



Produced by Tonya Allen, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team








MY BOYHOOD

By John Burroughs

With A Conclusion By His Son Julian Burroughs




FOREWORD


In the beginning, at least, Father wrote these sketches of his boyhood
and early farm life as a matter of self-defense: I had made a determined
attempt to write them and when I did this I was treading on what was to
him more or less sacred ground, for as he once said in a letter to
me, "You will be homesick; I know just how I felt when I left home
forty-three years ago. And I have been more or less homesick ever since.
The love of the old hills and of Father and Mother is deep in the very