Part 2 (1/2)

At the little old school house I had many teachers, Bill Bouton, Bill Allaben, Taylor Grant, Jason Powell, Rossetti Cole, Rebecca Scudder, and others I got well into Dayball's Arithraphy, and read Hall's History of the United States--through the latter getting quite familiar with the Indian wars and the French war and the Revolution Some books in the district library also attracted me I think I was the only one of the family that took books from the library

I recall especially ”Murphy, the Indian Killer” and the ”Life of Washi+ngton” The latter took hold of h the house with e of it aloud, and that it moved me so that I did not knohether I was in the body or out Many tied, as it were, by a wave of e a matter only to sho responsive I was to literature at an early age I should perhaps offset this statement by certain other facts which are by no

There was a period in rofor poetic literature

I used to learn the songs by heart and invent and extemporize tunes for thes

My taste for books began early, but rowth My interest in theological and scientific questions antedatedthe last half of y and possessed a copy of Spurzheiy,” and of Comb's ”Constitution of Man”

I also subscribed to Fowler's _Phrenological Journal_ and for years accepted the phrenologists' own estimate of the value of their science

And I still see soeneral truths in it The size and shape of the brain certainly give clues to the mind within, but its subdivision into arden plot, from each one of which a different crop is produced, is absurd Certain bodily functions are localized in the brain, but not our mental and emotional traits--veneration, self-esteem, sublimity--these are attributes of theto see wherein I differed from my brothers and from other boys of s and events about me When Mr McLaurie proposed to start an acadee and came there to feel the pulse of the people and to speak upon the subject I believe I was the only boy in his audience I was probably ten or twelve years of age

At one point in his address the speaker had occasion to use me to illustrate his point: ”About the size of that boy there,” he said, pointing to me, and my face flushed with embarrassment The academy was started and I hoped in a few years to attend it But the time when Father could see his way to send me there never came One season when I was fifteen or sixteen, I setto school at Harpersfield A boy whoe attended it and I wanted to accoly and held it out as a possible reward if I helped hurry the far to field with the tea” one of the oat-stubble lots I followed the plough those Septe about me, but the reality never ca, that he could not afford it butter was low and he had toohis ave me the best there was in Harpersfield anyway--a worthy aspiration is never lost All these things differentiate ical questions showed itself about the saue caed with novel ideas about the i the literal truth of the text ”The soul that sinneth, it shall die”

I attended the lib talk I distinctly remember that it was from his mouth that I first heard the word ”encyclopaedia” When he cited the ”Encyclopaedia Britannica”

in confirmation of some statement, I had no doubt of its truth, and I resolved soet my hands on that book I still have those notes and references that I took sixty years ago

At a e of , but, quite unguided, it resulted only in a waste of paper I wanted to walk before I could creep, to paint before I could draw, and getting a box of cheap water colours, I indulged my crude artistic instincts My most ambitious piece was a picture of General Winfield Scott standing beside his horse and some piece of artillery, which I copied from a print It was of course an awful daub, but in connection with it I heard for the first time a neord,--the word ”taste” used in its aesthetic sense One of the neighbour wo my picture said to Mother, ”What taste that boy has”

That application of the word otten

About this ti on the road, and I withbeside an old Quaker fare flat stone was turned over, and beneath it in soement were some smaller stones ”Here are some antiquities,” said Mr Corbin, and my vocabulary received another addition A neord or a new thing was very apt to make its mark upon my mind I have told elsewhere what a revelation to limpse of one of the warblers, the black-throated blue-back, indicating as it did a world of bird life of which I had never dreamed, the bird life in the inner heart of the woods My brothers and other boys ith me but they did not see the new bird The first time I saw the veery, or Wilson's thrush, also stands out in e of the woods ”A brown thrasher,” said Bill Chase It was not the thrasher but it was a new bird to me and the picture of it is in my mind as if made only yesterday Natural History was a subject unknown toas nature study in the schools was of course unheard of Our natural history we got unconsciously in the sport at noon time, or on our way to and from school or in our Sunday excursions to the streams and woods We learned much about the ways of foxes and woodchucks and coons and skunks and squirrels by hunting thee, too, and the crows, hawks, and owls, and the song birds of the field and orchard, all enter into the fars and habits of all the cos, toads, lizards, and snakes Also with the wild bees and wasps One season Ithe habits of five or six different kinds and rifling their nests I kept my store of bumble-bee honey in the attic where I had a se phial filled with the honey Hoell I came to know the different dispositions of the various kinds--the sround; the se black-vested, the yellow-necked, the black-banded, etc, that made their nests in old mice nests in the meadow or in the barn and other places I used to watch and woo the little piping frogs in the spring ht, till they would sit in my open hand and pipe I used to creep on e in the act of dru their nests in the old attic and noted their co on thecry fro raspberry, e called ”Scotch caps” I tried to trap foxes and soon learned how far the fox's cunning surpassed ot fro by on horseback one winter day, his huge feet al a fox across our upperas fast as he can, but if you stood behind that big rock beside his course, and as he ca should jump out and shout 'hello,' he would run faster” That was the winter when in fond ito deprive of their pelts when they needed the experiences and how completely I failed

