself to the universe , liv1ng as long as he can upon a world so perfectly adapted to life, if only one be

s physically and piritually adaptable . To take the earth as one finds it, to plant

’ ’ - one s self in it, to plant one s roof tree in it , to till it, to understand it and the P laws which govern it , and the erfection

which created it, and to love it all this ’ l is the heart of John Burroughs s re igion ,

the pith of his philosophy , the conclu

sion of his books .

But if a perfect place for the fit, how

hard a place is this world for the lazy , t the ignorant, the s ubborn , the weak , the physically and spiritually ill ! 8 0 hard that a torpid liver is almost a mor

tal handicap, the stars in their courses 2 4 ! H E SEER OF SLABSIDES

fighting against the bilious to d e f e at them , to drive them to take exercise, to

e a copious drinking of wat r, to a knowl edge of burdock and calomel to obedi

e ence and und rstanding . Underlying all of John Burroughs ’ s

e thought and feeling , framing ev ry one

e of his books , is a deep s nse of the per f e cti o n of nature, the sharing of which

t h e e is physical life , und rstanding of

e which is spiritual life, is knowl dge of

God himself, in some part of His per “ e ct i o n f . I cannot tell what the simple apparition of the earth and Sky mean to me ; I thin k that at rare intervals one sees that they have an immense spirit

e ual meaning , altogether unspeakabl ,

e and that they are the great helps, aft r ” — all . How the world was made its THE SEER OF SLABSI D ES 2 5

e s geology , its biology is the great qu

f o r tion , its answer is poetry and reli gion and life itself. John Burroughs was serenely sure as to h o w the world was made ; the theological sp e culation as to m b y it was made , he answered by grow i n f r u l ts g small on it, living upon it, writing about it . Temperamentally John Burroughs was a n optimist , as vocationally he was a

e n - writ r , and avocatio ally a vine dresser . He planted and expected to gather

m grapes from his grapevines , books fro

- his book vines , years , satisfactions , sor

du e hi m rows , joys , all that was .

! he wat e rs know the ir own a n d d r a w

h b k n ! e roo that s pri g s i n yo n d e r h e ights ; So flows t he good with e q u al law

U to t he so u l o f u re e li ts n p d gh . 2 6 THE SEER OF SLA BSI DES And what is it that was due him !

Ev e rything ; everything essential ; as everything essential is due the pine

i I s n o t tree, the prairie , the very planet .

! e this earth a star Are not the prairi ,

- a n d ! the pine tree , man the dust of stars each a part of the other ! all parts of

—a one whole universe , round , rolling, without beginning , without end , with

fla w out , without lack , a universe self ! sustained , perfect

I sta m aste I make e la s y y h , d y , Fo r what a v ails th is e age r pace !

I stan am i the e te r al a s d d n w y ,

A n d W at is m i e s all k o m face h n h n w y .

John Burroughs came naturally by such a ! iew of nature and its consequent opti

hi s mism . It was due partly to having been born and brought up on a farm ! H E SEER OF SLABSIDES 2 7

I where he had what was due him from

-u the start . Such birth and bringing p is

o f the natural right every boy . To know

and to do the primitive , the elemental ;

to go barefoot, to drive the cows , to

fish , and to go to school with not too “ a m ny books , but with plenty of real things —these are nominated in every

’ boy s bond .

Se re n e I fol m a s a ait , d y h nd nd w ,

th e is poem of a childhood on the farm ,

and the poem of a manhood on the farm , in spite of the critic who says “ We have neve r ceased to wonder

that this friend of the birds , this kindly

e int rpreter of nature in all her moods ,

was born and brought up on a farm ; i t u w as in that smiling country watered by

the east branch of the Delaware . No 2 8 THE SEER OF SLABSI DES man , as a rule, knows less about the colors , songs , and habits of birds , and is more indiff erent to natural scenery than the man born to the soil , who delves in it and breathes its odors . Contact with it and laborious da ys seem to deaden his faculties of observation and deprive him ” of all sympathy with nature . During the days when the deadening might have occurred , John Burroughs was teaching school . Then he became a United States bank examiner, and only after that returned to the country —to

Sl ab si de s Riverby and , and Woodchuck — Lodge, to live out the rest of his years , years as full of lif e and books as his vines along the Hudson are full of life and grapes . Could it be otherwise ! If men a n d

