Burroughs

“ I think of the Burroughs branch of my ancestry as rather retiring, peace-loving, solitude-loving men—men not strongly sketched in on the canvas of life, not self-assertive, never roistering or uproarious—law-abiding, and church-going. ”

“ Burroughs paused and turned, looking back at the old home, and up at the cattle silhouetted against the horizon. He gazed upon the landscape long and long. How fondly his eye dwells upon these scenes! So I have seen him look when about to part from a friend—as if he were trying to fix the features and expression in his mind forever.
"The older one grows, the more the later years erode away, as do the secondary rocks, and one gets down to bed-rock,—youth,—and there he wants to rest. These scenes make youth and all the early life real to me, the rest is more like a dream. ”

“ The young man halted not two paces from the Regent. The man went white as the king’s eyes bored straight into his miserable soul.
“Peter of Blentz,” cried the young man, “as God is your judge, tell the truth today. Who am I?”
The legs of the Prince Regent trembled. He sank upon his knees, raising his hands in supplication toward the other. “Have pity on me, your majesty, have pity!” he cried.
“Who am I, man?” insisted the king.
“You are Leopold Rubinroth, sire, by the grace of God, king of Lutha,” cried the frightened man. “Have mercy on an old man, your majesty.” ”

“ Burroughs we feel how preeminently sane and healthy he is. His essays have the perennial charm of the mountain brooks that flow down the hills and through the fertile valleys of his Catskill home. They are redolent of the soil, of leaf mould, of the good brown earth. His art pierces through our habitual indifference to Nature and kindles our interest in, not her beauty alone, but in her rugged, uncouth, and democratic qualities.
Like the true walker that he describes, he himself "is not merely a spectator of the panorama of nature, but is a participator in it. ”

“ True to the facts, Burroughs is a great deal more than scientific, for he loves the things—the birds, hills, seasons—as well as 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. ”

“ Straight up the sheer wall sprang Nu, dragging the woman after him. Now the aurochs herders raised a mighty shout of anger and dismay. Who had ever seen such a thing! It was impossible, and yet there before their very eyes they beheld a man, encumbered by a woman, scaling the unscalable heights.
With renewed speed the herders dashed straight toward the foot of the cliff, but Nu and Gron were beyond the reach of their hands before ever they arrived. Turning for an instant, Nu saw they were not yet out of reach of the weapons. ”

“ The meadow you see is the one that lies before the house where you were born; you read of the boy John Burroughs jumping trout streams on his way to school, but see yourself and your playmates scrambling up a canal bank, running along the towpath, careful to keep on the land side of the towline that stretches from mules to boat, lest you be swept into the green, uninviting waters of the Erie. On you run with slate and books; you smell the fresh wood as you go through the lumber yard. ”

“ Nu turned away and stepped out upon the ledge before the cave. His quick eyes scanned the panorama spread out before him in a single glance. They stopped instantly upon a tiny figure showing across the forest in the little plain that ran to the edge of the plateau before it dove into the valley beside the inland sea. It was the figure of a woman. She was running swiftly toward the declivity. Nu puckered his brows. There was something familiar about the graceful swing of the tiny figure, the twinkling of the little feet as they raced across the grassy plain. ”

“ A-Kor glanced at U-Dor. "Knew you the woman was ill?" he asked.
"Possibly it is lack of food," replied the other. "She mentioned, I believe, that she and her companions had not eaten for several days."
"Brave are the warriors of O-Tar," sneered A-Kor; "lavish their hospitality. U-Dor, whose riches are uncounted, and the brave O-Tar, whose squealing thoats are stabled within marble halls and fed from troughs of gold, can spare no crust to feed a starving girl."
The black haired U-Dor scowled. "Thy tongue will yet pierce thy heart, son of a slave!" he cried. ”

“ THE RETREAT OF A POET-NATURALIST
We are coming more and more to like the savor of the wild and the unconventional. Perhaps it is just this savor or suggestion of free fields and woods, both in his life and in his books, that causes so many persons to seek out John Burroughs in his retreat among the trees and rocks on the hills that skirt the western bank of the Hudson. ”