I was born at Roxbury, N Y, April 3, 1837 At least two other American authors of note were born on the third of April--Washi+ngton Irving and Edward Everett Hale The latter once wrote s, ”I have been looking back overborn I find I was undergoing an exae” The only other American author born in 1837 is William Dean Howells, as born in Ohio in March of that year

I was the son of a farain the son of a farmer There are no professional or coenerations, my blood has the flavour of the soil in it; it is rural to the last drop I can find no city dwellers in the line of hs tribe, as far back as I can find any account of them, were e Burroughs, as hung as a witch at Saleh I can find no proof of it I wanted to believe that he was and in 1898 I made a visit to Salem and to Gallows Hill to see the spot where he, the last victim of the witchcraft craze, ended his life There is no doubt that the renegade preacher, Stephen Burroughs, who stole a lot of his father's serer on his own account about 1720, was a third or fourth cousin of ious bent contributed the main elements of my personality I was a countryman dyed in the wool, yea, more than that, born and bred in the bone, and ious The religion of my fathers underwent inwhich would indeed have appeared like rank atheism to them, but which was nevertheless full of the very essence of true religion--love, reverence, wonder, unworldliness, and devotion to ideal truth--but in no way identified with Church or creed

I used to feel that ious temperament was as clearly traceable to the hard Calvinism of my fathers, as the stratified sandstone is traceable to the old granite rock, but that it had undergone a sea change as had the sandstone, or in h the activity of the e in which I lived It was rationalism touched with randfather and great-grandfather caeport in Connecticut about the end of the Revolution and settled in Stahs of Bridgeport, a reat uncle

Father used to say that his uncle Stephen could build a shi+p and sail it around the world The faeport The first John Burroughs of whom I can find any record came to this country from the West Indies and settled in Stratford, Conn, about 1690 He had ten children, and ten children to a family was the rule down to my own father One October while on a cruise with a s Island Sound, stress of weather compelled us to seek shelter in Black Rock harbour, which is a part of Bridgeport In theup a street seeking the trolley line to take us into the city,a large brick building with the legend on it--”The Burroughs Ho its hospitality--after our rough experience on the Sound its look and its na Sohs was probably its founder

My great-grandfather, Ephraim, I believe, died in 1818, and was buried in the town of Starandfather, Eden Burroughs, died in Roxbury in 1842, aged 72, and e of 81

My h born in this country about 1765 It is froet many of my Celtic characteristics--my decidedly feminine temperahs Grandfather Kelly was a s head and marked Irish features He entered the Continental army when a mere lad in some menial capacity, but before the end he carried a e and had many stories to tell of their hardshi+ps He was upward of seventy-five years old when I first remember him--a little man in a blue coat with brass buttons He and Granny used to come to our house once or twice a year for a week or two at a time Their perht ler How s, as soon as he had had his breakfast, have I seen hiomery Hollow or over in Meeker's Hollow, or over in West Settle hoo with hihty, and how skilfully he would take the trout! I was an angler myself before I was ten, but Grandfather would take trout from places in the stream where I would not think it worth while to cast my hook But I never fished when I ith him, I carried the fish and watched his, but Grandfather would show very little fatigue, and I know he did not have the ravenous hunger I always had when I went fishi+ng, so much so that I used to think there was in this respect so the trout strea corn or working on the road--a peculiarly fierce, all-absorbing desire for food, so that a piece of rye bread and butter was thein the world I remember that one June day ht years old, set out for Meeker's Hollow for trout

It was a pull of over two e held out until we reached the creek, but ere too hungry to fish; we turned homeward and fed upon the wild strawberries in the pastures and h and they kept us alive until we reached hoer beside the trout strea else like it in the world!