30 THE SEER OF SLABSI DES f playing gol , walking the streets ; but surely the advantages and the po e try are

e all in favor of the vin yard . And how much fitter a place the vineyard to mel

a n d f e low ripen li , than a city roof of tarry pebbles and tin ! Though necessarily personal and sub

’ e ct i v e e n j , John Burroughs s writing is t i r e ly free from self - e xploitation and n confessio . There are pages scattered here and there dealing bri e fly and frankly w ith his own natural history , but our thanks are d u e to John Burroughs that he never made a business of watching himself. Once he was inveigled by a magazine editor into doing “ An Ego ” t i st i ca l Chapter , wherein we find him as a boy of sixteen reading essays , and capable at that age of feeding for a ! H E SEER OF SLABSIDES 31

e r ! whole y ar upon D . Johnson Then

’ we find him reading Whipple s essays , and the early outdoor papers of Higgin so n - ; and later, at twenty three, settling

’ down with Emerson s essays , and getting one of his own into the Atlantic h ” Mont ly . How early his own began to come to him ! That first essay in the “ Atlantic was followed by a number of outdoor sketches in the New York Leader “ written , Burroughs says , mainly to break the spell of Emerson ’s influence ” m o w n and get upon ground of y . He succeeded in both purposes ; and a large and exceedi ngly fertile piece of ground it proved to be , too , this which he got u pon ! Already the young writer ha d 32 ! H E SEER OF SLABSIDES

chosen his field and his crop . The out o f - doors has been large ly his literary material , as the essay has been largely

e his lit rary form , ever since . He has done other things volumes o f literary studies and cri ticisms ; but his theme from first to last has been the Great Book o f o f Nature, a page which , here and there, he has tried to read to us .

’ Burroughs s work , in outdoor liter

i s ature, a distinct species , with new

- and well marked characteristics . He is

- the nature writer , to be distinguished

Gi lb e r t W hi t e from the naturalist in J , the mystic in Traherne , the philosopher in

Emerson , the preacher , po et , critic in

Thoreau , the humorist in Charles Dudley

Warner . As we now know the nature writer we come upon him for the first ! H E SEER OF SLABSIDES 33

Bu r r o u hs u Su c h time in John g . credit might have gone to Thomas Wentworth

Higginson , had he not been something — else before he was a lover of nature o f fl letters first, then of owers , carrying his library into the fields ; whereas Bur roughs brings the fields into the library .

The essay whose matter is nature, whose

i s moral is human , whose manner strictly literary , belongs to John Burroughs . His work is distinguished by this threefold

e v e n and emphasis . In almost every other of our early outdoor w riters either the naturalist or the moralist or the stylist holds the pen .

Early or late, this or that, good out door writing must be marked , first, by

fidelity to fact ; and , secondly , by sin ce r i t y of expression . Like qualities mark 34 ! H E SEER OF SLABSIDES all good literature ; but they are th e m

v e e selves the ry literature of nature . Wh n we take up a nature- book we ask !and it was Burroughs who taught us to ask), Is the record true ! Is the writing honest ! ” In these many volumes by John Bur b roughs there are many o servations , and it is more than likely that some of them may be wrong , but it is not possible that any of them could be mixed with observations that Burroughs knows he

e never made . If Burroughs has writt n a line of sham natural history , which line “ ” ! - is it In a preface to Wake Robin , the author says his readers have some times complained that they do not se e the things which he sees in the woods ; but I doubt if there ever was a reader ! H E SEER OF SLABSI DES 35 who suspected John Burroughs of not seeing the things . His reply to these complaints is sig n ifi ca n t e , being in no manner a d fense , i i but an exqu s te explanation , instead , of the diff erence between the nature which anybody may se e in the woods and the

b e nature that every individual writer,

a cause he is writer, and an individual , must put into his book ! a diff erence like that between the sweet-wate r gathered by the bee from the flowers and the drop o f acid -stung honey deposited by the bee

- in the comb . The sweet water under goes a chemical change in being brought

to the hive, as the wild nature under goes a literary change by the addition

’ o f the writer s self to the nature, while w ith the sweet- water it is by the addi

tion of the bee . 36 THE SEER OF SLABSI DES

One must be abl e to walk to an edi t o r i a l ffi o ce and back , and all the way walk humbly with his theme, as Bur roughs ever does — not entirely for

e tf u l g of himself, nor of me !because he has invited me along); but I must be quiet and not disturb the fishing if we

- go by way of a trout stream .