“ The death of his brother Hiram, in 1904, made the past bleed afresh for Mr. Burroughs. "He was next to Father and Mother in my affections," he wrote. "Oh! if I had only done more for him—this is my constant thought. If I could only have another chance! How generous death makes us! Go, then, and make up by doing more for the living."
As I walked with him about the Old Home, he said, "I can see Hiram in everything here; in the trees he planted and grafted, in these stone walls he built, in this land he so industriously cultivated during the years he had the farm." ”

“ Nu gathered his warriors about him. Two he commanded to remain always beside Nat-ul. Then, with the others at his heels, his long, white feather nodding bravely above his noble head, and the shaggy pelt of Ur, the cave-bear, falling from his shoulders, Nu, the chief, slunk silently out of the jungle toward the village of the excited Boat Builders.
There were forty of them, mighty men, mightily muscled. In their strong hands they grasped their formidable spears and heavy axes. In their loin cloths rested their stone knives for the moment when they closed in hand-to-hand combat with foes. ”

“ Burroughs's work, in outdoor literature, is a distinct species, with new and well-marked characteristics. He is the nature-writer, to be distinguished from the naturalist in Gilbert White, the mystic in Traherne, the philosopher in Emerson, the preacher, poet, critic in Thoreau, the humorist in Charles Dudley Warner. As we now know the nature-writer we come upon him for the first 33 time in John Burroughs. ”

“ They took to the open road together, the best of boon companions, and Burroughs came to know the poet as he knew the birds. His essay “The Flight of the Eagle,” is one of the most spirited and heartfelt tributes that one great man ever paid another.
One should, however, hear Mr. Burroughs talk about the poet and watch his kindling enthusiasm. He had been teaching us how to roast shad under the ashes of our camp-fire one day when a chance remark put him in a reminiscent mood. ”

“ The first John Burroughs of whom I have any trace came from the West Indies, and settled in Stratford, Connecticut, where he married in 1694. He had ten children, of whom the seventh was John, born in August, 1705. My descent does not come from this John, but from his eldest brother, Stephen, who was born at Stratford in February, 1695. Stephen had eight children, and here another John turns up—his last child, born in 1745. His third child, Stephen Burroughs (born in 1729) , was a shipbuilder and became a noted mathematician and astronomer, and lived at Bridgeport, Connecticut. ”

“ Burroughs start out morning after morning with his market-basket of manuscripts on his arm, and briskly walk to his rude study, I asked myself, "Is there another literary man anywhere, now that Tolstoy has gone, who is so absolutely simple and unostentatious in tastes and practice as is John Burroughs?" How he has learned to strip away the husks and get at the kernels! How superbly he ignores non-essentials! how free he is from the tyranny of things! ”

“ The sentry's back was toward the corner of the hut which hid the giant black. The fellow did not see the huge form which silently loomed behind him. The knob-stick swung upward in a curve, and downward again. There was the sound of a dull thud, the crushing of heavy bone, and the sentry slumped into a silent, inanimate lump of clay.
A moment later Mugambi was searching the interior of the hut. At first slowly, calling, "Lady!" in a low whisper, and finally with almost frantic haste, until the truth presently dawned upon him — the hut was empty! ”

“ Imagine our bird-lover describing a bird as Ellery Channing described one, as something with "a few feathers, a hole at one end and a point at the other, and a pair of wings"! We see the bird Mr. Burroughs sees; we hear the one he hears. Long before I had the memorable experience of standing with him on the banks of the Willowemoc and listening at twilight to the slow, divine chant of the hermit thrush, I had heard it in my dreams, because of that inimitable description of its song in "Wake-Robin." ”

“ ANCESTRY AND FAMILY LIFE
I am, as you know, the son of a farmer. My father was the son of a farmer, as was his father, and his. There is no break, so far as I know, in the line of farmers back into the seventeenth century. There was a Rev. George Burroughs who was hanged (in 1692) for a witch in Salem. He was a Harvard graduate. I know of no other Harvard graduate by our name until Julian (Mr. Burroughs's son) graduated in 1901 from Harvard. My father's cousin, the Rev. John C. Burroughs, the first president of Chicago University, was graduated from Yale sometime in the early forties. ”