Grandfather Kelly was a fisherhty-eight He had few of the world's goods and he did not want theling, and his only reading the Bible How long and attentively would he pore over the Book!--but I never heard hiious opinion or conviction He believed in witches and hobgoblins: he had seen them and experienced them and used to tell us stories that almost made us afraid of our own shadows My own youthful horror of darkness, and of dark rooms and recesses and cellars even in the dayti tales Yet Iabout this, for I remember a fearful experience I had when I was a child of three or four years I seein a corner of the old kitchen at night with my eyes fixed on the black space of the open door of the bedroom occupied byand aiting for their return The agony of that waiting I shall never forget Whether or not the other children shared my fear I do not remember; probably they did, and maybe communicated their fear to me I could not take h of what I may have fancied it held that would hurt me I have no idea

It was only the child's inherited fear of the dark, the unknown, the thened that fear It clung to h my boyhood and until my fifteenth or sixteenth year and was peculiarly acute about h the woods at twilight, the barn, the wagon house, the cellar set round up on the hill by the roadside in the dark, I did so very gingerly I was too scared to run for fear the ghosts of all the dead buried there would be at et h h my father; Mother had the self-consciousness of the Celt, Father not at all, though he had the Celtic temperament: red hair and freckles! The red-haired, freckled, harsh-voiced littleat the stock, sending the dog after the cows or after the pigs in the garden, or calling his orders to us in the field or shouting back his directions for the work after he had started for the Beaver Dae But his bark was always more to be feared than his bite He would threaten loudly but punish mildly or not at all But he improved the fields, he cleared the woods, he battled with the rocks and the stones, he paid his debts and he kept his faith He was not aHe was easily ious convictions and e his hy tone He knew nothing of e call love of nature and he owed little or nothing to books after his schoolboy days He usually took teekly publications--an Albany or a New York newspaper and a religious paper called _The Signs of the Tian of the Old School Baptist Church, of which he was a member He never asked me about my own books and I doubt that he ever looked into one of thehts and interests ran frohts and interests! Literature he had never heard of, science and philosophy were an unknoorld to hiion (hard predestinarianishts and time He had no desire to travel, he was not a hunter or fisherman, and the shows and vanities of the world disturbed hi and books he was disturbed lest I becoion on such easy and wholesale terhbours made his nostrils dilate with contempt But literature was an enemy he had never heard of

A writer of books had no place in his category of human occupations; and as for a poet, he would probably have ranked hi azine, he is said to have shed tears Poor Father, his heart was tender, but concerning so much that fills and ood farhbour, a devoted parent and husband, and he did well the work in the world which fell to his lot to do The narrowness and bigotry of his class and church and tiood will, and a fervent religious nature were his also His heart was hbour's religion or politics, but he was ever ready to lend him a hand

The earliestday in irl” had thrown rief and helplessness to punish her as I thought she merited, I looked up to the side hill above the house and saw Father striding across the ploughed ground with a bag strung across his breast frorain Hisarhtened no doubt by my excited state of mind, that stamped itself indelibly uponsuspended around his neck, sowing grain, forpicture of hirown and ho a teahed field, dragging in the oats To and fro he goes all afternoon, the dust strearessed I suppose I had a feeling that I should have taken his place He always got his crops in in season and gathered in season His far about it, calling the dog, ”hollering” at the cattle or the sheep or at the reat deal of unnecessary noise, but alith an eye to his crops and to the best interests of the farm He was a home body, had no desire to travel, little curiosity about other lands, except, maybe, Bible lands, and felt an honest contempt for city ways and city people He was as unaffected as a child and would ask a e as soon as ask the on the conventional side but great tenderness of emotion on the purely hu, and he often brought a look of sha for those times and had been a school teacher himself in the winter ht in Red Kill I passed the little school house recently and wondered if there was a counterpart of A about the door, or if there was a red-haired, freckled, country greenhorn at the teacher's desk inside Father was but once in New York, sometime in the '20's, and never saw the capitol of his country or his state And I am sure he never sat on a jury or had a lawsuit in my time He took an interest in politics and was always a De the Civil War, I fear, a ”copperhead” His religion saw no evil in slavery I re the Harrison Caon from the midst of which rose a pole with a coon skin or a stuffed coon upon it I suppose what I saas part of a Harrison political procession