True to the facts , Burroughs is a great deal more than scientific , for he — loves the things the birds , hills , sea — sons as well a s the truths about them and true to himself, he is not by any means a Simple countryman who has never seen the city , a natural idyl , who lisps in books and essays , because the essays come . He is fully aware of the thing

c o n f e s he wants to do , and by his own

a du e sion has . amount of trouble shap

38 ! H E SEER OF SLABSIDES

— o f of stars horoscope . You are born an

e e idyl or you are not , and wh re and wh n you live has nothing to do with it . Who would look for a true country idyl to - day in the city of Philad e lphia !

o f Yet one came out there yesterday , and lies here open before me, on the table . It is a slender volume, called ff With the Birds , An A ectionate Study , by Caroline Eliza Hyde . The author is discussing the general subject of nomen c la t u r e and animal distribution , and says “ When the D e luge covered the then known face of the earth , the birds were drowned with every other living thing , except those that Noah , commanded

t w o . by God , took two by into the Ark When I reflect deeply and earnestly about the Ark, as every one Should, ! H E SEER OF SLABSI DES 39 thoughts crowd my mind with an irre ” si st ib le f orce .

!And they crowd my mind , too . ! Noah and his family had preserved the names of the birds given them by

Adam . This is assured , for Noah sent a raven and a dove out to se e if the waters had abated , and we have birds of that name now . Nothing was known of our

o f so part the globe , these birds must have remained in the Holy Land f o r centuries . We do not hear of them until

America was discovered . “ Bats come from Sur . They are very

- black mouse like birds , and disagreeable . The bobolink is not mentioned in the Bible, but it is doubtless a primitive

' co ck t ha t bird . The crows too early in the morning can hardly be classed 4 0 ! H E SEER OF SLABSI DES

- with the song birds . The name of the humming- bird is not mentioned in the

Bible, but as there is nothing new under ” the sun , he is probably a primitive bird . Burroughs would have agreed that the humming-bird is probably a primitive bird ; and also that this is a true idyl , and that he could not write a true idyl if he tried . No one could write like that by trying . And what has any happy combination of circumstances to do with ! it No , a book essentially is only a per so n a li t i n y type , and he who would not be frustrated of his hope to write a true idyl must himself be born a true idyl . A fine Miltonic saying !

John Burroughs was not an idyl , but an

se c essayist, with a love for books only ond to his love for nature ; a watcher in ! H E SEER OF SLABSID ES 4 1

the woods , a tiller of the soil , a reader , critic , thinker, poet , whose chief busi ness these sixty years has bee n the inter

-o f - pro tation of the out doors .

Upon him as interpreter and observer , ” o W certain of his b oks, ays of Nature and Leaf and Tendril , are an interest ing comment . Truth does not always make good

n o t literature , when it is stranger than

as f fiction , it o ten is ; and the writer who sticks to the truth of nature must some times do it at the cost of purely lit e rary ends . Have I sacrificed truth to liter

! o f ature asks Burroughs his books . Have I seen in nature the things that

- are there , or the strange man things , the winged creepin g things w hich have four feet, and which were an abomina 4 2 ! H E SEER OF SLABSI DES

tion to the ancient Hebrews , but which the readers of modern nature- writing — do greedily devour are th e se the things I have seen ! And f o r an answer he sets about a ree xamination o f all he has ” “ - “ written , from Wake Robin to Far ” “ and Near , hoping that the result of the discussion or thr e shing will not be

e to mak the reader love the animals less , ” but rather to love the truth more . “ e But the result, as embodi d in Ways ” ” of Nature and in Leaf and Tendril , is quite the opposite , I fear ; for these two volumes are more scientific in tone than any of his other work ; and it is the mission , not of science , but of liter i ature, to q uicken our love for an mals, even for truth . Science only adds to the

i n truth . Yet here, spite of himself, ! H E SEER OF SLABSI D E S 4 3

e Burroughs is more the writ r , more the

e . interpret r, than the investigator He is constantly forgetting his scientific the

si s o f , as , for instance , in the account

’ e his neighbor s errant cow . He succe ds

finally , however , in reducing her fairly well to a mechanical piece o f be e f act ing to veg e table stimuli upon a nerve ganglion located somewh e re in the r e

gion between her horns and her tail .

u se Now, all this is valuable, and the m ade of it is laudable, but would we not

rather have the account than the cow , f ! especially rom Burroughs Certainly, because to us it is the a cco un t that he

f o r so has come to stand . And , if we do not love his scientific animals more ,

n hi s sci e n t i fi c and findings more , we shall , I think , love all his other books 44 THE SEER OF SLABSI DES

f o r se e f t h e more ; we now that , rom

f o f beginning , he has regarded the acts

o f nature as the solid substance his books , to be kept as free f rom fancy and from

false report , as his interpretation ofthem is to be kept free from all exaggeration

and cant .