“ Burroughs’s northern soul however, takes little pleasure in nature in her tropical aspect. He “cannot make love to her there.” She “has little winsomeness or tenderness. She is barbaric; she is painty and stiff; she has no sentiment; she does not touch the heart.”
“Humdrum, undistinguished style. ”

“ The hut was occupied by an old priest, and as the boy in armor pushed in, without the usual formality of knocking, the old man looked up with an expression of annoyance and disapproval.
“What now,” he said, “have the King’s men respect neither for piety nor age that they burst in upon the seclusion of a holy man without so much as a ‘by your leave’?”
“I am no king’s man,” replied the boy quietly. “I am Norman of Torn, who has neither a king nor a god, and who says ‘by your leave’ to no man. But I have come in peace because I wish to talk to another than my father. ”

“ Burroughs more perhaps than to any other living American might be applied these words in Genesis: "See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field which the Lord hath blessed"—so redolent of the soil and of the hardiness and plenitude of rural things is the influence that emanates from him. His works are as the raiment of the man, and to them adheres something as racy and wholesome as is yielded by the fertile soil. ”

“ It was the slave girl. I-Gos' cackling laughter rose above the silence of the room.
"Ey, ey!" he shrilled. "What the young warriors of O-Tar cannot do, old I-Gos does alone." "Only a Corphal may capture a Corphal," growled one of the chiefs who had fled from the chambers of O-Mai.
I-Gos laughed. "Terror turned your heart to water," he replied; "and shame your tongue to libel. This be no Corphal, but only a woman of Helium; her companion a warrior who can match blades with the best of you and cut your putrid hearts. Not so in the days of I-Gos' youth. Ah, then were there men in Manator. ”

“ The robe, falling away in front, disclosed a well knit, muscular figure, naked but for a loin cloth of doe skin in which was stuck his stone knife and ax.
For several minutes he stood watching the girl, his eyes glowing at the beauties of her profile and lithe, graceful figure. Then, very cautiously, he crept toward her. It was Tur of the Boat Builders. Never in his life had Tur looked upon a more beautiful woman. To see her was to want her. Tur must own her. He was almost upon her when a dried twig snapped beneath his tread.
Like a startled antelope Nat-ul was upon her feet. ”

“ Not every author improves upon personal acquaintance, but an actual visit with Burroughs seems almost necessary for the right approach to his books. Matter and manner, the virtues and faults of his writings, the very things he did not write about, are all explained in the presence of a man of eighty-three who brings home a woodchuck from the field for dinner, and saves its pelt for a winter coat. ”

“ No novelist has ever been able to give such a portraiture of a complacent criminal as was given a century ago in the autobiography of Stephen Burroughs.
Burroughs was the son of a worthy clergyman of Hanover, New Hampshire, and from the outset was looked upon as a black sheep. As a mere boy he ran away from home and joined the army, and then with equal irresponsibility deserted. He became a ship’s surgeon, a privateersman, then a self-ordained minister, a counterfeiter, a teacher of youth, a founder of libraries, and a miscellaneous philanthropist. ”

“ Two days after, however, he brought Burroughs the order for the goods, written on the official paper of Ehrlich Söhne, and signed with Errington's initials. At this, even a friend of long standing might well be staggered. Burroughs remembered that his chum had been looking more and more worried of late. He came to breakfast with a pale face and weary eyes, and the look of a man who had not slept. ”

“ A rattler crossing the trail ahead coiled, buzzing its warning. The hillside was steep—there was no footing above or below the snake. The Apache could not have stopped in time to save himself from those poisoned fangs. A coward horse would have wheeled and gone over the cliff; but the Morgan is no coward.
The rider saw the danger at the instant the horse did. The animal felt the spurs touch him lightly, he heard a word of encouragement from the man he trusted. ”