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    [Illustration: JOHN BURROUGHS]




    RAMBLES WITH JOHN BURROUGHS

    R. J. H. De LOACH


    _Illustrated with photographs by the Author_

    RICHARD G. BADGER
    THE GORHAM PRESS
    BOSTON


    _Copyright 1912 by Richard G. Badger_
    _All Rights Reserved_

    _The Gorham Press, Boston, Mass._


    To
    THE DEAR OLD UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA
    and her Noble faculty who have ever inspired me
    I dedicate this little volume




PREFACE


There is a longing in every student's life some time or other to share
his pleasure with the world, and if he happens to find himself in the
proper environment he cannot forego that pleasure. His studies, his
anxieties, his loves and his devotions are a part of him and he cannot
give himself to the world without giving these.

My personal contact with John Burroughs has meant a great deal to me and
these papers represent in a measure what I have enjoyed, though they
come far short of what I would like them to be. Some of them were
written among his native hills and it is hoped they will give the flavor
of his own experiences. Others were written at odd times on trains, on
boats, and in my study here, where I have enjoyed re-reading so many
times his essays on Nature. The qualities of the man and his papers have
always made a direct appeal to me, and I love to come in contact with
him and spend days with him.

Long before they were printed in book form, I had collected most of his
poems in my old scrap book and studied them. Their simplicity and beauty
combined with their perfect rhythm impressed me and almost at one
reading I was able to remember them line for line.

The names of Burroughs and Whitman are forever linked together and one
can hardly think of one in certain relations without thinking of the
other. To the literary public they have many ideals in common, and their
bonds of sympathy have been knit together forever in Burroughs essays.
To be associated with Burroughs is therefore to get many interesting and
valuable hints on the life and works of Whitman. While I write this
preface Mr. Burroughs talks with me in the evenings on the possible
future influence of Whitman on American literary methods and criticism.
The reader will not be surprised therefore, to find in this collection
of papers, one on the relation of these two grand old men.

I have not attempted to interpret John Burroughs. He is his own
interpreter and the very best one. In writing the papers, I have had in
mind only just what he has meant to me. How he has affected me and
changed the course of my life. How he has given me new eyes with which
to see, new ears with which to hear, and a new heart with which to love
God's great out-o'-doors.

Athens, Ga. January, 1911.




    CONTENTS


    The Simple Life
    Around Slabsides and the Den
    John Burroughs in the South
    Around Roxbury
    The Old Clump
    John Burroughs as Poet
    John Burroughs and Walt Whitman
    John Burroughs and the Birds




    ILLUSTRATIONS


    John Burroughs
    In the Old Barn
    The Old Stone Wall built by Deacon Scudder
    The Study
    Slabsides
    Burroughs Listening to the Cardinal in Georgia
    At the Bars in front of The Old Burial Ground
    Over the Site of his Grandfather's Old Home
    Under a Catskill Ledge where he has often been protected from the
      rain in summer
    A Catskill Mountain Side
    Under the Old Grey Ledge
    On the Summit of the Old Clump
    Looking across the Pasture Wall
    Stones marking Site of Thoreau's Cabin
    Pointing out the Junco's Nest
    My Chickadee's Nest




THE SIMPLE LIFE


The great majority of people consider that this expression about defines
a summer outing, or a camping trip and that is the end of it. They
cannot associate it with any form of living for they have not tried the
simple life. A few weeks in summer they are in the habit of unfolding
their tents and going away to the mountains where they can for a short
while rid themselves of conventionalities and try out nature. On such
occasions they are forced to do most of their own work, and hence are
primarily interested in reducing this to the minimum. Usually those who
seek this form of the simple life are glad when the spell is over and
they are back safely in the home.

Once in awhile and perhaps at long intervals, the world gives birth to a
character tuned in a lower key than the average of us, that by virtue of
its inborn love of simplicity and lack of things to worry over, prefers
to remove the deadly weights of the conventional and to live in harmony
with the forces of the world. In this way native merits are allowed to
expand and grow. Such persons are meek and lowly with much humility of
spirit and usually gifted with a great capacity for love. Unconsciously
they are continually weeding out everything from their lives that tends
in any way to abate their natural forces, and by the time they are far
on the way of life they have become entirely free from those things that
hold most of us aloof from the best the world has to offer.