Here , then , are a score of volumes of

honest seeing , honest feeling , honest

reporting . Such honesty of itself may

a - not m ke good nature literature, but

w ithout such honesty there can be no

- good nature literature . Nature-literature is not less than the

truth , but more ; how much more, Burroughs himself sugg e sts to us in a

passage about his literary habits .

h e For my part , says , I can never

interview Nature in the reporter fashion .

46 THE SEER OF SLABSI DES

t h e r D people . Then writing about Na

e ture, or about most other subj cts , is an expansive process ; we are under the law of evolution ; we grow the germ into the tree ; a little original observation go e s “ a good way . For when you go to

n e Nature, bring us good scie ce or els good literature, and not a mere inventory

o u of what y have seen . One demon ” strates, the other interprets . Care ful as Joh n Burroughs has been

so with his facts , careful as often to bring us excellent science , he yet has left us

-o f - no inventory of the out doors . His work is literature ; he is not a demon st r a t o r , but an interpreter, an expositor who is true to the text and true to the w hole of the context . Our pleasure in Burroughs as an THE SEER OF SLABSI DES 4 7 interpreter comes as much from his

e whol some good sense , from his balance and sanity , I think , as from the assur ance of his sincerity . Free from pose and cant and deception , he is free also from bias and strain . There is something

co m a n ordinary , normal , reasonable , p i o n ab l e , about him ; an even tenor to

hi s all ways , a deliberateness , naturalness to all his paths, as if they might have

m 8 0 been ade originally by the cows . they were . If Burroughs were to start from my door for a tramp over these small Hingham hills he would cross the trout

’ brook by my neighbor s stone bridge , and, nibbling a spear of peppermint on the way , would follow the lane and the

- u cow paths across the pasture . Thorea 48 THE SEER OF SL A BSI DES

would pick out t h e d e e pest hole in the brook and try to swim across ; he would

o f leap the stone walls the lane, cut a

- bee line through the pasture , and drop ,

for his first look at the landscape, to the botto m of the pit in the seam - face

granite quarry . Here he would pull out his notebook and a gnarly wild apple from

his pocket , and , intensely , critically ,

chemically , devouring said apple , make note in the book that the apples of Eden fl were at , the apples of Sodom bitter, but

w this ild , tough , wretched , impossible apple of the Hingham hills united all ambrosial essences in its striking odor

- of squash bugs .

Burroughs takes us along with him . Thoreau comes upon us in the woods j umps out at us from behind some bush , THE SEER OF SLABSI DES 49 with a Sca t ! Burroughs brings us home in time for tea ; Thoreau leaves us tangled up in the briars .

’ It won t hurt u s to he jumped at now

“ ‘ ’ and then and told to cca z ! It won t hurt us to be digged by the briars . It is f good for us , otherwise we might orget

w e that are beneath our clothes . It is — good for us and highly diverting , and highly irritating too . “ But Thoreau stands alone . Walden

’ Pon d i s one of America s certain con

’ t r ib u t i o n s to the world s great books .

For my part , when I take up an out door book I a m glad if there is quiet i n it , and fragrance , and something of the saneness and sweetness of the sky . Not

e that I always want sweet ski s . It is

- ninety eight degrees in the shade, and 5 0 ! H E SEER OF SLABSI DES three weeks Since there fell a drop of rain . I could sing like a robin for a Si z z li n e - w — g , crackling thund r sho er less f o r the Sizzling and crackling than for the shower . Thoreau is a succession of Showers his pages are

- sheet lightning , electrifying, purifying, illuminating , but not altogether condu “ P ” cive to peace . Walden ond is some thing more than a nature book . There

’ is a clear Sky to most of Burroughs s pages, a rural landscape, wide, gently rolling , with cattle standing here and there beneath the trees . Burroughs ’s natural history is entirely natural , his philosophy entirely reason able, his religion and ethics very much of the kind we wish our minister and our neighbor might possess ; and his THE SEER OF SLABSI DES 5 1

manner of writing is so unaff ected that w e f e e l we could write i n such a manner

e ours lves . Only we cannot . Since the time he can be sa 1d to have “ ” led a life , Burroughs has led a literary

sa life ; that is to y, nothing has been

allowed to interfere with his writing ; yet the writing has not been allowed to interf ere with a quiet successful busi — ness with his raising of grapes .

He has a study and a vineyard . Not many men ought to live by the pen alone . A steady diet of inspiration and words is hard on the literary health . The writing should be varied with some good , wholesome work , actual hard work f o r the hands ; not so much work , per haps , as one would find in an eighteen

’ acre vineyard ; yet John Burroughs s 5 2 THE SEER OF SLABSIDES eighteen acres c e rtainly proved to be no

e e e u check rath r , ind d , a stim lus to his writing . He seems to have gath ered a volume out of every acre ; and h e seems to have put a good acre into “ ” every volume . Fresh Fields is the name of one of the volumes , Leaf and ” Tendril of another ; but the f re shness of his fields , the leaves and the tendrils of his vineyard , enter into them all . The grapes of the vineyard are in them also . Here is a growth of books out of the soil , books that have been trimmed, trained , sprayed , and kept free from rot . Such books may not be altoge ther a c cording to the public taste ; they will keep , however , until the public acquires a better taste . Sound , ripe, fresh, early

5 4 ! H E SEER OF SLABSI DES

ing is seasoned and sane . It is ripe, and yet as f resh as gre e n corn with the d e w

t h e in the silk . You have eaten corn on

cob just from t h e stalk and st e amed in

! is its own husk Green corn that corn , fl that has all its milk and sugar and avor ,

is corn on the cob , and in the husk is cob and kernel and husk not a stripped ear that is cooked into the

kitchen air . Literature is too often stripped of its m human husk, and cut fro its human

! cob the man gone, the writer left ; the

substance gone , the style left corn that tastes as much like corn as it tastes like puff ed rice —which tastes like nothing

o f at all . There is the sweetness the f husk , the lavor of the cob , the substance

of the uncut corn to John Burroughs . THE SEER OF SLABSI DES 5 5

There is no lack o f cob and husk to

S Thoreau of shell and hull , one hould say , for he is more like a green walnut

e than an ear of gr en corn . Thoreau is very human , a whole man ; but he is almost as much a tree , and a mountain , and a pond , and a spell of weather , and a state of morals . He is the author of ” Walden , and nobody else in the world is that ; he is a lover of Nature , as ardent a lover as ever eloped with h e r ; he is a l e over of men , too , loving th m with an intensity that hates them bag and bag gage ; he is poetical , prophetic , para d o xi ca l , and utterly impossible .

But he knew it . Born in Concord ,

e e under the transcend ntal stars , at a tim w hen Delphic sayings and philosophy , romance and poetry ran wild in t h e 5 6 THE SEER OF SLABSI DES gardens where Bouncing - Bet and Way

.

e u ward Charlie now run wild , Thor a knew that he was touched , and that all

e s his neighbors were touch d , and ought asylum at Walden . But Walden was not distant enough . If John Burroughs in

N e w e Roxbury , York , found it n cessary to take to the woods in order to escape from Emerson , then Thoreau should

X a m i lt e e c have gone to Chicago , or to p .

It is the strain , in Thoreau , that

wearies us ; his sweating among the stumps and woodchucks , for a bean crop

i - netting him e ght dollars , seventy one ! and one half cents . But such beans

! f o r Beans with minds and souls Yet ,

baking , plain beans are better than these

e e transcendental b ans , becaus your trans

c e n de n ta l beans are always baked with ! H E SEER OF SLA BSI DES 5 7

out pork . A family man , however , can not contemplate that piddling patch with any patience , even though he have a taste for literature as real as his taste for

e b ans . It is better to watch John Bur roughs pruning his grapevines for a crop to net him one thousand , three hundred

- fi ve n o and twenty dollars , and cents ,

- t and no half cen s . Here were eighteen acres to be cultivated , whose fruit was to be picked , shipped , and sold in the New York markets at a profit a

’ profit plainly felt in John Burro u ghs s books d Reading what I have just sai , as it “ ” appeared in the Atlantic f o r Novem

1 10 ber, 9 , Burroughs wrote in the course of a letter to me ! “ I feel like scolding you a little for 5 8 THE SEER OF SLA BSI DES

a u f o r e e disp raging Thorea my b n fit .

e e e Thor au is n ar r the stars than I am .