The human race has given very few such characters to the world, in fact
not a great enough number to formulate in any sense a law of the
probability and chance of their production. Diogenes is an illustration
of such a character, who after an early life of luxury, settled upon an
extremely simple life during his later years, and grew in wisdom and
understanding in proportion to his devotion to such life. Gilbert White
after a thorough college training refused many offers to appointments to
honorable posts in order to live simply at the Wakes and make a complete
record of the Natural History about Selburne. In preference to large
paying positions in many parts of the Kingdom, he chose clerical work at
very low pay that he may remain at home and not miss any important event
in the Natural History thereabouts. Thoreau is another type of the
advocate of the simple life. He could have remained about Concord all
his days as other men and have amounted to as little as many of them
did, if he had preferred. But instead, he deliberately planned an
experiment in plain living and high thinking. It has been thought by
many that he was an extremist, but how many of us there are who would
gladly take his claim to immortality. His experiment was a success. So
soon as he cast off all obstacles to free thinking, his mind seized on
the things he most loved and desired, and made him famous.

Another character that belongs in this category, and the one in whom we
are the most concerned in the present paper, is John Burroughs. Born in
one of the most beautiful sections of a great country, and reared on a
farm where he learned first hand the secrets of nature, he has never
departed far from the simple life. At the age of seventy-five he still
finds greatest comfort away from any human habitation, and the earth
beneath--the sky above, and nothing to mar his inner musings. Strange to
say the happiest environment that ever comes to him is amid the very
hills where he first saw the light. Recently, he confessed as he lifted
his eyes to a Catskill sunrise: "How much these dear old hills mean to
me! When in my playful youth little did I think as I went along this
roadway to school every morning that some day I should fall back upon
these scenes for thought, love, inspiration! O what a wholesome effect
they have upon me!" This I am sure is not an exaggerated statement of
the case. He really longs to get back among the hills of his nativity on
the return of summer, and so long as health and strength permits he
will'return to the place of his birth, though he cannot go back to his
youth.' There in the quiet of the country, nestled among those beautiful
hills and valleys, he can get into the free and wholesome open air and
live as he likes, while the many pleasant memories of his earlier days
seem to act as a lubricant to his already active mind.

A simple life is not necessarily a life of idleness, but may on the
other hand be the very busiest of lives. In fact, is the product of any
mind as wholesome, as pure, as great as it might be when the denominator
is not reduced to its lowest terms? Let us not get the little summer
visit to the mountains confused with the larger simple life. Very few
campers on a summer vacation ever know the real joy of a quiet life as
Thoreau lived it at Walden Pond, or as Burroughs lives it at Slabsides
in spring and at Woodchuck Lodge in summer. Such a life as I am writing
about is a psychological condition as well as a physical environment,
and results from a choice or preference of two or more methods of
living. It carries with it no regrets, no envy, no covetousness. Perhaps
such a life would prove impossible when forced upon one, but happy
indeed is he who, having lived as other men, learns "to reduce the
necessities of subsistence to their lowest terms" and proves, "that in
every life there is time to be wise, and opportunity to tend the growth
of the spirit." 'Tis then and only then that he can "share the great,
sunny, joyous life of the earth, or be as happy as the birds are! as
contented as the cattle on the hills! as the leaves of the trees that
dance and rustle in the wind! as the waters that murmur and sparkle to
the sea!"

All of this I think John Burroughs has realized if ever any man has
realized it. Sitting in an old barn about a hundred yards from Woodchuck
Lodge, his summer home, in his home-made chair, and for his writing desk
an old chicken coop with one board-covered side, and a large piece of
heavy manila paper covering this, is the way I found him at work. In
front of the opening or barn door was The Old Clump, the mountain of his
boyhood days to inspire, to uplift him. Even the summer home in which he
lives savors too much of the conventional. To be absolutely free is a
consummation devoutly to be sought for--and this he finds, experiences,
cherishes. Writing at seventy-five? Yes, thinking and writing,--but
writing, thinking and living best when living simplest. With his dark
brown wash-suit and cap on, he is not afraid to sit or roll on mother
earth nor to climb a tree if necessary. Before breakfast we go to gather
some apples for the table, and nothing would do but I should hold the
basket while he mounted the tree and picked the apples. Then over the
brow of the hill after breakfast to get potatoes for dinner--but to
stop long enough at the old barn for a snap-shot of him and to learn of
the junco's nest built in the hay only six feet from his chicken-coop
desk. The