I may be more human , but he is as cer t a i n l y more divine . His moral and ethi

e n e cal valu I thi k is much gr ater , and he has a heroic quality that I cannot approach . Perhaps no truer word will ever be said of these two men than that ; and certainly no more gen erous word was ever spoken by one great writer of a n other , his nearest rival . I have not , nor would I , disparage Thoreau for Bur

’ r o u hs s b g enefit . Thoreau dwells apart . l He is ong past all disparagement . “ P ” “ ” Walden ond and The Week , if

n not the most challenging , most origi al

u e books in American literat r , are, with

’ “ ” Whitman s Leaves of Grass a n d ! H E SEER OF SLABSI DES 5 9

’ Emerson s Essays, among those books . Thoreau and Burroughs had almost nothing in common except their love of nature , and in that they were farther apart than in anything else, Thoreau searching by night and day in all w ild places for hi s lost horse and b o u n d while

Burroughs quietly worshiped , as his rural divinity , the ruminating cow . The most worthy qualities of good writing !are those least noticeable— neg ative qualities of honesty , directness , sincerity , euphony ; noticeable only by their absence Yet in John Burroughs they amounted to a positive charm . In deed , are not these same negative quali ties the very substance o f good style ! Such style as is had by a pair of pruni n g

S hears , as is embodied in the exquisite 60 THE SEER OF SLABSI DES lines of a flying swallow - the style th at f ! is perfect, purpose ul adaptability Bu t t he r e is m o r e t ha n e fii ci e n cy t o J o hn

’ Burroughs s style ; there are strengths and i i graces ex st ng in and for themselves . Here is a naturalist who has studied the “ art of writing . What little merit my ” “ style has , he declares , is the result of ” much study and discipline . And whose

style , if it be style at all , is not the result ! of much study and discipline Flourish ,

fi n e - writing , wordiness , obscurity , and

cant are exorcised in no other way ; and

as for the limpidness, sweetness , fresh ” ness , which John Burroughs says should

characterize outdoor writing , and which

s do characterize his writing , how el e than by study and discipline shall they be obtained !

6 2 THE SEER OF SLABSI DES s o f ff i n tore single, su icient words, for s tance, especially the homely , rugged

fl e words and idioms, and the avor th y give, is second to the work they do ; or take his use of figures when he speaks

’ of De ! uincey s discursive, roundabout style, herding his thoughts as a collie dog herds sheep and unexpected , vivid , apt as they are , they are even more

ff On e e ective . is often caught up by the s poetry of the e essays and borne aloft , but never on a gale of words ; the lift and sweep are genuine emotion and thought .

— - AS an essayist as a nature writer I

’ ought to sa y -John Burroughs s literary care is perhaps nowhere so plainly seen as in the simple architecture of his essay plans, in their balance and finish , a qual ! H E SEER OF SLABSIDES 6 3 ity that distinguishes him from others

f e n o r of the cra t, and that n ither gift chance could so invariably supply . The common —fault of outdoor books is the r a w . catalogue data , notes There are paragraphs of notes in John Burroughs , volumes of them in Thoreau . The aver age nature-writer sees not too much of nature, but knows all too little of literary values ; he sees everything , gets a mean ing out of nothing ; writes it all down ; and gives us what he sees, which is pre ci se l y what everybody may see ; whereas , we want also what he thinks and feels . Some of our present writers do nothing but feel and divine and fathom the animal psychologists, whatever they are .

- The bulk of nature writing , however , is journalistic, done on the spot , into a 64 THE SEER OF SLABSI DES

notebook , as were the journals of Tho

e - r au fragmentary , yet with Thoreau — often exquisite fragments bits o f old stained glass, unleaded, and lacking unity and design . No such fault can be found with John

e n cill e ss Burroughs . He went p into the woods , and waited before writing until his return home , until time had elapsed for the multitudinous details of the trip to blur and blend , leaving only the domi

nant facts and impressions for his pen . Every part of his work is of selected

stock, as free from knots and seams and

- sapwood as a piece of old growth pine .

There is plan , proportion , integrity to his essays —the naturalist living faith fully u p to a sensitive literary con

science . THE SEER OF SLABSI DES 65 John Burroughs was a good but not a great naturalist , as Audubon and Gray were great naturalists . His claim !and

’ Audubon s in part)upon us is literary . He was a watcher in the woods ; he made a few pleasant excursions into the prime -1 val wilderness, leaving his gun at home , ! and his camera , too , thank Heaven He broke out no new trail , discovered no new animal , no new thing . But he saw

sa w all the old , uncommon things , them oftener , watched them longer , through more seasons , than any other writer of our out- o f - doors ; and though b e di s d covered no new thing , yet he ma e — discoveries, volumes of them contri butions largely to our stock of literature ,

t h e e and to our store of love for arth , and to our j oy in living upon it . He 6 6 ! H E SEER OF SLABSI DES turned a little of t he universe into liter ature ; translated a portion o f the earth into human languag e ; r e stored to us our garden here eastward in Eden —apple tree and all .

For a real taste of fruity literature, try John Burroughs ’ s chapter on “ The

’ ’ - if Apple . Try Thoreau s , too , you

- are partial to squash bugs . There are “ chapters in John Burroughs , such as Is ! ” “ ! ” it going to Rain A River iew ,

- A Snow Storm , which seem to me as

e p rfect , in their way , as anything that — has ever been done single , simple, beautiful in form , and deeply significant ; the storm being a piece of fine d e scr ip

w tion , of whirling sno across a geologic landscape , distant, and as dark as eter n i ty ; the whole wintry picture lighted ! H E SEER ‘ OF SLABSI DES 67 and warmed at the end by a glowing touch of human life “ We love the Sight of the brown and f ruddy earth ; it is the color of li e , while a snow- covered plain is the face o f death ; yet snow is but the mark of life giving rain it, too, is the friend of man

- i m m a cu the tender, sculpturesque , ” late, warming, fertilizing snow . There are m any texts in these vol umes , many themes ; and in them all there is one real message ! that this is a good world to live in ; that these are good m e n and women to live with that life is good , here and now, and alto gether worth living . I I I

I! was in October that I last sa w him at Woodchuck Lodge . November 2 2 he

W I' Ot C

I neglected to make any apologies for the long letter I wrote you the other

n o t day . I promise to do so again . I am

a n enclosing old notebook of mine , filled with all sorts of jottings as you will see .

I send it for a keepsake .

o ff - We are for California to morrow .

Hope to be there in early December .

2 t We leave Chicago on the 9 h . My

L a 0114 address there will be 7 , San Diego .

Good luck to you and yours . Always your fri e nd J o H N B U R R OU G H S

7 0 ! H E SEER OF SLA BSI DES

o f verse , called The Reds Literature . But all t he whil e he was thinking of

f o r home, and planning his birthday party at the Lodge back on the ancestral farm .

We celebrated it . He was there .

But he did not know . On the third

- day of April , his eighty fourth birth

a f day , followed by few of his riends , mourned by all the nation , he was laid to rest in the hill pasture, beside the boulder on which he had played as a

b e child , and where only a few months fore he had taken me to se e the glory of hill and sky that had been his life long theme, and that were to be his sleep forever . He died on the train that was bring i n g him back from California , his last de ! H E SEER EOEJ SLABSI DES g I

sire not quite fulfilled . He was a wholly human man ; and an utterly simple man ; and so true to himself, that his last words , uttered on the speeding train , expressed a n d completed his whole life with sin “ gular beauty ! How far are we fro m — t home, he asked , and the ligh failed ; and the train sped on as if there were need of hurry now !

“ Se re e I fol m a s a ait t n , d y h nd nd w ,

N o r care f o r i or ti e or se a w nd , n d , n ,

’ I rav e no more gain st ! im e or Fate ” Fo r 10 ! m o sha ll co me to m e y wn .

! H E E N D «t he minerfiibe p r eys! CAM B R I DGE M AS S ACHU S E ! ! S U S A

A N I N I ! I A L F I N E OF 25 CE N ! S W I LL B E A SS ESS ED F O R F A I LU R E TO R ETU R N I S B ! O N D D U E P EN L ! TH OO THE ATE . THE A T W I LL I N C R EAS E TO 5 0 C EN TS O N THE F O U RTH DA ! A N D TO O N THE S E! EN TH DA ! D O! ER U E.

J UN 18 1944